Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

MANU—CANNES—VENUS 271The vagaries of Solar Mythology can be safely neglected.But the story, derived perhaps from Semitic sources, of fishincarnation and of the adventures of Manu, is deserving offuller consideration.According to one variant of the legend, Vishnu, in the formapproached Manu to beg protection against theof a small fish,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 compelledhim to remove the fish to the sea. Upon this the god madehimself known, warned the sage of the coming of the Floodwithin seven days, and bade him build a ship and furnish itmore or less on the lines of the Jewish Ark, only among thepassengers were to be seven Sages !In accordance with his promise, Vishnu, still in fish shape,reappeared on thesubsidence of the waters, and with a ropeattached to his horn towed the Ark to the Northern Mountain,where it grounded. 1Instances of impiscation (so to speak) appear not infrequentlyin my pages. Cannes, with head and tail of fish, butalso with human face and feet ; Dagon, " Sea-monster, upwardman and downward fish " ; Atargatis, or Derceto, " with faceof woman but body of fish " ; Venus, turning herself and Cupid—and also,as one account adds, her lover Mars—into fishes toescape the pursuit of the Giants ;—all these can be groupedwith other myths.These tell us that Asia was saved by a fish and is supportedby a tortoise, that Polynesia was brought up, itself a fish, ona fish-hook out of the primaeval ocean, or that America wasrescued from the depths of diluvian chaos by a turtle. Wellmay Robinson conclude, " Since in the beginning there wereonly Light and Water, the eldest of the Zoological Myths isthe Fish Myth." 2According to de Gubernatis,3 " the ancient systems of mythologyhave not ceased to exist :they have been merely diffused1 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 elsewliere.* Op. cit., p. xi.