Chapter Five: Avatāra Doctrine and Rama Worship

—worship in the sweet disposition emerged openly, freely, and with intense force. Because Bhagavan assumes a human body, the nectar of his human līlā can be savoured readily. Like human life, these līlās contain meeting and separation, pleasure and pain, joy and grief, appearance and disappearance. They have therefore especially enchanted the human mind and steeped it in rasa. As a result, the author observes, ninety-nine percent of our poetic literature has been composed around these two avatāras.

We shall consider later why and how the mādhurya disposition entered Rama’s līlā. For now, it must be remembered that even its sweetness remains fully bounded by propriety.

Scientific evolution in avatāra doctrine

Many interpret avatāra doctrine as supporting scientific evolution: first aquatic creatures such as Matsya; then amphibious creatures such as Kurma; then terrestrial animals such as Varaha; then the half-animal, half-human Narasimha; then the diminutive human Vamana; then proud warriorhood in Parashurama; and finally the full development of humanity in the human avatāras Rama, Krishna, and Buddha. The ten avatāras have also been interpreted in physical, mental, and spiritual terms.¹

The worship of Sri Krishna is generally regarded as the oldest among the avatāra cults. Jacobi states that he was first worshipped as a national hero. Toward the close of the Vedic period, Krishna then came to be worshipped as a national deity of the Abhiras. Gopala Krishna and Vasudeva Krishna, originally distinct, were brought together in a single personality and became the principal deity of the Pancharatra religion.

The sage Patanjali mentions Krishna and Arjuna in the Mahābhāṣya. He refers to Krishna not merely as a heroic Kshatriya but as a great person endowed with divine power.²

According to Bühler, this religion had arisen long before Jainism, in the eighth century BCE. Krishna is mentioned in the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka and the Chāndogya Upaniṣad in the sixth century BCE.³ In the fourth century BCE Megasthenes referred to him as Heracles—