A story · Vishnu Purana · The End of Things

The Four Dissolutions

Vishnu Purana 6.3 · read aloud in the app

The story · English

Parasara spoke to Maitreya about the ending of all that lives. He said the dissolution of beings is of three kinds. The first is incidental, which belongs to Brahma and comes at the end of a Kalpa. The second is elemental, which comes after two Parardhas. The third is absolute, and that is final liberation from existence. Maitreya asked, "Tell me, excellent teacher, how a Parardha is counted, since two of them must pass before the elemental dissolution." Parasara answered that a Parardha is the number that stands in the eighteenth place when figures are counted by tens. When twice that span is over, everything that nature has put forth is drawn back into its unseen source.

Then Parasara taught how time is measured. The smallest moment is a Matra, the blink of a human eye. Fifteen Matra make a Kashtha, thirty Kashthas make a Kala, and fifteen Kalas make a Nadhika. A Nadhika is measured with a small copper vessel with a gold-tubed hole in its base, set on water until it fills. Two Nadis make a Muhurta, and thirty Muhurtas make a day and night. Thirty days make a month, and twelve months make a year. That year is one day and night of the gods, and three hundred and sixty of those make a divine year. Four ages together last twelve thousand divine years. A thousand such rounds of four ages make one day of Brahma. This is a Kalpa, in which fourteen Munis preside, and at its end comes the dissolution that belongs to Brahma.

Parasara said this dissolution is very dreadful. At the end of a thousand rounds of four ages, the earth is mostly spent. Then comes a drought that lasts a hundred years. Food fails, and all beings grow weak and listless, until at last every one of them dies. Then the eternal Vishnu takes the form of Rudra, the destroyer, and comes down to gather all his creatures back into himself. He enters the seven rays of the sun. He drinks up the waters of the earth and draws out every drop of moisture, from living bodies and from the soil alike. The whole earth dries.

Filled with that moisture, the seven rays swell into seven suns. Their blaze burns above, below, and on every side, and sets the three worlds and Patala on fire. Mountains, rivers, and seas are scorched and twisted. The earth lies bare of green and empty of moisture, like the back of a tortoise. Hari, as Rudra, the flame of time, becomes the scorching breath of the serpent Sesha, and it burns Patala to ashes. The great fire climbs to the earth and consumes it, then spreads through the air and the sphere of the gods. The three spheres look like a frying pan in the flames, and everything that moves or stands still is eaten by the fire.

The dwellers of the two upper spheres, having finished their duties and pressed by the heat, go to Maharloka. When that grows hot, those who have served their full time there and wish to rise higher pass on to Janaloka. When Janarddana, as Rudra, has consumed the whole universe, he breathes out great clouds called Samvartta. They are as huge as elephants and fill the sky with thunder and lightning. Some are white as the water-lily, some dark as smoke, some yellow, some grey like ashes, some deep blue like lapis, some red like arsenic. Some are shaped like towns, some like mountains, some like houses, some like columns. They pour down rain and put out the fires that wrapped the three worlds.

Then the rain does not stop. For a hundred years it falls, in drops as large as dice, and it floods the earth, fills the middle region, and drowns the sphere of the gods. Darkness covers the world. Everything that moved or stood still has perished, and still the clouds pour down water for more than a hundred years. The waters rise as high as the region of the seven Rishis, and the three worlds become one ocean. Then the breath of Vishnu turns into a strong wind. It blows for more than a hundred years, until every cloud is scattered. At last the wind itself is drawn back in.

Now he from whom all beings are made, the lord by whom all things exist, rests. He is beyond understanding, without beginning, the origin of the universe. In the form of Brahma, Hari sleeps upon Sesha in the midst of the ocean. Sanaka and the saints who went to Janaloka praise him. The holy ones of Brahmaloka, longing for liberation, contemplate him. He lies in a mystic slumber, meditating on his own spirit, called Vasudeva. This is called the incidental dissolution, because Hari, as Brahma, sleeps there as its cause. When he wakes, the world revives. When he closes his eyes, all things fall onto the bed of his sleep. His night lasts as long as his day, a thousand rounds of four ages, and the world lies under the ocean through it. Then the unborn Vishnu wakes, and as Brahma he creates the universe again.

Parasara then turned to the elemental dissolution. It begins when drought and fire have dried the worlds and Patalas, and by the will of Krishna, Mahat and the other products of nature are undone. First the waters swallow the property of earth, which is smell. Earth, robbed of it, becomes water. The water swells, roaring and rushing through all of space. Then fire licks up the flavour of the water, and the water becomes fire. Flame fills everything. Then the wind seizes the property of fire, which is form, and all becomes air. Ether takes touch from the air, and the air is gone. Ether alone remains, holding only sound, vast and bodiless, filling all of space.

Then egotism devours sound, and all the elements and faculties are merged into their origin. Egotism is swallowed by Mahat, whose nature is intelligence. Earth and Mahat are the inner and outer bounds of the universe. The seven forms of nature that arose in creation, from Mahat down to earth, now enter into each other in turn. The egg of Brahma dissolves in the waters around it. Water is drunk by fire, fire by air, air by ether, ether by egotism, egotism by intellect, and all of it is taken up by nature. Nature is the balance of the three qualities, with nothing too much or too little. Spirit is one, pure, and imperishable, a portion of the supreme spirit. That supreme spirit has no name or kind. It is Brahma, the highest power, Vishnu, from whom the perfect sage does not return. Nature and spirit both resolve into him.

Parasara said that Vedic works are of two kinds, active and quiescent, and by both the universal person is worshipped. Men worship Vishnu, lord of sacrifice, through the rites of the Rik, Yajur and Sama Vedas. The sages worship him in stillness, through meditation, as the giver of freedom. He is everything that can be spoken, long or short, and what has no name. He is the seen and the unseen, Hari, who takes all forms. Nature is absorbed into him, and spirit merges into the all-pervading spirit. Two Parardhas make one day of Vishnu. While nature returns to its source, and nature into spirit, and spirit into the supreme, that is his night, and it lasts as long. But for the supreme spirit there is neither day nor night. These words are only a way of speaking. So Parasara ended the elemental dissolution, and said he would speak next of the final one.

कथा · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: The Signs of the Kali Age · Vishnu Purana 6.1
• Next: Kesidhwaja Teaches Khandikya · Vishnu Purana 6.6
• All of Vishnu Purana · Ask Krishna about it

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