The next larger cycle of time is called the Manwantara or the Deluge. When the Divine Cycle has revolved 71 times it brings about a cataclysm. The oceans surge up and cover the entire earth with its waters, even the highest peaks of the Himalayas being submerged, and remain so for the period of 71 Divine Cycles. This world-wide natural catastrophy occurs periodically, owing to more and more increased accumulation of the sins of humanity, who, along with all living beings and vegetation are thus destroyed by submersion. The only man saved is the most virtuous and spiritual man of the time, who becomes the Manoo elect, that is, the spiritual governor of the next Cycle which extends between the time of the reappearance of land after the Deluge to the next Deluge. This period is called Manwantara, the period between two Manoos. The account of the Deluge as given in the Old Testament of the Bible has been taken from minute accounts recorded in the Alatsya (Fish) Purana and the condensed facts about them given in all the Purānas as well as the Mahābhārata. Only, the Bible version is distorted in some particulars. Since the beginning of the present Kalpa creation, six Manwantaras, each ending with the Deluge, have passed away. We are just now living in the seventh of which twenty-seven Divine Cycles have rolled away and we are now living in the Iron Age of the twenty-eighth. Many millions of years therefore have gone by since the last Flood. Towards the end of the Kali Yuga of the last Manwantara, mankind became filled with the utmost corruption. But there was, according to the Mahābhārata and the Bhāgavat Purana, one man, by the name of King Satyavrata, whom this spirit of corruption failed to touch. He was almost as pure and spiritually powerful as Brahmā, the Creator, while he was possessed of uncommon physical beauty. He was engaged in spiritual austerities and meditation in a holy forest on the top of the Himalayan mountains for many hundred years. One day, while he was sitting in contemplation on the bank of the river Cheerinee, a little fish leapt out of the water into his hands. He threw it back into the river but the fish, to his surprise, spoke and begged the king to protect him from a large fish coming to devour him. Satyavrata out of compassion took the fish into his hands again, went home and placed it in a water-pot. He tended him as his own offspring. The fish gradually grew so big that he had to be taken to a large pond, but after a few years the pond could no more hold the fish, so large had it become. The King wondering at this unprecedented growth suspected the fish to be Vishnoo Himself. The fish begged Satyavrata to put him into the holy Ganges which he did by his Yoga power. In time, however, the fish growing still larger, he had to be taken to the ocean. The King exhibited his yoga-power again by carrying that huge fish to the ocean.