Matsya Avatar: The Fish Avatar of Vishnu, the Great Flood and Manu

Matsya, “the fish”, is the first of the ten avatars of Vishnu in the list most people know as the Dashavatara. In the tradition he is the form Vishnu took at the end of one age of the world to save the first man, Manu, the seeds of living things and the sacred Vedas from a flood that covered the earth. Of all the avatar stories it is the one with the oldest roots, and it sits beside flood stories told in many other cultures. This page tells the story as the tradition tells it, notes where the texts differ, and then looks at the day Matsya is remembered and the temples where he is worshipped.

Where the story comes from

The earliest telling is in the Shatapatha Brahmana, a Vedic prose text on ritual. There the fish is not yet named as Vishnu: a small fish speaks to Manu as he washes his hands and asks to be protected, promising to save him in return. The identification with Vishnu comes later, in the Puranas. The Matsya Purana, which takes its name from the avatar, makes the story its frame, and the Bhagavata Purana tells it in its eighth book. The Mahabharata has its own short version in which the fish is a form of Brahma. So the story has a long history of retelling, and each text shapes it a little differently.

The story as the tradition tells it

Manu was a king who, in the Bhagavata telling, is called Satyavrata, a ruler devoted to Vishnu. One day, while he offered water in a river, a tiny fish swam into his hands and begged him to save it from the larger fish. Manu took it home in a pot. It grew until the pot was too small, then a tank, then a lake, then a river, and at last only the ocean could hold it. Manu understood that this was no ordinary creature and asked who it was.

The fish revealed himself as Vishnu and told Manu that in seven days the world would be flooded at the end of an age. He told Manu to build a great boat and to load it with the seeds of every plant, with pairs of animals, and with the seven sages (the saptarishis). When the waters rose, a boat appeared, and the fish, now shown with a single golden horn in the Matsya Purana, came to tow it. Manu tied the boat to the horn with the great serpent Vasuki as a rope, and the fish drew it through the dark waters while the Vedas were taught to the passengers. When the flood subsided, the boat came to rest on a high peak, and Manu became the father of the human race that followed. That is why humankind is called manava, the children of Manu.

The Bhagavata Purana adds a second thread. A demon named Hayagriva stole the Vedas from Brahma as he slept at the end of an age, and Vishnu in the form of the fish killed the demon and returned the sacred texts. In that reading the avatar saves knowledge as well as life. Not every text includes this thread, so some tellings centre only on Manu and the boat.

How the story is read

Readers have taken the story in several ways, and none is required of you.

• Devotional: Vishnu protects those who turn to him, and the small fish that asks for help turns out to be the Lord, a theme that returns in other avatar stories.
• Preservation of knowledge: the Vedas, the seeds and the sages are carried through the flood, so the story is about continuity through an ending.
• Comparative: scholars note that flood narratives appear in the traditions of Mesopotamia and in the Bible, and discuss how the Indian version relates to them. The Indian story has its own character: the flood is a cosmic turning, and the saviour is a god who grows from a tiny fish.
• Modern: some readers see the fish as the beginning of a sequence from water to land that the next avatars follow. This is a popular modern reading, not a classical doctrine, and the texts themselves do not present the list as a ladder of development.

Tradition places the Matsya avatar in the Satya Yuga, the first of the four ages. The Puranas speak of the flood as the one that closes the reign of the previous Manu and begins that of Vaivasvata Manu, the Manu of our present era.

The festival: Matsya Jayanti

Matsya Jayanti is the day on which the avatar is remembered. Most calendars place it on the third tithi of the bright fortnight of Chaitra, the day known as Tritiya, which is also the time of Gauri Tritiya and Gangaur in several regions. It falls soon after the new year of the lunar calendar. Calendars differ on small points, and some regions keep it on another day, so follow your family’s or temple’s calendar.

Devotees fast or take a single meal, bathe early, and worship an image of Vishnu or of the fish form with tulsi leaves, lamps and sweet offerings. Some read the Matsya Purana or the eighth book of the Bhagavata Purana, and some feed fish or give food to others, since the story is one of compassion for small creatures. The Matsya Jayanti does not have its own page of dates on this site. Dates for the other Chaitra festivals, such as Chaitra Navratri and Ram Navami, are computed for 49 cities on the festival pages. For the Vishnu fasts that fall every fortnight, see the guide to Ekadashi.

Temples

Matsya is one of the rarer avatars to have a dedicated temple, and the best known is in southern India.

• Vedanarayana Swamy Temple, Nagalapuram, Andhra Pradesh: the main image is Vishnu as Vedanarayana, and the temple is famous for its Matsya form. The shrine stands near Tirupati and is connected in the local tradition with the recovery of the Vedas.
• Matsya forms in larger Vishnu temples: many Vishnu temples carry the fish avatar in carvings on the walls or in the ten-avatar panels that run along the gateways. Look for the fish form in the old temples of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Odisha.

Temple customs, timings and entry rules change, so check the temple’s own notice before you travel.

Reading and reciting

The Vishnu Sahasranama includes names that refer to the avatars, and the Achyutashtakam is a short hymn to Vishnu that many people recite on Vishnu days. For the Gita’s statement of why the Lord descends, see chapter 4 of the Bhagavad Gita.

The next avatar

After Matsya the list continues with Kurma, the tortoise, who supports the world during the churning of the ocean. Return to the Dashavatara overview for the whole list.

Frequently asked questions