The Geography of the Puranas c13.s5.5

c13.s5.5

Similarly, the idea of cosmic cycles, i.e., the incidental dissolution of the world at the end of definite periods (Kalpas of the Purāṇas) and its recreation thereafter was firmly established among the Chaldeans, the Ionians, the Greeks and the Pythagoreans from which Plato adopted it. Although the principle was accepted in essence many and various opinions prevailed about the period covered by each cycle, and about the violence and character of the changes produced by the Sun. The Stoics adopted it in its most extreme form involving successive liquefactions of the Universe. The Chaldeans thought that whenever all the planets come into conjunction on one straight line in the sign of the zodiac Cancer, the entire universe is destroyed by fire, but destroyed to be born again; similarly the world is destroyed by water when the same phenomenon occurs in Capricorn. The theory of a complete and universal birth and rebirth (paliogenesis) was held by some of the Greek philosophers. Plato and Aristotle, however, seem to have restricted the destructive effects of the celestial influence to the sub-lunar sphere and maintained that the realm above the Moon (i.e., Mahāloka of the Purāṇas or the worlds of gods who live in the upper two spheres) were eternal. On the whole, the belief in periodically recurrent destructions of the earth by water (one of which is mentioned in the old Testament and in the Al-Koran) was more widespread and was given greater definition than belief in corresponding destruction by fire. The main reason for this may be attributed to rudimentary geological observations (notably of the presence of shells on high ground) which showed that portions of the earth's surface had at one time lain beneath the waters.