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14. THE CONCEPT OF AVATARS
8 out of 9 avatars (no. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9) are involved in saving the world of gods from the power attained by the demons, while only 6 is concerned with saving humans alone. Whenever there was a conflict of interest between the gods and the non-gods, incarnation of God sided with the gods and in fact outright cheated the non-gods.
The general structure of the Hindu Avatar myth follows a strict progression as follows:
1. A demon (Asuras) gains great power through austerities and becomes invincible 2. The demon defeats gods (Suras, Devas) totally and takes over their lands
3. The Suras pettitions one of the great deities.
4. The deity takes a form suitable to trick the Asura.
5. Demon is defeated without violating any legal conditions within the law. 6. Suras praise the demon slayer.
A casual look will verify that most of the incarnations do not fulfill the reason for avatar. Evidently it is a one sided story and certainly refers not to how the supreme God of all Creations deal with his creation, but how the King of a group of people deal with their enemies. It is this obvious character of the avatar that I treat as historical.
The Reality Check with Time
This would imply that except for the Balabhadra and Krishna avatars all avatars took place over a million years ago. Even those two fall within the vast time frame of 3000 to 867000 BC (nearly a million years). It would also imply that human civilization with highly sophisticated social system, kingship, chariots, war machines, flying vehicles etc were in existence in India for over three million years.
(4) The Hindu religion was revealed 155.52 trillion years ago; the uninterrupted Ganges valley civilization of India for 1,900 million years; and the ice ages. EBER
The True History and the Religion of India: A Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism.By Swami Prakashanand Saraswati
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| SR No. | 007303 |
| Book Title | Development of Hinduism |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | M M Ninan |
| Publisher | M M Ninan |
| Publication Year | |
| Total Pages | 582 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 45 MB |