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DELUGE. 579
now shall Manus make all creatures, gods, asuris and men, and
all the worlds, things movable and immovable. And as he had
so it was done.
spoken,
In the Bhagavatam, Satydvratas (supra, p. 249) takes the place
of Manus, Vishnus that of Brahma, and the facts are embellished
with philosophy.
The Indian myth then, like the Teutonic, makes the Deluge
precede the real creation, whereas in the Mosaic account Adam
lives long before Noah, and the flood is not followed by a new
creation. The seven rishis in the ship, as Bopp remarks, are
of divine rather than human nature, sons of Brahma, and of an
older birth than the inferior gods created by Manus or their
enemies the asuris (elsewhere daityas and danavas = titans,
giants) . But it is a great point gained for us, that Manus (after
whom manushyas, homo, is named) comes in as a creator; so
that in our German Mannus (whence manna and manniskja,
homo) we recognise precisely Borr and his creator sons (p. 349).
Askr and Embla are simply a reproduction of the same idea of
creation, and on a par with Deucalion and Pyrrha, or Adam and
Eve.
I must not pass over the fact, that the first part of the Indian
poem, where Brahma as a fish is caught by Manus, and then
reveals to him the future, lingers to this day in our nursery tale
of the small all-powerful
turbot or pike, who gradually elevates
and
a fisherman from the meanest condition to the highest rank ;
only plunges him back into his pristine poverty, when, urged by
the counsels of a too ambitious wife, he desires at last to be
equal with God. The bestowal of the successive dignities
is in
a measure a creation of the different orders. 1
One more story of the Deluge, which relates the origin of the
Lithuanians, deserves to be introduced. 2 When Pramzimas the
most high god looked out of a window of his heavenly house
(like Wuotan, p. 135) over the world, and perceived nothing but
war and wrong among men, he sent two giants Wanda and
Weyas (water and wind) upon the sinful earth, who laid all
things waste for twenty nights and days. Looking down once
1, 2.
1 Conf. the capture of the soothsaying marmennil, p. 434.
2 Dzieje starozytne narodu Litewskiego, przez
Th. Narbutta. Wilno 1835.