The Story of Brahmand

Birth of The Vedas

The world was stabilised, but the gods realised there were no means to aid man in aatmadarshan, to bring about peace and prosperity in their lives, to encourage health in them and to promote learning and arts in them. So they together gave rise to the vedas, who were born as Brahmaas manas putras. The vedas can be found on the right upper hand of Brahma. On the surface, the 4 vedas were just books of hymns and mantras like rigveda consisted of praise of gods, mainly the elemental deities, yajurvedas consisted of sacrifices to propitiate dieties, samaveda consisted of chants and songs for these cermonies and atharvveda consisted knowledge of mantras for purpose of easy living, mediconal plants and ayurveda for health of person. The main and hidden purpose of these vedas was to allow one to get aatmadarshan. So the vedas were available to all. In a way, they considered all the knowledge of the world. The vedas brought knowledge and peace to the world. Man no more fought over resources, he started becoming devoted to learning and due to the power of vedas, the forces of devtaas could be harnessed for the benefit of the world. After the creation of vedas, Brahma decided that his work was over and took rest.

Haigreeva asura was aware of this, so to gain supremacy he decided to steal the vedas. He stole all the vedas and imbibed them. He then went and hid in the centre of the ocean. The absence of the vedas caused man to become violent, selfish and jealous resulting in the start of destruction. Among all this, there were still some individuals, who followed dharma, they were Satyavrata Manu, the son of surya deva and the saptarishis. To reestablish dharma in this satyug, the gods prayed to Lord Naarayana. He blessed them and assured that he would solve the problem.

One day, Manu, saw a small fish struggling to survive in a ditch. He took the fish and was about to threw it in a river , to help it survive, when the fish begged "He rajan, the big fish will eat me take me with you." Manu agreed and took him in his kamandalu back to his palace. The fish soon became bigger and so he transferred it to a bucket and as the sixe kept increasing to a pond, a lake, a river and then the sea. The mighty fish told him that it was his test and he emerged victorious, so he will be the king of the world. A great flood will come in which he had to build a huge boat and take the saptarishi and male as well as female of each plant and animal. He will guide them. Manu realised it was Narayanaa now also called Vishnu avtaar and proceeded to do the same. On the alloted day Matsya guided them till the Himalayas which weren't submerged during the floods. He then chased Haigreeva asura out of the ocean and recovered the vedas.
Once on land he took his Haigriv avtar, in respect of the asura. As having imbibed the vedas, the asura had also become a fountain of knowledge and was on his way to aatmadarshan. The avtar is described to be horse headed with vedas [mantras] making up his shape, his body built by all the great gods; in the middle of his head was Shiva, in his heart was Brahmā [god of heaven]; the rays of sun (Marichi) were his mane, the sun and moon his eyes; the Vasus and Sadhyas were his legs, in all his bones were the gods. Agni [Ka-ten; god of fire] was his tongue, the goddess Satya his speech, while his knees were formed by the Maruts and Varuna. He is having rosary and his hand is raised in benediction. He then vanquished the asura and decided to give the supreme knowledge to Manu and the saptarishis. Thus did Manu get the knowledge for the first book of justice or nyayashatra called Manusmriti.

Thus did bhagvan Naarayan take two of his avtaars Matsya and Haigreeva to save the knowledge and the righteous of the world.