"A year of Brahma is composed of the proper number of such days and nights, and a hundred of such years constitute his whole life. The period of his life is called Para, and the half of it Pararddha, or the half of a Para. One Pararddha, or half of Brahma's existence, has now expired, terminating with the great Kalpa called the Padma Kalpa. The now existing Kalpa, or day of Brahma, called Varaha (or that of the boar), is the first of the second Pararddha of Brahma's existence. The dissolution which occurs at the end of each Kalpa,

or day of Brahma, is called naimittika, incidental, occasional, or contingent." [**]

The dissolution of existing beings is of three kinds: "incidental, elemental, and absolute." [*+] The first is naimittika, occasional, incidental, or Brahmya, as occasioned by the intervals of Brahma's days; the destruction of creatures, though not of the substance of the world, occurring during the night. The second is the general resolution of the elements into their primitive source, or Prakriti, the Prakritika destruction, and occurs at the end of Brahma's life. The third, the absolute, or final, Alyantika, is individual annihilation, Moksha, exemption for ever from future existence.

The process of destruction is described as follows:--

"At the end of a thousand periods of four ages the earth is for the most part exhausted. A total death then ensues, which lasts a hundred years, and in consequence of the failure of food all beings become languid and exanimate, and at last entirely perish. The eternal Vishnu then assumes the character of Rudra, the destroyer, and descends to reunite all his creatures with himself. He enters into the seven rays of the sun, drinks up all the waters of the globe, and causes all moisture whatever, in living bodies or in the soil, to evaporate, thus drying up the whole earth. The seas, the rivers, the mountain-torrents, and springs are all exhaled, and so are all the waters of Patala, the regions .below the earth.

"Thus fed, through his intervention, with abundant moisture, the seven solar rays dilate to seven suns, whose radiance glows above, below, and on every side, and sets the three worlds and Patala on fire. The three worlds, consumed by these suns, become rugged and deformed