Shraddhadeva is stated to be the king of the
Dravida kingdom during the epoch of the
Matsya Purana. According to the
Matsya Purana,
Matsya, the
avatara of
Vishnu, first appeared as a
shaphari (a small
carp) to Shraddhadeva while he washed his hands in a river flowing down the
Malaya Mountains. The little fish asked the king to save him, and out of compassion, he put it in a water jar. It kept growing bigger and bigger, until the king first put it in a bigger pitcher, and then deposited it in a well. When the well also proved insufficient for the ever-growing fish, the king placed it in a tank (reservoir), that was two yojanas (16 miles) in height above the surface and on land, as much in length, and a yojana (8 miles) in breadth. As it grew further, the king had to put the fish in a river, and when even the river proved insufficient, he placed it in the ocean, after which it nearly filled the vast expanse of the great ocean. It was then that Vishnu, revealing himself, informed the king of an all-destructive deluge which would be coming very soon. The king built a huge boat which housed his family, the
Seven Sages, nine types of seeds, and animals to repopulate the earth, after the deluge would end and the oceans and seas would recede. At the time of deluge, Vishnu appeared as a horned fish and
Shesha appeared as a rope, with which the king fastened the boat to the horn of the fish. The boat was perched after the deluge on the top of the highest peak of Himavat called Naubandhana. After the deluge, Manu's family and the seven sages repopulated the earth. According to the Puranas, Manu's story occurs before the 28 chaturyugas in the present Manvantara which is the 7th Manvantara. This amounts to 120 million years ago. A genealogical list in the
Adi Parva of the
Mahabharata lists 43 generations (inclusive) between Manu and the hero
Arjuna (who, according to different traditions, lived somewhere between 3200 and 1000 BC). This narrative is similar to other
flood myths like the
Gilgamesh flood myth and the
Genesis flood narrative. == Descendants ==