The Child on the Cosmic Waters

Among all the sages who visited the Pandavas in their forest exile, none was so wonderful as Markandeya. For Markandeya was deathless. Ages of the world had risen and fallen while he lived on, unaging, and he had seen things that no other living being had ever seen. As he sat with them one evening, Yudhishthira looked at the ancient, ageless sage and asked the question that was in all their hearts.

"Holy one," he said, "you have outlived the destruction of the world itself and live on into a new creation. You are older than the mountains and the seas as we know them. Tell us - what have you seen? You who have watched the universe dissolve and be born again, what is the greatest wonder you have beheld in all your endless years?"

Markandeya was silent a while, his eyes turned inward upon depths of memory no other could follow. Then he said, "I will tell you of the one thing I have seen that is greater than all the rest - the thing I saw when the whole world had ended and there was nothing left but a shoreless sea, and I alone was left awake in all of creation. Listen, son of Pandu, and I will tell you of the dissolution of the world, and of the child I found floating upon the cosmic waters."