come forth into life by the showers that fall from
the clouds, even so many new kinds of duty or religious
observances are brought about in each yuga. As
the same phenomena reappear with the reappearance
of the seasons, even so, at each new Creation the
same attributes appear in each new Brahman and Hara.
I have, before this, spoken to thee of Time which
is without beginning and without end, and which ordains
this variety in the universe. It is that Time
which creates and swallows up all creatures. All
the innumerable creatures that exist subject to pairs
of opposites and according to their respective natures,
have Time for their refuge. It is Time that assumes
those shapes and it is Time that upholds them.[891]
I have thus discoursed to thee, O son, on the topics
about which thou hadst inquired,
viz., Creation,
Time, Sacrifices and other rites, the Vedas, the real
actor in the universe, action, and the consequences
of action.’”
“Vyasa said, ’I shall now tell thee, how,
when his day is gone and his night comes, he withdraws
all things unto himself, or how the Supreme Lord,
making this gross universe exceedingly subtile, merges
everything into his Soul. When the time comes
for universal dissolution, a dozen Suns, and Agni
with his seven flames, begin to burn. The whole
universe, wrapt by those flames, begins to blaze forth
in a vast conflagration. All things mobile and
immobile that are on the earth first disappear and
merge into the substance of which this planet is composed.
After all mobile and immobile objects have thus disappeared,
the earth, shorn of trees and herbs, looks naked like
a tortoise shell. Then water takes up the attribute
of earth, viz., scent. When earth becomes
shorn of its principal attribute, that element is
on the eve of dissolution. Water then prevails.
Surging into mighty billows and producing awful roars,
only water fills this space and moves about or remains
still. Then the attribute of water is taken by
Heat, and losing its own attribute, water finds rest
in that element. Dazzling flames of fire, ablaze
all around, conceal the Sun that is in the centre
of space. Indeed, then, space itself, full of
those fiery flames, burns in a vast conflagration.
Then Wind comes and takes the attribute, viz.,
form of Heat or Light, which thereupon becomes extinguished,
yielding to Wind, which, possessed of great might,
begins to be awfully agitated. The Wind, obtaining
its own attribute, viz., sound, begins to traverse
upwards and downwards and transversely along all the
ten points. Then Space takes the attribute, viz.,
sound of Wind, upon which the latter becomes extinguished
and enters into a phase of existence resembling that
of unheard or unuttered sound. Then Space is
all that remains, that element whose attribute, viz.,
sound dwells in all the other elements, divested of
the attributes of form, and taste, and touch, and
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