Thursday, July 6, 2017

Manu Flood

"Manu, in the mythology of India, the first man, and the legendary author of an important Sanskrit law code, the Manu-smriti (Laws of Manu). The name is cognate with the Indo-Europeanman” and also has an etymological connection with the Sanskrit verb man-, “to think.” Manu appears in the Vedas, the sacred literature of Hinduism, as the performer of the first sacrifice. He is also known as
the first king, and most rulers of medieval India traced their genealogy back to him, either through his son (the solar line) or his daughter (the lunar line).
 

In the story of the great flood, Manu combines the characteristics of the Hebrew Bible figures of Noah, who preserved life from extinction in a great flood, and Adam, the first man.
 
The Shatapatha Brahmana recounts how he was warned by a fish, to whom he had done a kindness, that a flood would destroy the whole of humanity. He therefore built a boat, as the fish advised. When the flood came, he tied this boat to the fish’s horn and was safely steered to a resting place on a mountaintop. When the flood receded, Manu, the sole human survivor, performed a sacrifice, pouring oblations of butter and sour milk into the waters. After a year there was born from the waters a woman who announced herself as “the daughter of Manu.” These two then became the ancestors of a new human race to replenish the earth. In the Mahabharata (“Great Epic of the Bharata Dynasty”), the fish is identified with the god Brahma, while in the Puranas (“Ancient Lore”) it is Matsya, the fish incarnation of Lord Vishnu." EncyclopediaBritanica
 
 
".....Then the god warned Manu that a flood would happen soon. Vishnu sent him a large ark, with orders to embark two specimens of each living species and seeds of every plant. Manu obeyed, and he boarded the ark when the ocean swelled and overwhelmed everything. We can see nothing anymore, except Vishnu in his fish body, a huge narwhal with golden scales. Manu moored his ark to the narwhal’s horn and Vishnu towed it through the waters.
Thus they came to the emerged summit of the North Mountain, Former gods had foreseen the flood and prepared shelters on mountaintop. See Les cités des cimes where they ran aground. The fish said then: “I saved you. Moor your ark to a tree, so that water cannot take it away while you are on the mountain. And as the waters will recede, you will get down with them.” And Manu descended with the ebb. The flood destroyed everything.
Manu was all alone. His animals colonized the earth, his plants germinated and nurtured them, but Manu stayed alone in the world." ES

 
And Noah went forth,...
Genesis 8:18