Pralaya (pralaya)

Pralaya is the dissolution of the world at the end of a cosmic cycle, when the oceans rise, the sun burns everything dry and creation is drawn back into its source to rest. Markandeya describes it to Yudhishthira from the inside, having wandered the drowned universe until he found a banyan leaf carrying a sleeping child who was the whole of it. The flood in which Manu is towed to safety by a horned fish is the same event told as a rescue rather than a vision.