Lord Vishnu's preserving, protecting powers have been manifested to the world in a variety of forms, called Avatars, in which one or more of his divine attributes were embodied in the shape of a human being or an animal or a human-animal combined form, possessing great and sometimes supernatural powers. All these Avatars of Vishnu appeared in the world either to correct some great evil or to effect some great good on earth. These avatars are ten in number, however, the Bhag wad Purana increases them to twenty two and adds further that are innumerable.Of the ten universally recognized avatars, nine have already manifested whereas the tenth is yet to appear. It is important to note that the all the Avatars are earthly form of Lord Vishnu , who himself is eternal, unchangeable and immutable. Parashurama shows the man of power, Rama the Divine warrior and protector, Krishna the Divine lover, Buddha the Divine sage, and Kalki the completer and saviour . In this scheme we see the idea of the evolution of the soul from the animal re alms to perfect spiritual knowledge. The idea of the messiah came to the western religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam from the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia. Zoroastrianism has similar incarnations of Vrithragna (Indra). Hence it is related to the avatar idea of the Hindus. The various Avatars of vishnu will be posted in this block in the coming days, hope the younger generation likes the blog.
3 comments:
Hello Chittapa, we look forward to read about each of the Avatars.
Chitappa, it was interesting to read that the concept of incarnations exists in Zorastrian religion too.
Digressing a little- in the US and I am sure in other parts of the world, online gaming is really popular. Many people are almost addicted to it and the roles that the assume in these games. It is a world by itself and is also known as second life. One day 3 of my classmates made a presentation on Second Life and they kept referring to the roles people assume in these games as Avah-torrs. I wondered what it meant and only a few days later it struck me that they meant Avatars.
You mentioned that we know of nine incarnations; seeing the kind of roles that people assume in the games I would rather that they be Avah-torrs than Avatars.
with regards,
Bhuvani
Bhuvani, in fact email services like yahoo provide you to assume your own "avatar" ...this is a list of pictures with caricatures that represent your personality
Interesting!
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