The Day the World Began Again

Before this story begins, the tradition holds that the universe had passed through pralaya. This was a great cosmic flood in which all of creation was dissolved and submerged, undone back into formlessness. There was no day, no night, no seasons, no measure of time passing at all. Nothing yet stood still long enough to be measured.

It fell to Brahma, the creator among the trinity of gods, to begin again. The Brahma Purana describes this moment as the true beginning of ordered existence after the flood. Brahma did not simply return matter to its old shape. He established Kalachakra, the wheel of time itself. For the first time in this new cycle of creation, the world had days, nights, months, and years.