Matsya is the fish, the first of the ten principal avatars of Vishnu, and the hero of the Hindu version of a great-flood story found across the ancient world. In the tale, the first man Manu finds a tiny fish in the water he has scooped up, and the fish begs his protection; Manu keeps it, and it grows so large that no vessel can hold it, until he realises it is divine and releases it into the sea. The fish then warns Manu that a flood is coming that will cover the whole earth, and tells him to build a great boat and to load it with the seeds of all living things and, in some versions, with the seven sages.
When the waters rise, Matsya appears as a vast fish, sometimes horned, and Manu ties the boat to his horn with the serpent as a rope; the fish then tows the boat through the deluge to safety on the peak of the northern mountain, where it waits until the waters recede and life can begin again. In a further strand of the story, Matsya recovers the Vedas, which a demon had stolen and hidden in the depths of the ocean, restoring the sacred knowledge to the world. Matsya is thus the preserver of the seeds of life and of sacred wisdom across the destruction of the world by water, the first of the forms Vishnu takes to rescue creation, and one of the oldest layers of the avatar tradition.