Vishnu 1

And Maheswara said, 'None can slay or conquer
them in battle. Save Arjuna, however, thou shall be able to only check them (once) on the field of battle!
The heroic Arjuna, with mighty arms, is the god incarnate styled Nara. He practised austerities of old in
the Vadari forest. The God Narayana is his friend. Therefore, he is unconquerable of the very gods. I
myself have given him the celestial weapon called Pasupata. From the regents also of all the ten
cardinal points, he has acquired the thunder-bolt and other mighty weapons. And the great god Vishnu
who is the Infinite Spirit, the Lord Preceptor of all the gods, is the Supreme Being without attributes, and
the Soul of the Universe, and existeth pervading the whole creation. At the termination of a cycle of
ages, assuming the shape of the all-consuming fire, he consumed the whole Universe with mountains
and seas and islands and hills and woods and forests.

And after the destruction of the Naga world also in
the subterranean regions in the same way, vast masses of many-coloured and loud-pealing clouds, with
streaks of lightning, spreading along the entire welkin, had appeared on high. Then pouring down water
in torrents thick as axles of cars, and filling the space everywhere, these extinguishing that all-consuming fire! When at the close of four thousand Yugas the Earth thus became flooded with water,
like one vast sea, and all mobile creatures were hushed in death, and the sun and the moon and the winds
were all destroyed, and the Universe was devoid of planets and stars, the Supreme Being called
Narayana, unknowable by the senses, adorned with a thousand heads and as many eyes and legs, became
desirous of rest. And the serpent Sesha, looking terrible with his thousand hoods, and shining with the
splendour of ten thousand suns, and white as the Kunda flower or the moon or a string of pearls, or the
white lotus, or milk, or the fibres of a lotus stalk, served for his conch.

Vana Parva: Draupadi-harana Parva: Section 270