ten avatars: the true story
dasavathaaram refers to the ten (dasha) avatars (forms/incarnations) that vishnu took in order to save the world. they occurred over a period of four yugas; the length of each yuga varies, but they have a total length of around 12,000 years.
the first, matsya, is a fish. tt is said to have warned the first man, manu, about a great flood. in response to this warning, manu builds an ark, as noah did. however, it is destroyed, so matsya helps pull it to shore.
the second, kurma, is a turtle. it is said to have assisted the gods in the churning of the ocean, which occurs in order to lift a curse from a sage. the gods use a mountain as a rod and the king of the snakes as a rope, but find that their rod keeps slipping, preventing them from properly completing the task. vishnu, seeing their distress, appears in the form of a giant turtle and holds the mountain on his back to allow the gods to churn the nectar.
the third, varaha, is a boar that is said to have rescued the earth goddess (bhudevi) after the demon hiranyaksha tosses her into the cosmic ocean. varaha kills the demon and lifts bhudevi out of the sea on his tusks.
the fourth, narasimha, a lion-human hybrid, is said to have killed the demon hiranyakashipu (not to be confused with his brother hiranyaksha) and rescued his son prahlada, a staunch devotee of vishnu. earlier, hiranyakashipu had asked for the ability to be killed “neither during the day or the night, neither inside nor outside, and neither by a human or animal”. narasimha, who is neither animal nor human, kills hiranyakashipu on a doorstep (neither inside nor outside) at evening (neither day nor night).
the fifth avatar is vamana, a dwarf born to the famous sage kashyapa and his wife aditi, the mother of the gods. this avatar is said to have restored indra, the king of the gods, to his throne after being deposed by the demon bali. vamana travels to indra’s throne with a wooden umbrella. When bali offers him gifts, he refuses them all and says that ownership of three steps of land that vamana takes himself would suffice. bali, seeing that he was a dwarf, agrees. vamana grows until he is a giant, the size of the cosmos. his first step covers the earth, his second covers the heavens, and the third covers and kills bali.
The sixth avatar is parashurama (parashu meaning axe), the son of a sage named jamadagni and his wife renuka. his family owns a cow that is wanted by the hundred-armed king of their province. when jamadagni refuses to give it to him, the king takes it by force. parashurama, angered by the mistreatment of the animal, kills the king while he sleeps and rescues the cow. the king’s sons go to parashurama’s house the next day while parashurama is out and kill a meditating jamadagni in his stead. parashurama, distraught, says goodbye to his family and goes to rid the earth of all wrongdoers using his holy axe. he continues killing until he has wiped out twenty-one generations of wrongdoers, after which he retires to the mountains of the himalayas.
the seventh avatar is rama, who is the son of the king dasaratha and his second wife kausalya, and is conceived as the result of a yagna (holy fire). his step-mother kaikeyi wants her son bharata to be inaugurated as king instead of rama so she invokes a promise that dasaratha had made to her on their wedding night. rama, his wife sita, and his brother lakshmana are sent into exile in the forest for 14 years. their exile is chronicled in valmiki’s epic, ramayanam.
the eighth avatar is disputed: it is either krishna, the son of devaki and vasudeva who was brought to the village of gokul to be raised by a woman named yashoda instead of being killed by his uncle kamsa, or his brother balarama, an incarnation of shesha, vishnu’s seven-headed snake companion, who was transferred into the womb of a woman named rohini using yoga maya so that he would escape the same fate. krishna goes on to kill his uncle alongside his brother, and as an adult he helps his maternal cousins, the pandavas, at kurukshetra where they defeat the kauravas. this battle and its aftermath is chronicled in the epic, mahabharata.
the ninth avatar is also disputed: it is either siddhartha gautama (the man who would later become the buddha), balarama (krishna’s brother), or another buddha whose story has been mostly forgotten.
the tenth avatar is kalki, who hasn’t arrived yet. it is said that kalki will arrive to end the kali yuga [modern day] and return us all to the first yuga.
this sequence of avatars has been said to somewhat represent the history of evolution of life; the first avatar is a fish representing the first aquatic life, the second is a turtle representing the first land animals, the third is a boar representing a more modern land animal, the fourth is a half-lion man, the fifth is a dwarf/child, the sixth is a bigger angrier child (which very loosely represents early humans,) the seventh is a “modern” man, the eighth is a god, the ninth is disputed but probably also a god, and the tenth is fucking death.
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