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                                AVATARAS

              FOUR LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE TWENTY-FOURTH
                       ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF THE
                     THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY AT ADYAR,
                         MADRAS, DECEMBER, 1899



                                   BY

                              ANNIE BESANT



                           _ENGLISH EDITION_




                    Theosophical Publishing Society
                      3 Langham Place, London, W.
                                  1900

       *       *       *       *       *




CONTENTS.


                                                         PAGE

LECTURE I.--

WHAT IS AN AVATARA?                                        7

LECTURE II.--

THE SOURCE OF AND NEED FOR AVATARAS                       31

LECTURE III.--

SOME SPECIAL AVATARAS                                     65

LECTURE IV.--

SHRI KRISHNA                                              95

       *       *       *       *       *




AVATARAS.

FIRST LECTURE.


BROTHERS:--Every time that we come here together to study the
fundamental truths of all religions, I cannot but feel how vast is the
subject, how small the expounder, how mighty the horizon that opens
before our thoughts, how narrow the words which strive to sketch it for
your eyes. Year after year we meet, time after time we strive to fathom
some of those great mysteries of life, of the Self, which form the only
subject really worthy of the profoundest thought of man. All else is
passing; all else is transient; all else is but the toy of a moment.
Fame and power, wealth and science--all that is in this world below is
as nothing beside the grandeur of the Eternal Self in the universe and
in man, one in all His manifold manifestations, marvellous and beautiful
in every form that He puts forth. And this year, of all the
manifestations of the Supreme, we are going to dare to study the holiest
of the holiest, those manifestations of God in the world in which He
shows Himself as divine, coming to help the world that He has made,
shining forth in His essential nature, the form but a thin film which
scarce veils the Divinity from our eyes. How then shall we venture to
approach it, how shall we dare to study it, save with deepest reverence,
with profoundest humility; for if there needs for the study of His works
patience, reverence and humbleness of heart, what when we study Him
whose works but partially reveal Him, when we try to understand what is
meant by an Avatara, what is the meaning, what the purpose of such a
revelation?

Our President has truly said that in all the faiths of the world there
is belief in such manifestations, and that ancient maxim as to
truth--that which is as the hall mark on the silver showing that the
metal is pure--that ancient maxim is here valid, that whatever has been
believed everywhere, whatever has been believed at every time, and by
every one, that is true, that is reality. Religions quarrel over many
details; men dispute over many propositions; but where human heart and
human voice speak a single word, there you have the mark of truth, there
you have the sign of spiritual reality. But in dealing with the subject
one difficulty faces us, faces you as hearers, faces myself as speaker.
In every religion in modern times truth is shorn of her full
proportions; the intellect alone cannot grasp the many aspects of the
one truth. So we have school after school, philosophy after philosophy,
each one showing an aspect of truth, and ignoring, or even denying, the
other aspects which are equally true. Nor is this all; as the age in
which we are passes on from century to century, from millennium to
millennium, knowledge becomes dimmer, spiritual insight becomes rarer,
those who repeat far out-number those who know; and those who speak with
clear vision of the spiritual verity are lost amidst the crowds, who
only hold traditions whose origin they fail to understand. The priest
and the prophet, to use two well-known words, have ever in later times
come into conflict one with the other. The priest carries on the
traditions of antiquity; too often he has lost the knowledge that made
them real. The prophet--coming forth from time to time with the divine
word hot as fire on his lips--speaks out the ancient truth and
illuminates tradition. But they who cling to the words of tradition are
apt to be blinded by the light of the fire and to call out "heretic"
against the one who speaks the truth that they have lost. Therefore, in
religion after religion, when some great teacher has arisen, there have
been opposition, clamour, rejection, because the truth he spoke was too
mighty to be narrowed within the limits of half-blinded men. And in such
a subject as we are to study to-day, certain grooves have been made,
certain ruts as it were, in which the human mind is running, and I know
that in laying before you the occult truth, I must needs, at some
points, come into clash with details of a tradition that is rather
repeated by memory than either understood or the truths beneath it
grasped. Pardon me then, my brothers, if in a speech on this great topic
I should sometimes come athwart some of the dividing lines of different
schools of Hindu thought; I may not, I dare not, narrow the truth I have
learnt, to suit the limitations that have grown up by the ignorance of
ages, nor make that which is the spiritual verity conform to the empty
traditions that are left in the faiths of the world. By the duty laid
upon me by the Master that I serve, by the truth that He has bidden me
speak in the ears of men of all the faiths that are in this modern
world; by these I must tell you what is true, no matter whether or not
you agree with it for the moment; for the truth that is spoken wins
submission afterwards, if not at the moment; and any one who speaks of
the Rishis of antiquity must speak the truths that they taught in
their days, and not repeat the mere commonplaces of commentators of
modern times and the petty orthodoxies that ring us in on every side and
divide man from man.

I propose in order to simplify this great subject to divide it under
certain heads. I propose first to remind you of the two great divisions
recognised by all who have thought on the subject; then to take up
especially, for this morning, the question, "What is an Avatara?"
To-morrow we shall put and strive to answer, partly at least, the
question, "Who is the source of Avataras?" Then later we shall take up
special Avataras both of the kosmos and of human races. Thus I hope to
place before you a clear, definite succession of ideas on this great
subject, not asking you to believe them because I speak them, not asking
you to accept them because I utter them. Your reason is the bar to which
every truth must come which is true for you; and you err deeply, almost
fatally, if you let the voice of authority impose itself where you do
not answer to the speaking. Every truth is only true to you as you see
it, and as it illuminates the mind; and truth however true is not yet
truth for you, unless your heart opens out to receive it, as the flower
opens out its heart to receive the rays of the morning sun.

First, then, let us take a statement that men of every religion will
accept. Divine manifestations of a special kind take place from time to
time as the need arises for their appearance; and these special
manifestations are marked out from the universal manifestation of God in
His kosmos; for never forget that in the lowest creature that crawls the
earth I'shvara is present as in the highest Deva. But there are certain
special manifestations marked out from this general self-revelation in
the kosmos, and it is these special manifestations which are called
forth by special needs. Two words especially have been used in Hinduism,
marking a certain distinction in the nature of the manifestation--one
the word "Avatara," the other the word "A'vesha." Only for a moment
need we stop on the meaning of the words, important to us because the
literal meaning of the words points to the fundamental difference
between the two. The word "Avatara," as you know, has as its root
"tri," passing over, and with the prefix which is added, the "ava,"
you get the idea of descent, one who descends. That is the literal
meaning of the word. The other word has as its root "vish,"
permeating, penetrating, pervading, and you have there the thought of
something which is permeated or penetrated. So that while in the one
case, Avatara, there is the thought of a descent from above, from
I'shvara to man or animal; in the other, there is rather the idea of an
entity already existing who is influenced, permeated, pervaded by the
divine power, specially illuminated as it were. And thus we have a kind
of intermediate step, if one may say so, between the divine
manifestation in the Avatara and in the kosmos--the partial divine
manifestation in one who is permeated by the influence of the Supreme,
or of some other being who practically dominates the individual, the Ego
who is thus permeated.

Now what are the occasions which lead to these great manifestations?
None can speak with mightier authority on this point than He who came
Himself as an Avatara just before the beginning of our own age, the
Divine Lord Shri Krishna Himself. Turn to that marvellous poem,
the _Bhagavad-Gita_, to the fourth Adhyaya, Shlokas 7 and 8; there He
tells us what draws Him forth to birth into His world in the manifested
form of the Supreme:

[Sanskrit:

yadA yadAhidharmasya GlAnirBavati BArata |

aByutthAnamadharmasya tadAtmAnaM sRujAmyaham ||

paritrANAya sAdhUnAm vinAsAyacaduShkRutAm ||

dharmasaMsdhApanArthAya saMBavAmi yuge yuge ||]

"When Dharma,--righteousness, law--decays, when
Adharma--unrighteousness, lawlessness--is exalted, then I Myself come
forth: for the protection of the good, for the destruction of the evil,
for the establishing firmly of Dharma, I am born from age to age." That
is what He tells us of the coming forth of the Avatara. That is, the
needs of His world call upon Him to manifest Himself in His divine
power; and we know from other of His sayings that in addition to those
which deal with the human needs, there are certain kosmic necessities
which in the earlier ages of the world's story called forth special
manifestations. When in the great wheel of evolution another turn round
has to be given, when some new form, new type of life is coming forth,
then also the Supreme reveals Himself, embodying the type which thus He
initiates in His kosmos, and in this way turning that everlasting wheel
which He comes forth as I'shvara to turn. Such then, speaking quite
generally, the meaning of the word, and the object of the coming.

From that we may fitly turn to the more special question, "What is an
Avatara?" And it is here that I must ask your close attention, nay, your
patient consideration, where points that to some extent may be
unfamiliar are laid before you; for as I said, it is the occult view of
the truth which I am going to partially unveil, and those who have not
thus studied truth need to think carefully ere they reject, need to
consider long ere they refuse. We shall see as we try to answer the
question how far the great authorities help us to understand, and how
far the lack of knowledge in reading those authorities has led to
misconception. You may remember that the late learned T. Subba Rao in
the lectures that he gave on the _Bhagavad-Gita_ put to you a certain
view of the Avatara, that it was a descent of I'shvara--or, as he said,
using the theosophical term, the Logos, which is only the Greek name for
I'shvara--a descent of I'shvara, uniting Himself with a human soul. With
all respect for the profound learning of the lamented pandit, I cannot
but think that that is only a partial definition. Probably he did not at
that time desire, had not very possibly the time, to deal with case
after case, having so wide a field to cover in the small number of
lectures that he gave, and he therefore chose out one form, as we may
say, of self-revelation, leaving untouched the others, which now in
dealing with the subject