MANU— CANNES— VENUS 271 



The vagaries of Solar Mythology can be safely neglected. 

 But the story, derived perhaps from Semitic sources, of fish 

 incarnation and of the adventures of Manu, is deserving of 

 fuller consideration. 



According to one variant of the legend, Vishnu, in the form 

 of a small fish, approached Manu to beg protection against the 

 larger fish ; whereupon he was placed securely in a water-jar, 

 but in a single night outgrew the jar. Manu then tried a pond, 

 and next the Ganges, but similar increases in size compelled 

 him to remove the fish to the sea. Upon this the god made 

 himself known, warned the sage of the coming of the Flood 

 within seven days, and bade him build a ship and furnish it 

 more or less on the lines of the Jewish Ark, only among the 

 passengers were to be seven Sages ! 



In accordance with his promise, Vishnu, still in fish shape, 

 reappeared on the subsidence of the waters, and with a rope 

 attached to his horn towed the Ark to the Northern Mountain, 

 where it grounded. ^ 



Instances of impiscation (so to speak) appear not infre- 

 quently in my pages, Cannes, with head and tail of fish, but 

 also with human face and feet ; Dagon, " Sea-monster, upward 

 man and downward fish " ; Atargatis, or Derceto, " with face 

 of woman but body of fish " ; Venus, turning herself and Cupid 

 — and also, as one account adds, her lover Mars — into fishes to 

 escape the pursuit of the Giants ; — all these can be grouped 

 with other myths. 



These tell us that Asia was saved by a fish and is supported 

 by a tortoise, that Polynesia was brought up, itself a fish, on 

 a fish-hook out of the primaeval ocean, or that America was 

 rescued from the depths of diluvian chaos by a turtle. Well 

 may Robinson conclude, " Since in the beginning there were 

 only Light and Water, the eldest of the Zoological Myths is 

 the Fish Myth." 2 



According to de Gubernatis,^ " the ancient systems of myth- 

 ology have not ceased to exist : they have been merely diffused 



1 Cf., however, " The Story of the Deluge," in the Catapatha Brahmana. 



2 P. Robinson, op. cit. (p. i8), to which I owe much, here and elsewhere. 

 ' Op. cit., p. xi. 



