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Two unconnected traditions furnish the between-worlds interval identically: everything drowned back into one primeval water; a span measured in cosmic units (millions of years / a night of Brahma); and the sole survivor a god withdrawn into or onto a SERPENT, explicitly unseen by men and gods, waiting out the gap. The long sleep is literally a sleep · on the water, in serpent company · and both texts agree that no one inside an age can witness it.
At the elemental dissolution (prakrita-pralaya) 'the whole of the three worlds is one ocean.' The breath of Vishnu becomes a wind that blows a hundred years until the clouds are gone; then the lord 'reposes, sleeping upon Sesha' · the world-serpent · 'in the midst of the deep,' for a night equal in length to his day, until creation dawns again.
set against Book of the Dead, chapter 175
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