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| STORIES-
TEN AVATARS OF VISHNU - Dasavatar |
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"Whenever Dharma, or the
situation of law and order, is endangered on this world, I
shall incarnate onto this world to re-establish Dharma, law
and order, and to protect the good people and to destroy the
evil elements of the society."
Vishnu is the name
given to the protector and sustainer of the universe. Lord
Vishnu, has incarnated in various life forms through different
yugas (ages or eons) in situations where Dharma was in danger,
because of certain evil elements in the world. There are ten
incarnations of Lord Vishnu. These incarnations are termed as
the 'avatars' of Lord Vishnu. The TEN Avatars or Dasavatar is given below: |
The Story of MATSYA Avatar
 In
MATSYA Avatar, Lord Vishnu incarnates himself as a fish in
this world. In the earliest yuga (era) of Sata-yuga, a king
named Manu was performing severe penance for thousands of
years. One day as he was performing ablutions with river
water, a small fish came into his hands and just as he was
about to throw the fish back into the river, the fish
requested the king to save its life. Heeding its request, the
king put the fish into a jar of water but the fish started
growing and the jar was not big enough for it. Then the king
threw it into the river, but it soon it outgrew the river and
the king then threw it into Ganges and then into the ocean.
The king realized that it was Lord Vishnu himself and then the
lord made an appearance and made a special request to the
king. It predicted that the world would come to an end by a
huge flood in seven days and requested the king to build a
huge boat and take the seven sages(hermits), seeds of all
plants, one animal of each type and told him that he would
appear as a fish to propel the boat to Mt Himavan for
surviving the flood to the next yuga(eon). True to his word,
after seven days the Lord appeared and the king tied the boat
to the fish by using the royal serpent Vasuki and the fish
took all of them to Mt Himavan and kept them there till the
flood was over and in the new era, the king started
procreation for the new era.
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The Story of KURMA
Avatar
 In KURMA Avatar, Lord Vishnu incarnates himself as a
tortoise. It is an interesting story involving both the gods
(devtas) and asuras (demons). In the ongoing saga of battle
between the gods and asuras, on one occasion the gods suddenly
lost all their strength due to a curse by the short-tempered
sage Durvasa. The sage had once presented a garland of flowers
to Indra, king of gods, who carelessly gave it away to his
elephant which trampled it.
The Devtas approached
Vishnu for help. Vishnu then asked them to churn the ocean of
milk after adding medicines into the ocean. Mt Mandara could
be used a the churning stick he said. He requested them to ask
them help of Asuras in lifting the mountain in exchange for
offer of the share of nectar of immortality that would ensue
from the churning. Both the devatas and the asuras churned the
ocean using the serpent Vasuki as the rope. At the start,
playing a Machiavellian trick, Indra, king of the gods asked
the asuras for the head end of vasuki. But asuras suspecting
foul play, took the head end, only to be deceived as the
poison from Vasuki was slowly weakening them. But as churning
was proceeding the mountain was sinking and then Lord Vishnu
took the form of the tortoise KURMA and kept the mountain
afloat. As soon as the bowl of amrita, the nectar of
immortality was out, the asuras grabbed it. Then Lord Vishnu
took the form of an apsara, a beautiful maiden, and seduced
the asuras into letting her distribute the nectar and also to
abide by her order of distribution. As soon as the devatas
were served the maiden disappeared thus totally deceiving the
asuras and making them totally weak.
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The Story of VARAHA Avatar
 In
VARAHA Avatar, Lord Vishnu incarnates himself as a boar in
this world. A demon Hiranyaksha, had prayed for Lord Brahma
and got awarded a boon that no beast nor man nor god could
kill him. But somehow from the list of beasts the name of boar
was missing. This proved to be his lacunae. He then started a
campaign of plunder across the worlds. He pushed the world to
the Pataal loka, or the under of the sea. He stole the Vedas,
the holy scriptures from the Lord Brahma, while he was asleep
and performed huge atrocities. To retrieve the Vedas and to
save the world the Lord Vishnu assumed the role of a boar and
brought out the earth from the under of the ocean, using its
two tusks. It then killed Hiranyaksha and retrieved the Vedas
from the asura and brought it back to the safe custody of the
Lord Brahma.
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The Story of
NARASIMHA Avatar
 In NARASIMHA Avatar, Lord
Vishnu incarnates himself as a semi-man, semi-lion in this
world. The king of demons (asuras), Hiranyakasyapa, wanted to
become immortal and wanted to remain young forever. To this
end, he meditated for Lord Brahma and because of his severe
penance, the gods were frightened and asked Brahma to pacify
the king. Brahma was impressed by his austerity and granted
him a wish. HiranyaKasyapa wished that he be neither killed by
a man or beast, nor in daylight or at night and neither inside
or outside a building. Having obtained the wish he considered
himself the supreme God and frobade all worship of gods by
anyone.
But his son Prahlada, was an ardent devotee of
Vishnu. This enraged Hiranyakasyapa very much. He ordered
numerous ways to kill Prahlada including asking his sister
Holika to sit with Prahlada in the fire. But everytime
Prahlada escaped unhurt. Enraged, once he asked Prahlad to
show him the Lord Vishnu. Prahlad said, "He is everywhere".
Further enraged, Hiranyakasyapa knocked down a pillar, and
asked if Lord was present there. Lord Vishnu then emerged as a
half lion, half man from the pillar which was neither inside
the house nor outside, and the time was evening, neither night
nor day. He then killed Hiranyakasyapa thus saving the life of
his devotee Prahlada.
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The Story of
VAMANA Avatar
 In VAMANA Avatar, Lord Vishnu incarnates himself as
a dwarf priest in this world. Bali, the grandson of Prahlada
was a very valorous and mighty asura. By his penance and
might, he conquered the whole world. Indra and other gods
fearing that he and asuras would conquer all the three worlds,
went to Lord Vishnu for help. Lord Vishnu was then born as a
dwarf Vamana in the household of a brahmana (priest). He went
to Bali on growing up and asked for alms. Bali was delighted
to offer him anything he requested even though his priest
warned him that it was Lord Vishnu.
Vamana then
requested for the amount of land that could come under his
three feet. Bali gracefully agreed. Lord Vishnu then grew in
size and covered the earth and heaven in two stride. And due
to lack of space, he put his third leg on Bali himself and
crushed Bali to the nether or the Patala loka(underground
world), thus helping the Gods out.
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The Story of PARASHURAMA Avatar
 In
PARASHURAMA Avatar, Lord Vishnu incarnates himself as a
brahmana (priest) in this world. He was brought in this world
to avenge all kshatriyas who had become arrogant and were
suppressing the brahmans in the world. He was born to
Jamadagni and Renuka, and belonged to the Brighu clan.
Parashurama was always carrying an axe presented to him by
Lord Shiva of whom he was an ardent devotee. Kartavirya a
powerful king, once went to Jamadagni's home when he was out,
and after a meal, stole the Kamadhenu cow, which was supposed
to give endless quantity of milk.
Jamadagni was enraged
and he went and killed the king and brought Kamadhenu back. On
hearing this, the son of the king came back and killed
Jamadagni.
Parashurama was enraged at this and went and
avenged the death of his father by killing all kshatriyas in
21 battles.
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The Story of
RAMA Avatar
 In RAMA Avatar, Lord Vishnu incarnates himself as
RAMA, the central character in the epic
Ramayan. In the epic, the character RAMA is expected to
show the world the characteristics of an ideal person,
including ideal son, ideal husband, ideal king and an ideal
person. RAMA was incarnated upon this planet to get rid of the
asura with ten heads, Ravana, who had been granted a boon by
Brahma of immunity from gods, and other celestial beings.
Ravana was too vainglorious to be thinking of being vanquished
by a man. Hence RAMA was born and Lakshmi, wife of Lord Vishnu
was born as Sita, his wife to be in this life. The story of
Ramayan, is an exciting nail-biting story of the war raged by
Rama against various evil elements of the world and in the end
against Ravana.
Ramayan epitomises the ideal behaviour
of man, with special focus on man-wife relationship,
son-father relationship and the rules for ideal governance by
a king.
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The Story of KRISHNA Avatar
 In
KRISHNA Avatar, Lord Vishnu incarnates himself as KRISHNA ,
the central character in the epic MAHABHARATA. In the biggest
epic of Indian mythology a myriad of topics are covered,
including war, love, brotherhood, politics etc. It is
essentially the story of two warring groups of cousin
brothers, the PANDAVAs and the KAURAVAs. As a part of the
Mahabahrata, during the war KRISHNA, gives a long discourse to
his disciple ARJUNA, collectively termed as
Bhagvad-Gita.
Krishna, during his child-hood was
responsible for the killing of Kamsa. Krishna is also
considered to be an ultimate playboy who was responsible for
charming all gopikaas around him.
Unlike Ramayan,
Mahabharata deals with more down to earth issues like
politics, human nature, human weaknesses, and does not attempt
to idealise the characters as in Ramayan.
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The Story of
BALA RAMA AVATAR
BALA RAMA AVATAR(Rama,the strong)
This Avatar and that of Sri
KRISHNA happened in Dvaparyuga. Vasudeva's first wife was Rohini. The second
wife was Devaki. For the seventh time Devaki conceived and it was Balarama. But,
by Lord's `Yogamaya' the foetus was transferred from the womb of Devaki to that
of Rohini. Balarama was the aspect of Adhisesha just as Lakshmana was in
Ramaavatar.
Balarama was fair in color and he had a palm tree inscribed on
his flag staff. Balarama's weapon was the Hala (plough). Swami SRI DESIKA calls
him HELAHALIN- One who wields the plough as his weapon. BALARAMA married REVATI
daughter of Raivata. He killed `RUKMI' brother of Rukmini when he exceeded his
limits in his misbehavior. Once he dragged the entire HASTINAPURA with his
plough when the Kauravas refused to free SAMBHAN son of JAMBAVATI (one of the
wives of Krishna). When the Kauravas surrendered he also released Hastinapura.
During the Mahabharata war he did not join either Kauravas or Pandavas but
left on a pilgrimage along with VIDHURA because both sides were his close
relatives.
After the destruction of the Yadhavas, he took his serpent form, entered the
sea and disappeared. BALARAMA AVATAR was not a PURNA AVATAR say some scholars.
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The Story of KALKI Avatar
 In
KALKI Avatar, Lord Vishnu will incarnate himself as KALKI, the
machine-man, who will come riding his white horse and with his
blazing sword in his hands. This is supposed to be a future
avatar of Lord Vishnu. At the end of Kali Yuga (present eon)
He will punish all evil doers in this world, destroy this
world and recreate a golden age again.
KALKI is the
last of the avatars of Lord Vishnu.
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