There are twenty four Vishnu Avatars in Bhagwat Puran and eighteen in Garun Puran. Newer texts have ten Vishnu Avatars. Swami Shankaracharya suggested Buddha as one of Vishnu avatars.
Following is a Whatsapp forward:
Vasu asked.
"Mom, I am a genetic scientist. I am working in the US on the evolution of man.
Theory of evolution. Charles Darwin,
have you heard of him? "
His Mother sat next to him,
smiled and said,
"I know about Darwin, Vasu.
But Have you heard of Dashavatar?
The ten avatars of Vishnu?"
Vasu replied yes.
"Ok! Then let me tell you what you and your Darwin don't know.
Listen carefully- The first avatar was the Matsya avatar, it means the fish. That is because life began in the water. Is that not right?"
Vasu began to listen with a little more attention.
She continued,
"Then came the Kurma Avatar, which means the tortoise, because life moved from the water to the land. The amphibian!
So the Tortoise denoted the evolution from sea to land.
Third avatar was Varaha, the wild boar, which meant the wild animals with not much intellect, you call them the Dinosaurs, correct?"
Vasu nodded wide eyed.
"The fourth avatar was Narasimha, half man and half animal, the evolution from wild animals to intelligent beings.
Fifth, the Vaman avatar, the midget or dwarf, who could grow really tall. Do you know why that is? Because, there were two kinds of humans, Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens and Homo Sapiens won that battle."
Vasu could see that his Mother was in full flow and he was stupefied.
"The Sixth avatar was Parshuram, the man who wielded the axe, the man who was a cave and forest dweller. Angry, and not social.
The seventh avatar was Ram, the first rational thinking social being, who practised and laid out the laws of society and the basis of human relationships.
The Eighth avatar was Balarama, a true farmer who showed value of agriculture in the life.
The Ninth avatar was Krishna, the statesman, the politician, the diplomat, the Ambassador, the sutile interpreter, the lover who played the game of society and taught how to live and thrive in the adhaarmic social structure.
And finally, my boy, will come Kalki,
the man you are working on. The man who will be genetically supreme."
Vasu looked at his Mother speechless.
"This is amazing Mom, how did you .... ? This makes sense!"
She said, "Yes it does, son! We Indians knew some amazing things, but just didn't know how to pass it on scientifically. So we made them into mythological stories.
Mythology creates faith and makes man sensible. It is just the way you look at it - Religious or Scientific. Your call."
Bharti Raizada
Question - Does God incarnate?
Answer - No, God does not incarnate. Many people believe that God incarnates on earth to destroy the evil and establish religion and they are also example of Ram-Krishna etc. in this subject. They give and say that God incarnated the earth in their form for the destruction of evils like Ravana-Kansa, but here it is considerable that the God who is such a big creation in which we do not know how many planets like our Earth exist, Operates and destroys. What a big deal for the Almighty God to kill petty creatures like Ravana-Kansa that he incarnates for them.
In the second Vedas, God is said to be free from Akaya, without body, Asnaviram, or without bondage of nerves.
स पर्यगाच्छुक्रमव्रणमकायमस्नाविरं शुद्धमपापविद्धम्
That is, God is everywhere, all worldly, unreasonable, cowardly, free from the bondage of nerves, pure and free from all the lusts of sin.
Even in Yogadarshan, it is said to be far away from distress and misery.
Tribulation is like a person: God special: |
Even in the Upanishads, it is said to be different from words, touch, form, juice, smell.
In Kathopanishad the form of God is spoken
अशब्दमस्पर्शमरुपमव्ययं तथारसं नित्यमगन्धवच्च यत्
अनाद्यनन्तं महत: परं ध्रुवं निचाय्य तन्मृत्युमुखात्प्रमुच्यते
That means God's word, touch, form, juice, smell is indestructible, anadi - eternal and stable. Knowing the same Brahma, the creature is free from death.
Thus, the incarnation of God is not proved by being against the scripture evidence and logic of justice. Ram, Krishna, Shiva etc were definitely great men who did great things in their lives but only because they cannot be considered as God. They were born, they got death, they rejoiced and mourned
These qualities never decrease in God because he is unborn, eternal, joy-mourning etc. So no living being can be given the noun of God.
Matsya Avatar: The first incarnation of Lord Vishnu.
Matsya Avatar Story – Why was Lord Vishnu Born as Matsya Avatar ?
Matsya, (Sanskrit: “Fish”) one of the 10 avatars (incarnations) of the Hindu god Vishnu. In this appearance Vishnu saved the world from a great flood. Manu, the first man, caught a little fish that grew to giant size. When the flood approached, Manu saved himself by tying his boat to the horn on the fish’s head. Some early accounts refer to the fish-saviour as Prajapati (whose identity is later merged with that of Brahma). Later sources identified him as Lord Vishnu.
Matsya may be depicted either in animal form or in a combined human-animal form, with the man as the upper half and the fish as the lower half. Matsya is generally represented with four hands—one holding the conch shell, one holding the discus (chakra), one in the pose of conferring a boon (varada mudra), and one in the protection-affording pose (abhaya mudra). According to the canons of sculpture, the man-half should be shown as wearing all the ornaments usually associated with lord Vishnu.
Along with Brahma, the creator and Shiva, the destroyer, Lord Vishnu is one of the three main male deities in Hinduism and they are together known as the TRIMURTI. Being a part of the Trinity, He has taken ten incarnations and the ten Avatars of Lord Vishnu or the Dashavatara are the several forms He took whenever the universe was in turmoil. Each of Vishnu’s Avatars had the same purpose which they achieved by different means. This divine purpose was the restoration of Dharma or righteousness and to save the planet and the good people from the hands of evils, demons or Asuras.
Matsya (Fish in Sanskrit) was the first Avatar of Vishnu in Hinduism. The great flood finds mention in Hindu mythology texts like the Satapatha Brahmana , where in the Matsya Avatar takes place to save the pious and the first man, Manu and advices him to build a giant boat. Lord Matsya is generally represented as a four-armed figure with the upper torso of a man and the lower of a fish.
It is said that, during the Satya Yuga, the people on earth had become irreligious and disorderly in the way they lived their lives. This is when the Gods collectively decided to flood the earth and prepare it for the process of renovation. Lord Brahma, the creator, had been given the guidelines to remodel the earth by Lord Vishnu. These guidelines were the Vedas, the four principle books of Hinduism. Lord Brahma decided to rest before this grand task as he was quite tired from the process of creation.At this time, a horse-headed demon named Hayagriva ( not t be confused with Lord Hayagriva, the avatar of Vishnu who is considered as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge) came out of Brahma’s nose and stole the Vedas from him. Then Hayagriva went and hid himself deep in the oceans of the earth. Meanwhile, a pious king named Satyavrata who was a great admirer of Lord Vishnu, regularly worshipped Lord Vishnu and wished to meet Him. So Lord Vishnu decided to pay a visit to Manu.
The story, according to the Matsya Purana, goes like this :
Satyavrata, the king of pre-ancient Dravida and a devotee of Lord Vishnu, who later was known as Manu was washing his hands in a river when a little fish swam into his hands and pleaded with him to save its life. He put it in a jar, which it soon outgrew. He then moved it to a tank, a river and then finally the ocean but to no avail. The fish then revealed himself to be Vishnu and told him that a deluge would occur within seven days that would destroy all life. The fish told Manu that at the end of Kali yug, the mare who lived at the bottom of the ocean would open her mouth to release a poisonous fire. This very fire will burn the whole universe, Gods, constellations and everything. The seven clouds of doomsday would then flood the earth until everything was a single ocean. Therefore, the fish instructed Satyavrata to build an ark to take “all medicinal herbs, all the varieties of seeds, and accompanied by the seven saints” along with the serpent Vasuki and other animals. As the time of the flood approached, Manu’s ark was complete. As the flood swept over the land, Manu asked Vishnu why mankind had to meet such a deadly fate to which Matsya Vishnu told Manu that he was the only moral man alive and that he would be the father of the future generations of men. Matsya killed Hayagriva and returned the Vedas to Brahma. Then he tied himself to Manu’s ark using Vasuki as a rope and protected them from the storm and the floods. When the storms ended and the water subsided, Matsya Vishnu left Manu and the others at the Himalayas, where they could begin human civilization again
