Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/676

660 its being accidentally brought to him one morning in the water with which he was to wash. The fish advised Manu to build him an ark; and when he entered it, at the coming of the deluge, the fish undertook to guide the ark to the place where it was to remain until the waters subsided. When at length Manu was able to leave the ark, he meditated and sacrificed to the waters, pouring into them libations of clarified butter, milk, whey and curds, until at the end of a year's time there came forth a lovely maiden, emerging from the midst of the libations, with which she was all dripping. She told Manu that she was his daughter, for he, she said, had brought her into being by his prayers and sacrifices of clarified butter, milk, whey and curds, which he had thrown into the waters. She was called Iḍâ; she became Manu's wife and bore him children. Manu, though reckoned among divine beings, figures in Sanskrit as man par excellence, and he was regarded as the father of men; while in Greek the literal namesake of Manu-s was. Now Minos was the mythic ruler and legislator of ancient Crete: