Nārāyaṇa and Mārkaṇḍeya

Mārkaṇḍeya is a great ṛshi with a very long life. At the end of a kalpa (age of the world), the great pralaya (dissolution) had come. Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa had drawn all worlds and beings into himself. Mārkaṇḍeya had been wandering inside the body of Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa. One day he was breathed out into the endless dark ocean of the pralaya. There he saw the infant Nārāyaṇa lying on a fig leaf, sucking his own toe and shining like a thousand suns. This is the Nārāyaṇa-Mārkaṇḍeya dialogue of the Matsya Mahā Purāṇa.

The setting: the pralaya and Mārkaṇḍeya within

At the end of the kalpa the great pralaya had taken place. Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa had drawn all beings, all worlds and all creation back into himself. He floated on the cosmic waters in his first yoga-nidrā (sleep of yoga). He was the only reality left.

Inside the endless belly of Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa, the ṛshi Mārkaṇḍeya had been wandering. His tapas was so great and his life so long that even the pralaya had not ended it. He walked through an inner cosmos of forests, mountains, rivers, villages and cities, and the āśramas of ṛshis. All the worlds were there, because inside Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa the whole universe went on in a subtle form. Mārkaṇḍeya wandered through it for ages. He had no idea where he was, or why the world around him seemed a little different from the one he had known.

The exhalation: outside the cosmic body

One day Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa breathed out. In that great breath Mārkaṇḍeya was blown out of the divine body like a tiny insect from an opened jar. In an instant he found himself alone, with no world at all, floating in the middle of the endless cosmic ocean. There was nothing: no sky with stars, no earth, no mountains, no sun, no beings. There was only dark water stretching without end in every direction, under a sky of total darkness.

Mārkaṇḍeya was filled with fear. He was the greatest of living ṛshis. He was the master of kāla-jñāna (knowledge of time), and by the grace of Bhagavān Śiva he had a long life. Yet here he was, lost, with no direction and no protection, in a void that was not even emptiness but the end of everything he had known. He cried out: “Where am I? What has happened to the world? Where are the ṛshis, the devas, the mountains, the rivers? Has the pralaya come? Am I dead? Is there anything at all?”

The vision of the infant Nārāyaṇa

As Mārkaṇḍeya floated in fear on the cosmic ocean, he saw far off a faint light. It was unlike any star or sun, soft and golden, and it came from a small thing floating on the water. He swam toward it and saw this:

An infant, divine and shining as a thousand suns and moons together, lay on a vaṭa patra (fig leaf) floating on the dark waters of the pralaya. The child looked no more than a few years old, yet his radiance was eternal and not that of an ordinary baby. He lay on the leaf in perfect peace with one knee drawn up. He was sucking his own great toe, quietly content like a child at rest, without fear and without need, wholly complete in himself. His eyes were a little open, with a gaze that looked into infinity.

Mārkaṇḍeya stood before this sight, overcome. Devotion, awe and recognition filled him. He felt that he stood before the source of everything that had been and would ever be. His fear was gone. Tears flowed from his eyes. He joined his palms and began to pray.

Mārkaṇḍeya’s prayer and Nārāyaṇa’s answer

Mārkaṇḍeya prayed. He praised the infant as the Paramātmā, without beginning and without end. He praised him as the one in whom all worlds arise and into whom they return, who plays like a child yet holds up the cosmos with no support. He praised him as Nārāyaṇa: “Nāra means the waters of the first matter, and ayana means the dwelling place. You are the one who rests on the first waters, the adhishṭhāna (base) of all that exists.”

The child smiled, and in that smile the whole cosmos flashed into view for a moment. Then Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa spoke, in a voice that filled the empty universe: “Mārkaṇḍeya, do not be afraid. You have wandered inside me for all these kalpas. The world you knew, with its mountains, rivers, cities, āśramas, devas and beings, was not outside me. It was inside me. You have been seeing the world within my body. Now you have been breathed out for a moment and you see the outside: the ocean of the pralaya. Do not be afraid. Come back inside.”

Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa breathed in. Mārkaṇḍeya was drawn back into the divine body. All the familiar worlds, the mountains, the rivers and the āśramas, appeared around him again exactly as before.

Sixteen ṛtvijs

The same chapter also tells of the beginning of creation. Sixteen ṛtvijs (priests of the cosmic yajña) came out of the body of Prajāpati, each from a different part of the body. They formed the first assembly of the yajña, which begins the new kalpa.

Sources

• Matsya Mahā Purāṇa, Chapter 166