Pralaya (“dissolution”) generally meant the destruction of one creation before the next. Chapter 2 deals with Hindu conceptions of time and of multiple creations.
The Agni Purana mentioned four kinds of pralaya: a daily destruction (nitya pralaya), the destruction at the end of a kalpa or a day of Brahma (Brahma Pralaya), the destruction at the end of a thousand catur-yugas (Prakrita Pralaya), and the final destruction and dissolution of the individual self (atman) and absorption into the Supreme Self (atyantik-pralaya).
See also Catur-Yuga; chapter 2 on time
For further reading:
Hermann Jacobi, “Ages of the World,” in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 1; Mircea Eliade, “Time and Eternity in Indian Thought,” in Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, vol. 3, Man and Time, edited by Joseph Campbell (New York: Pantheon, 1957; reprinted Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, “Pralaya,” in Encyclopedia of Religion,
