The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c22.s4.3

v1.c22.s4.3

Of the legends of Manu¹ the most important is that of the deluge, of which he is warned by a fish, and which he escapes through the agency of the fish, which carries his ship about until it rests on a mountain peak, in post-Vedic mythology called Naubandhana.² The fish in the epic becomes Brahman, and in the Purāṇas the full legend of the Avatar of Viṣṇu is recounted. Thereafter Manu with his daughter Iḍā, the personification of the sacrificial food, produces the human race. The legend may be alluded to in a very late book of the Atharvaveda,³ but its late appearance, at a time when the Nakṣatras had probably been borrowed from a Semitic source, renders the theory of its independent Indian and even Indo-European origin, defended by Lindner,⁴ rather dubious, though not impossible.