Confusing Interpretations and Recordings

Preamble

Pralaya or dissolution is part or total annihilation of all that is created. Generally, most Eastern traditions interpret it as the end of part of a universe through the primary elements, essentially the water element swallowing up part or all that was created.

Pralaya mean ‘destruction’, ‘dissolution’, dissipation’ and other similar things in Sanskrit. The Sanskrit term Pralaya consists of two parts, ‘pra’ and ‘laya’.

‘Pra’ means a natural momentum or a push ahead without any external control.

‘laya’ means a return to the original state, meaning a return from the created gross state to the pre-creation subtle state.

Pralaya means merging of one element with another or dissolving one into another. It indicates the merger of the gross into the subtle and the subtle into its source.

The inevitability of this world of duality is that one born has to die, one that comes into existence has to undergo decay, one that goes up has to come down and so on. These endpoints are a certainty. 

The Great Flood: Widely Texted

Pralaya or dissolution can be more clearly associated with Hindu mythology and part of the continuous cycle. Hindu religious texts speak about different types of pralaya affecting different levels of creation and at different time scales. Such elaborate events do not find mention in the Semantic religions. There is only mention of a great deluge, and hundreds of descriptions of such a deluge can be found worldwide from various tribes and cultures.

Though differing slightly in details, all of the descriptions have commonality, indicating that they refer to the same event. The Biblical and Khoranic versions of the great deluge refer to the great flood finding mention in the Hindu mythological texts occurring at the end of a ‘manvantara.’ A previous blog addressed this deluge.  Please refer to the same.

Mention or description about the great deluge can be found in the texts of various countries with an identification of a Manu like character. Narratives about a flood can be found in the texts of Babylonia, Sumer, Tibet, in the Ifugaos of Philipines, Kamnu of Thailand, Batak of Sumatra, in the Egyptian, Greek, and Norse mythology, in the native American tribes of Quechua and Mayans, in the Shaur of Andes, Cadd of Texas and the Hopi. Mention can also be found in Mechocan of Mexico, Tarahumara and Toltecs of Mexico, the Nahua of Central Mexico, the Mixtec of Northern Oaxaca, in New Guinean legends, the Kwaya in Africa, the Yoruba of South-West Nigeria, in the belief of Yenisey-Ostyak of North-Central Siberia, and in the Tuviniam tales of Mongolia to name a few.

Pralaya according to Indian Religious Texts: Types

According to Vishnu and Agni Puranas, four types of pralayas find mention.

  1. Nitya pralaya (Periodical or recurrent on a continuous dissolution)
  2. Naimitik pralaya (Causal or occasional dissolution)
  3. Prakritik pralaya (Elemental, total or Great dissolution)
  4. Atyantik pralaya (Absolute and unscheduled dissolution)

In addition to these, other types of pralaya find mention in various other religious texts. They are  ‘Mahapralaya (great), ‘Dainandin pralaya (daily)’, ‘Kaand pralaya (sectional)’, ‘Mahakalpa pralaya’(glactic dissolution), and ‘Surya samvatsara anta pralaya’. Two of them are alternate names for two of the above mentioned four types of pralaya.

Differing explanation of pralayas

Nitya or naityik pralaya

  1. The state of dreamless sound sleep is Sushupti, and the period of such a time is known as naityik pralaya. 
  2. Nitya Pralaya relates to the absorption or dissipation of divinities of the universe into their source. Continuous cyclic destruction of existing states, and this itself is Nitya Pralaya.
  3. Nitya pralaya is also when some state or another continually undergoes dissolution. Simultaneously, some form happens to be originating. So, Nitya Pralaya happens to be continuously cyclic within the macrocosmic creation. Some refer to all the changes constantly occurring at the microcosmic level.
  4. The material death of living beings also constitutes Nitya Pralaya since it takes place daily. There is change occurring continuously in nature, like grass drying up, flowers withering, etc. All these also represent Nitya Pralaya.
  5. Round the clock destruction of all that gets created also becomes part of Nitya Pralaya.

Naimitik Pralaya

A thousand cycles of the four epochs (4.32 billion solar years) or the 4 Epochs is called a Kalpa, a day of the Creator God. 14 Manus preside over this period (approximately 71 four epochs each).  At the end of this, a day of Creator God ends marked by a dissolution. The Creator God’s night is of the same duration and is the period of specified dissolution, the Naimittik Pralaya. I also came across an odd mention of Naimitik Pralaya as the dissolution of the Milky Way Galaxy while surveying the available literature on Pralayas. Why Naimitik Pralaya does not represent the galaxy’s destruction and what happens shall be explained at the end when I give my take on the various pralayas.

Strangely, a dreadful event of dissolution/annihilation finds mention in many quarters inspired mainly by the descriptions in mythological texts like Vishnu and Garud Purans and Shrimad Bhagavatam.

A Glimpse of the Description

At the end of thousand years, the Creator God goes to sleep, a total lack marked by a severe shortage of food occurs. All the water will dry up, leaving everything to perish. The description talks about no water. There would be absolutely no water either in the seven lower worlds or the two upper subtle worlds along with the Bhu Loka (the earth). The Supreme Being* (actually, it should be the Super Soul or the Creator God) will take the form of Rudra (a mythical mythological form)  to take all creatures with him. The seven rays of the Sun would get split into seven individual Suns.  These suns will burn all the seven lokas, starting with Patala (the nether world or hell), moving up to the earth and the two subtle worlds (Bhur and Svar lokas). The inhabitants of Bhur and Suvar lokas move up to the next higher world, the Janaloka. After the Sun gorged fire, constant heavy rain for 100 years would engulf all the worlds in darkness. The water level will rise to the world of the seven seers and stop there.  The clouds get dispersed away by the breadth of Vishnu. This wind again keeps blows for another 100 years. After all this, the Creator God wakes from his nightly slumber and starts creating another world again.

This dissolution that occurs at the end of a Kalpa (a day) is the intermediate dissolution. As mentioned in a previous blog on Vedic time scales, the dissolution of the earth is slated to occur only after 4.32 billion years after the appearance of life on earth. It was also mentioned there that it is only approximately 2 billion years since life appeared on earth. That leaves us with almost a similar time before the earth can undergo dissolution.

Prakritik Pralaya

This is a pralaya that finds identical descriptions in various sources. All describe Prakrita Pralaya as one that occurs at the end of the life of Creator God (the life span of the Creator God is 100 divine years). At the end of his hundred years, the five essential gross elements – Mahat (the total material energy for one creation (one universe), Ahankara (universal ego) and the 5 Tanmatras (the five subtle elements)are subject to dissolution. Hence, this dissolution is also known as elemental annihilation since it involves the dissolution of all aspects of nature (Prakriti).

Macabre explanation

All calamities are supposed to occur one by one, starting with extreme drought resulting in severe famine, followed by destruction by fire. Again, as in the case of Naimitik Pralaya, a terrible wind will blow for 100 years, followed by heavy rains for the next 100 years. After this rain, the universal egg (cosmos) will be one big infinite ocean of water.

The Pancha Bhoota (five gross elements) get destroyed one after the other. When each element is deprived of its underlying subtle element, they get annihilated or undergo dissolution. Accordingly, the earth is associated with smell, water with taste, fire with form, wind with touch or feeling and ether with sound.

The water that covers all the universes will deprive the earth of its quality of fragrance. The earth thus gets dissolved.

The great fire will rob the water of its fine quality of taste, and water undergoes dissolution.

The ferocious wind takes away the quality of form from fire, and hence, fire undergoes dissolution.

The wind loses its fundamental subtle element of touch or sensation to ether, and therefore wind undergoes dissolution.

With the loss of the elemental nature of sound from the ether, it undergoes dissolution into the Ahankara or ego.

Ahankara (ego) dissolves into mahat and the mahat, in turn, dissolves into moh (the material energy for creating the entire cosmos or the unmanifest subtle nature). As mentioned in all mythological texts, including the Bhagavatam, this represents the Prakritik pralaya or elemental dissolution. In this, all manifest forms and the unmanifest as well all return to the root source. Space and time disappear, and nothing remains except a vacuum.

Mahapralaya

This is another name for Prakritik pralaya. This is the final dissolution of the entire cosmos in totality at the end of 311 trillion years.