ere further growth is
possible. As waters rose, waters of matter submerging the globe which
was passing into pralaya, an ark, a vessel appeared; into this vessel
stepped the great Rishi with others, and the seeds of life were
carried by Them, and as They go forth upon the waters a mighty fish
appears and to the horn of that fish the vessel is fastened by a rope,
and it conveys the whole safely to the solid ground where the Manu
rebegins His work. A story! yes, but a story that tells a truth; for
looking at it as it takes place in the history of the world, we see the
vast surging ocean of matter, we see the Root Manu and the great
Initiates with Him gathering up the seeds of life from the world whose
work is over, carrying them under the guidance and with the help of the
planetary Vishnu to the new globe where new impulse is to be given
to the life; and the reason why the fish form was chosen was simply
because in the building up again of the world, it was at first covered
with water, and only that form of life was originally possible, so far
as denser physical life was concerned.

You have in that first stage what the geologists call the Silurian Age,
the age of fishes, when the great divine manifestation was of all these
forms of life. The Purana rightly starts in the previous Kalpa,
rightly starts the manifestations with the manifestation in the form of
the fish. Not so very ridiculous after all, you see, when read by
knowledge instead of by ignorance; a truth, as the Puranas are full
of truth, if they were only read with intelligence and not with
prejudice.

But some of you may say that there is confusion about these first
Avataras; in several accounts we find that the Boar stands the first;
that is true, but the key of it is this; the Boar Avatara initiated that
evolution which was followed unbrokenly by the human; whereas the other
two bring in great stages, each of which is regarded as a separate
kalpa; and if you look into the _Vishnu Purana_ you will find
there the key; for when that begins to relate the incarnation of the
Boar, there is just a sentence thrown in, that the Matsya and Kurma
Avataras belong to previous kalpas.

Now if we take the theosophical nomenclature, we find each of these
kalpas covers what we call a Root Race, and you may remember that the
first Root Race of humanity had not human form at all but was simply a
floating mass able to live in the waters which then covered the earth,
and onl