s and vows and pilgrimages to sacred
waters and spots.[890] As in the season of rains a large variety of new
objects of the immobile order are caused to 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.'"'"

SECTION CCXXXIII

"'"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,