Matsya Purana "That in which, for the sake of promulgating the Vedas, Vishnu, in the beginning of a kalpa related to Manu, the story of Nrisimha and the events of seven Kalpas, that O sgaes known to be the Matsya Purana, containing twenty thousand stanzas.
The Purana, after the usual prologue of Suta and the Rishis is open with the account of the Matsya or 'fish' Avatara of Vishnu in which he reserves a king named Manu, with the seeds of all things, in an ark, from the waters of that inudation which in the season of a Pralaya overspreads the world. In the latter, he brings them all together by the power of yoga. In the latter, the great serpents come to the king, to serve as cords where with to fasten the art to the horm of the fish. This story is told in the Mahabharata, with reference to the Mastya as its authority; form which it might be inferred that the Purana was prior to the poem.