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, 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