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SECTION VII.
The Days and Nights of Brahma.
This is the name given to the Periods called Manvantara (Manuantara,
or between the Manus) and Pralaya, or Dissolution ;
one referring
to the Active Periods of the Universe; the other to its times of
relative and complete Rest, whether they occur at the end of a Day or
an Age, or I^ife, of Brahma. These Periods, which follow each other
in regular succession, are also called Small and Great Kalpas, the
Minor and the Maha Kalpas; though, properly speaking, the Maha
Kalpa is never a Day, but a whole Life or Age of Brahma, for it is
said in the Brahma Vaivarta: " Chronologers compute a Kalpa by the
Life of Brahma. Minor Kalpas, as Samvarta and the rest, are numerous."
In sober truth they are infinite; for they have never had
a commencement; or, in other words, there never was sl first Kalpa,
nor will there ever be a last, in Eternity.
One Parardha, or half of the existence of Brahma,
in the ordinary
acceptation of this measure of time, has already expired in the present
Maha Kalpa; the last Kalpa was the Padma, or that of the Golden
Lotus; the present one is the Varaha,* the "Boar" Incarnation, or
Avatara.
*
There is a curious piece of information in the Buddhist esoteric traditions. The exoteric or allegorical
biography of Gautama Buddha shows this great Sage dying of an indigestion of "pork and
rice"; a very prosaic end, indeed, with little of the solemn element in it! This is explained as an
allegorical reference to his having been born in the "Boar" or Varaha Kalpa, when Vishnu
assumed the form of that animal to raise the Earth out of the "Waters of Space." Now as the
Brahmans descend direct from Brahma and arc, so to speak, identified with him; and as they are at
the same time the mortal enemies of Buddha and Buddhism, we have this curious allegorical hint
and combination. The Brahmanism of the Boar or Varaha Kalpa has slaughtered the religion of
Buddha in India, swept it from its face. Therefore Buddha, who is identified with his philosophy, is
said to have died from the effects of eating of the flesh of a wild hog. The very idea of one who
established the most rigorous vegetarianism and respect for animal life—even to refusing to eat eggs
as being vehicles of latent life—dying of an indigestion of meat, is absurdly contradictory and has
puzzled more than one Orientalist. But the present explanation, however, unveils the allegory, and
makes clear all the rest. The Varaha, however, is no simple Boar, but seems to have meant at first
some antediluvian lacustrine animal " delighting to sport in water." (
V&yu Pur&na.)