Manu

Manu, in Hindu tradition, is the legendary first man and progenitor of humanity, traditionally credited as the author of the Manusmriti, also called the Manu Dharmashastra or the Laws of Manu, along with the Manava Grihyasutra and Manava Sulbasutra, among the foundational texts of Hindu law and social conduct. Hindu cosmology holds that fourteen successive Manus each preside over one Manvantara, a vast era within a single kalpa, or cosmic day of the god Brahma, and the current Manvantara is ruled by the seventh Manu, Vaivasvata Manu, who also figures in a Hindu flood narrative paralleling other traditions' deluge stories. Manu is treated in Hindu sources as a legendary or mythological figure rather than a historically attested person, and the Sanskrit word for human being derives from his name, meaning descendants of Manu. As the traditionally credited author of the Manusmriti, the most influential and most extensively studied of the Dharmashastra texts, Manu occupies a foundational place in the history of Hindu jurisprudence comparable to the founding lawgivers of other ancient legal traditions, even though, like several of those other legendary lawgivers, his own historicity as an author is not treated as an established fact within the tradition itself.