is the middle or central one of the Three who is the source of Avatâras. There has never been a direct Avatâra of Mahâdeva, of Shiva Himself. Appearances? Yes. Manifestations? Yes. Coming in form for a special purpose served by that form? Oh yes. Take the Mahâbhârata, and you find Him appearing in the form of the hunter, the Kirâta, and testing the intuition of Arjuna, and struggling with him to test his strength, his courage, and finally his devotion to Himself. But that is a mere form taken for a purpose and cast aside the moment the purpose is served; almost, we may say, a mere illusion, produced to serve a special purpose and then thrown away as having completed that which it was intended to perform. Over and over again you find such appearances of Mahâdeva. You may remember one most beautiful story, in which He appears in the form of a Chandâla5 at the gateway of His own city of Kâshî, when one who was especially overshadowed by a manifestation of Himself, Shrî Shankarâchârya, was coming with his disciples to the sacred city; veiling Himself in the form of an outcaste – for to Him all forms are the same, the human differences are but as the grains of sand which vanish before the majesty of His greatness – He rolled Himself in the dust before the gateway, so that the great teacher could not walk across without touching Him, and he called to the Chandâla to make way in order that the Brâhmaṇa might go on unpolluted by the touch of the outcaste; then the Lord, speaking through the form He had chosen, rebuked the very one whom His power overshadowed, asking him questions which he could not answer and thus abasing his pride and teaching him humility. Such forms truly He has taken, but these are not what we can call Avatâras; mere passing forms, not manifestations upon earth where a life is lived and a great drama is played out. So with Brahmâ; He also has appeared from time to time, has manifested Himself for some special purpose; but there is no Avatâra of Brahmâ, which we can speak of by that very definite and well understood term.
Now for this fact there must be some reason.
Why is it that we do not find the source of Avatâras alike in all these great divine manifestations? Why do they come from only one aspect and that the aspect of Viṣhṇu? I need not remind you that there is but one Self, and that these names we use are the names of the aspects that are manifested by the Supreme; we must not separate them so much as to lose sight of the underlying unity. For remember how, when a worshipper of Viṣhṇu had a feeling in his heart against a worshipper of Mahâdeva, as he bowed before the image of Hari, the face of the image divided itself in half, and Shiva or Hara appeared on one side and Viṣhṇu or Hari appeared on the other, and the two, smiling as one face on the bigoted worshipper, told him that Mahâdeva and Viṣhṇu were but one. But in Their functions a division arises; They manifest along different lines, as it were, in the kosmos and for the helping of man; not for Him but for us, do these lines of apparent separateness arise.
Looking thus at it, we shall be able to find the answer to our question, not only who is the source of Avatâras, but why Viṣhṇu is the source. And it is here that I come to the unfamiliar part where I shall have to ask for your special attention as regards the building of the universe. Now I am using the word "universe," in the sense of our solar system. There are many other systems, each of them complete in itself, and, therefore, rightly spoken of as a kosmos, a universe. But each of these systems in its turn is part of a mightier system, and our sun, the centre of our own system, though it be in very truth the manifested physical body of I´shwara Himself, is not the only sun. If you look through the vast fields of space, myriads of suns are there, each one the centre of its own system, of its own universe; and our sun, supreme to us, is but, as it were, a planet in a vaster system, its orbit curved round a sun greater than itself. So in turn that sun, round which our sun is circling, is planet to a yet mightier sun, and each set of systems in its turn circles round a more central sun, and so on – we know not how far may stretch the chain that to us is illimitable; for who is able to plumb the depths and heights of space, or to find a manifested circumference which takes in all universes! Nay, we say that they are infinite in number, and that there is no end to the manifestations of the one Life.
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