When we begin to trace the origins of Indian civilization, we often encounter a familiar starting point: Manu Vaivasvata, the archetypal progenitor of humankind in the Indic tradition. While he is most famously associated with the Manu Smriti, a text that was redacted and formalized many centuries later during the post-Vedic period, his legacy predates that code by millennia. Manu Vaivasvata is invoked over twenty times across the Vedic corpus, not merely as a mythical patriarch, but as a moral and legal anchor: the first law-giver, the inaugurator of human society (manushya samaj), and a link between the divine and the earthly order. His role is comparable in scope, though…