IS MANU
VAIVASVATA A HISTORICAL FIGURE !
The Puranic story of the Great Flood
is very well known the world over as similar stories find mention in the
mythologies of almost all the ancient nations. It is said that Manu and his wise men alone survived the great flood,
and from him the world was repopulated. The connection between the Puranic
story and the Genesis account is strengthened by the fact that
etymologically the names “Noah” and
“Manu” represent the same figure. One of the most puzzling points is as to how
it was known to all the ancient nations.
Those
who were saved from the Flood were finally brought to Himavat (the Himalayas), where they landed. According to the Bhagwata Purana, It was Satyavrata, the
saintly king of Dravida country, who later
became Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Vivasvan,
(the Sun god) in the next Manvantara- a cyclical period of Manu ( Bh. IX- 1/ 3), to save the humanity from
this devastating Flood.
At that period of time, the southern territories appear to have been thrown
down by faulting and the nearby sea inundated it. Because of this the people
appear to have proceeded north in the elevation higher than the sea level and
established themselves there. Scholars date the Flood to about 12000 BC
The transgression of seas and oceans
with great floods is symbolic of the dissolution of the Universe after the
completion of cosmic cycles when the rains continue uninterruptively for a much longer time and
deluge the whole world. This event of great antiquity was later mythologised by
the masters of spirituality and added to the religious scriptures. According to
the Puranas the incidental dissolution takes place at
the end of each kalpa which is
calculated at 4355 million human years. The institution of Manu is an important
and significant primeval part of
this scheme of cosmic administration of
the universe laid down by the eternal laws. According to the Aryan concept of
time each kalpa is divided into
fourteen equal parts governed by a Manu, for a
fixed tenure of 311 million
years. Each Manu is assisted by ten Prajapatis (the lords of each wing of creation for
the cosmic administration) and seven wise men called sapta-rishis to enlighten the mankind in their spiritual evolution.
In the present kalpa, six Manus have already completed their respective terms and
the seventh one called as the Vaivasvata Manu is running which started about
120 million years ago thus suggesting seven layers of civilization. It seems to
be consistent with the formation of ozone layer and the development of the
atmosphere on the earth planet when the human civilization started.
The Rig-veda, declares Manu Vaivasvata
to be the foremost of all kings
and seers. Another son of Vivaswan was
known as Yama. In Avesta, we find that Iranians too had their legendary
Manu known as Vivanghat, or Vivangaho
clearly referring to the same personality as Vedic Vaivasvata,confirming the
early ancestral common home land of both these peoples.He was succeeded by his
son Yama or Yima, the radiant and eventually in Persian Pahlavi, his name is
transformed to Jam-sheed. In the Vedas, he is called Yama, and an elder brother
of Manu and is claimed by the Persians to be the progenitor of their
royal dynasties. There are historic relationships between the Hindus and the
Persians through ties of common Aryan blood, close kinship in language and
tradition, and through near affinities in the matter of religious beliefs,
ritual observances, manners, and customs. Manu
is spoken of as the mythical ancestor of a number of ruling
dynasties and most important of all, the originator and upholder of the
traditional social order, the Hindu Manu is known in Germanic mythology as Mannus.
