The Yugas and the Dissolution of the World

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Yudhiṣṭhira asked Mārkaṇḍeya, who has lived through ages beyond counting, to explain how things come to be. The sage first bowed to Janārdana, the eternal Lord and source of all, and then described time. The Kṛta age lasts four thousand years, with a dawn and dusk of four hundred each; Tretā three thousand, Dvāpara two thousand, Kali a thousand, each with proportionally shorter twilights. Together these make twelve thousand years, and a thousand such cycles make one day of Brahmā. Near the end of the Kali age, order collapses. Brahmins abandon their duties, Śūdras seek wealth, and foreign rulers such as the Śakas, Yavanas and Ābhīras gain power. People shorten their own lives through vice, rain fails and crops wither. A long drought comes, and then seven suns blaze together and dry up the rivers and seas. A fire called Saṃvartaka, driven by wind, burns the earth and the worlds below. Great clouds pour rain for twelve years, the oceans overflow and the mountains break apart.

Then Brahmā draws in the winds and sleeps on his lotus. Mārkaṇḍeya alone is left, drifting on the endless water. He sees a banyan tree and, on a bough of it, a radiant boy with the Śrīvatsa mark, who invites him to rest inside his body. Mārkaṇḍeya enters and sees the whole universe in it: rivers, oceans, mountains, gods, sages and creatures. After wandering there for ages he is breathed out through the boy's mouth and sees the boy again in his true form. Awestruck, he worships him and asks why the universe is within him and how long he will remain.

The Lord answered that even the gods do not fully know him. In ancient times he was called Nara, and since the waters have been his ayana, his home, he is Nārāyaṇa. He is the source and destroyer of all things, and is Viṣṇu, Brahmā, Indra, Vaiśravaṇa, Yama, Śiva, Soma and Kaśyapa. Fire is his mouth, earth his feet, the sun and moon his eyes, heaven his head, wind his mind. As Śeṣa he bears the earth; as a boar he once lifted it out of the water; the four castes came from his mouth, arms, thighs and feet.

He explained the ages by colour: white in the Kṛta age, yellow in Tretā, red in Dvāpara, dark in Kali. When righteousness fades and fierce demons rise, he takes birth in good families to restore order. At the end of a yuga he becomes Death itself and destroys the three worlds, then sleeps for a span a thousand times as long as the ages, looking like a boy though he is ancient, until Brahmā wakes. Mārkaṇḍeya recalled that the Lord is Hari, who has been born as Kṛṣṇa of the Vṛṣṇis. He grants Mārkaṇḍeya long life and unfailing memory. The Pāṇḍavas and Draupadī bow to Janārdana, who comforts them.

Told by Mārkaṇḍeya → Yudhiṣṭhira

Who: Mārkaṇḍeya, Nārāyaṇa, Yudhiṣṭhira, Brahmā

Bound to

Markandeya sees the flood and the child on the banyan leaf origin

Matsya (the Flood) mirror

Viṣṇu Slays Madhu and Kaiṭabha origin

Places: Banyan in the flood

Where this comes from

read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (ibiblio sripedia mirror) Vana Parva, Section CLXXXVII (yugas and dissolution)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (ibiblio sripedia mirror) Vana Parva, Section CLXXXVIII (Nārāyaṇa's discourse)

See it on the tree · All stories

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