Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [167]
Narasimha, the half-man-half-lion avatar, kills the invulnerable demon who brings terror to the world.
Vamana, the dwarf-priest avatar, tricks an asura by requesting the amount of land he could cover in three steps. The demon, named Bali, agrees, and Vishnu assumes his full size, covers the whole earth in two steps, and crushes Bali with the third step.
Parashurama is a brave human of the Brahmin caste who carries a great battle-ax given to him by Shiva to punish all those in the warrior caste (Kshatriyas) who have become arrogant and are suppressing the Brahmins. In winning twenty-one battles, Parashurama proves the supremacy of Brahmins.
Rama, who is usually depicted as a king carrying a bow and arrow, is a popular mortal hero in Hinduism and the central figure in the Ramayana (see below).
Krishna is Vishnu’s other divine avatar, and the central character in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad-Gita, in which he assumes the role of Arjuna’s charioteer and they engage in lengthy philosophical discourse (see below).
Buddha is the only avatar who can be connected to an actual historical person—the great religious teacher who founded Buddhism (see below). Scholars suggest that Buddha was made an avatar in order to bring his worshippers back into the Hindu fold.
Kalki is the coming avatar who will end the current evil age (Kali-Yuga). In an apocalyptic vision, Kalki will ride a white horse and carry a great sword to punish all evildoers in this world, and usher in a new Golden Age.
MYTHIC VOICES
Facing us in the field of battle are teachers, fathers and sons; grandsons, grandfathers, wives’ brothers; mothers’ brothers and fathers of wives.
These I do not wish to slay, even if I myself am slain.
Not even for the kingdom of three worlds: how much less for a kingdom of the earth!
—Bhagavad-Gita 1: 34–35
The author of the Mahabharata has not established the necessity of physical warfare; on the contrary, he has proved its futility. He has made the victors shed tears of sorrow and repentance, and has left them nothing but a legacy of miseries.
—MOHANDAS GANDHI
What kind of hero doesn’t want to fight?
A war epic might seem like an unlikely favorite of one of the twentieth century’s most notable apostles of nonviolence. But Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), the leader of the peaceful resistance movement that secured India’s independence from England in 1947, was said to be profoundly influenced by the Indian poem of war and peace, the Mahabharata.
Presumably based on a much older oral tradition, Mahabharata was first recorded between 500 and 400 BCE and was continually refined and edited until as late as 500 CE. At least four times the length of the Bible, it recounts an epic feud between two related families—the Pandavas and the Kauravas—who are the descendants of King Bharata. Over centuries, the word “Bharata” has become synonymous with India, so the epic is considered the story of India itself. Although some of the poem’s heroes are taken from history, the dating of the war it is said to be based on—once placed at 3102 BCE—has now been discredited.
One relatively small but enormously important piece of the Mahabharata is the beloved Hindu scripture, Bhagavad-Gita (“song of the lord or blessed one”). The hero of the Bhagavad-Gita is the warrior hero Arjuna, the “Achilles” of the Pandavas—the semidivine son of the ancient god Indra and a mortal woman. As Arjuna prepares to do battle in the ongoing war between the Pandavas and Kauravas, he has an extended conversation with the god Krishna, who has taken on the role of Arjuna’s friend and chariot driver. Arjuna is caught in a moral dilemma which he voices in the opening of Bhagavad-Gita. As a member of the warrior caste, Arjuna knows he must defend his brother, the king. However, arrayed on the opposing side are his cousins, other relatives, and teachers, and he is frozen by the thought of killing these acquaintances and relatives for the reward of a kingdom.
As Arjuna wonders what to do, Krishna teaches him—in eighteen-verse chapters