Investigating Hindu parallels

The Hindu flood with Manu and 7 sages surviving in the boat on the right.

Hinduism presents some interesting myths that seem to be reminiscent of some Biblical narratives in Genesis: namely, Adam and the Noachian Deluge. Both the Adam- and Noah-figures are named Manu, two different figures. Discussing these parallels are two booklets on Hinduism from the 1980s published by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Starting with the Flood first, in the Hindu flood myth Vishnu warns Manu of the coming diluvial disaster.

Our 1983 booklet From Kurukshetra to Armageddon, said:

Manu found favour with his god and was given divine warning to build a ship to save himself and seven other rishis (sages), a total of eight persons. (p. 16)

This quote made no small impact on me growing up. However, it has not been repeated that eight survived the Hindu flood. A reason for this may be that more research revealed that other Hindu texts include Manu’s family:

He was warned of the flood by the Matsya (fish) avatar of Vishnu, and built a boat that carried the Vedas, Manu’s family and the seven sages to safety, helped by Matsya.^[1]

At the same time I also wondered if the “nu” from Manu derived from Noah. No. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says:

The name is cognate with the Indo-European “man” and also has an etymological connection with the Sanskrit verb man-, “to think.”

What made me wonder about the “nu” is The Two Babylons, where Alexander Hislop wrote that the “nu” of Vishnu was Noah. (This concept was printed in From Kurukshetra to Armageddon and in the 1989 book Reasoning From the Scriptures, but has since been dropped.)^[2] However, the Encyclopaedia Britannica derives it from Sanskrit, meaning: “The Pervader.”^[3] So “nu” is not Noah, they are letters nested within a Sanskrit name. And the eight survivors just depends on how you count the passengers. Lastly, this flood lore may derive from the ancient Mesopotamian counterparts where there existed a rich flood tradition.

Regarding the Manu Adam-figure, the 1980 booklet The Path of Divine Truth Leading to Liberation says of this Manu:

A late Rigveda hymn describes the personified rib, Parsu, as the daughter of the first man, Manu, by whom he fathers children —“a score of children at a birth”! (Rigveda 10. 86. 23) The first woman, as the divine product of the first man’s rib, could, in time, be traditionally viewed as his daughter. (p. 5)

The text Rigveda 10. 86. 23 specifically says:

Daughter of Manu, Parsu bare a score of children at a birth.
Her portion verily was bliss although her burthen caused her grief.

A paper in 1937 mentioned this.^[4] There it is noted that Rigveda 10. 86. 23 “suggests an interesting parallel to the Biblical story of the creation.” It is an interesting parallel, with the only difference being that the rib was a daughter and not a wife, which the brochure tried to account for.

Incidentally, the paper also adds that:

We have seen, then, that in the Rig-Veda pársu means only “rib,” but that it came also to mean “sickle” in the Atharva-Veda. This semantic transfer becomes instantly clear when we take into consideration the rib-like shape of the instrument and realize that the rib of a horse was actually sharpened to make a sickle.

This shows that ribs were seen as very important bones. As the Hindu flood myth may derive from the Mesopotamian flood lore, the man with a rib-lady who produces life may also derive from the Sumerian myth of the goddess Ninti which means both “Lady of the Rib” and “Lady of Life.” Ninti was featured in the legend of Enki and Ninhursag which features Enki and his daughters. So this is probably where the Hindu myth of Manu and his daughter-rib derives from.

In closing, I find it encouraging that these Hindu myths are no longer seen as deriving from Biblical narratives in Genesis. While interesting for being reminiscent of the Genesis narratives, it is impossible to say they definitely derive from the Genesis accounts of Adam, Eve, and Noah. (This is true of another similairity not mentioned here, of seeing Genesis 3:15 in a Hindu goddess.^[5])

Footnotes:
^[1] Manu (Hinduism), Wikipedia. “The tale is repeated with variations in other texts, including the Mahabharata and a few other Puranas. It is similar to other floods such as those associated with Gilgamesh and Noah.” The book Wikipedia cites adds: “We have several accounts of the deluge, which also plays a great role in the popular traditions of other cultures.” (Klaus K. Klostermaier. A Survey of Hinduism: Third Edition. SUNY Press. p. 97.)
^[2] Page 135 of The Two Babylons:

In India, the god Vishnu, “the Preserver,” who is celebrated as having miraculously preserved one righteous family at the time when the world was drowned, not only has the story of Noah wrought up with his legend, but is called by his very name. Vishnu is just the Sanscrit form of the Chaldee “Ish-nuh,” “the man Noah,” or the “Man of rest.” (Footnote: We find the very word Ish, “man,” used in Sanscrit with the digamma prefixed: Thus Vishampati, “Lord of men.”—See Wilson’s India Three Thousand Years Ago, p. 59.)

First, Hislop misremembered the meaning of Vishnu, as it means the “Pervader” not “Preserver.” Second, Wilson’s book actually says: “Though he is called Vishpati, Visha'mpati and Manasaspati, the lord of men; …” So it was the last name that was identified as “the lord of men.” I cannot imagine Hislop being confused over this, so this is a clear case of him being a deceiver in order to bolster his baseless butchery of slicing the V off of Vishnu and chopping the ish off of nu. However, his charisma alone was persuasive enough to have it referred to twice:

One Hindu version says it was the god Vishnu who warned and preserved Manu. Interestingly, the name Vishnu without the digamma is Ish-nuh, which in Chaldee means “the man Noah,” or “the man of rest.” Hindu tradition has Vishnu ‘resting’ or sleeping on a coiled snake called Shesha, floating on an ocean. (Kurukshetra, 16-17)

Interestingly, the name of the Hindu god Vishnu, without the digamma, is Ish-nuh, which in Chaldee means “the man Noah.” (Reasoning, 22)

Fortunately, this reasoning is no longer used.

For more information on The Two Babylons, see:

• The habitation of nonsense
  jimspace3000.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-habitation-of-nonsense.html
• The Two Babylons debunked in under 5 minutes youtu.be/fueXd1YrJqQ

^[3] The Online Etymology Dictionary adds regarding Manu: “Proto-Indo-European root meaning “man.” … Sanskrit manuh, Avestan manu-.” For Vishnu, it adds: “from Sanskrit Vishnu, probably from root vish- and meaning “all-pervader” or “worker.””
^[4] William M. Austin and Henry Lee Smith, Jr., Sanskrit parśu and paraśu, Journal of the American Oriental Society Vol. 57, No. 1 (Mar., 1937), pp. 95-96. Additionally, another journal stated:

in Rg Veda the name of Manu’s daughter is the ‘Rib’ (‘par sur ha nâma mānavi’), who under another name, Idā, is the mother ‘through whom he (Manu) generated this race of men’ (Satapatha Brahmana, 1, 8, 1, 10), Manu being in the Hindu tradition the archetype and progenitor of men in the same way as Adam in the Hebrew tradition, the condition of incest in both formulations depending on the ‘blood relationship’ (jamitra) of the original parents.” (Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, “Two Passages in Dante’s Paradiso,” Speculum Vol. 11, No. 3 (July, 1936), 330.)

Thus, the Hindu Adam-figure had relations with his daughter, much like the Mesopotamian Enki in his legend in Enki and Ninhursag, which appears to strengthen the likelihood of this derivation.
^[5] Regarding Lakshmi as seen in The Path of Divine Truth Leading to Liberation pages 15-17.