Sat Ma­haraj

Avatar is a 2009 epic 3-D sci­ence fic­tion film which pre­miered in Lon­don on De­cem­ber 10 and is now on lo­cal screens. The term Avatar is a Hin­du con­cept that is be­ing used loose­ly in the West and es­pe­cial­ly Hol­ly­wood. In­deed, many com­put­er users and gamers use the term Avatar reg­u­lar­ly. In com­put­ing, Avatar is the graph­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a user. There was an Avatar (2004 film) star­ring Genevieve O'Reil­ly. Avatar is a main char­ac­ter in the Ralph Bak­shi film Wiz­ards. Avatar, a 1983 film di­rect­ed by Mo­han Ku­mar, and Avatar, the orig­i­nal ti­tle of The Last Air­ben­der, is an up­com­ing 2010 film based on the Avatar. ?

There are many tele­vi­sion char­ac­ters, games, Web sites, records, and even race­hors­es with the Hin­du name Avatar. In 1998, In­dia even named a rock­et Avatar! In Hin­duism, Avatar is san­skrit for "de­scent," viz from Heav­en to Earth, and is most­ly trans­lat­ed in­to Eng­lish as "in­car­na­tion," "ap­pear­ance" or "man­i­fes­ta­tion." The term is most of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with Lord Vish­nu, though it has al­so come to be as­so­ci­at­ed with oth­er Hin­du deities. There are lists of Avatars of Vish­nu in dif­fer­ent Hin­du scrip­tures, in­clud­ing the ten (dasa­vatara) of the Garu­da Pu­rana and the 22 avatars in the Bha­ga­va­ta Pu­rana. The Avatars of Vish­nu are a pri­ma­ry com­po­nent of Vaish­nav­ism.?Alain Danielou was a French au­thor who spent more than 25 years in In­dia study­ing mu­sic and Hin­du phi­los­o­phy un­der some of In­dia's most em­i­nent pun­dits of the Hin­du tra­di­tion. Danielou has writ­ten many books on Hin­duism but his book The Gods of In­dia is used as a ref­er­ence man­u­al on many top­ics of Hin­duism.

In a chap­ter ti­tled "The Avatars, or In­car­na­tions, of Vish­nu" he writes: Vish­nu, the Per­vad­er, supreme cause of all, self of all, is every­where, per­vad­ing all things, lim­it­less. His qual­i­ties, his ac­tions, the man­i­fes­ta­tions of his pow­er, are end­less. Hav­ing man­i­fest­ed the world, he en­ters it again as its guide and ruler. (Tait­tiriya Up­anisad 1.2.6. [274].) At all the cru­cial mo­ments of the world's his­to­ry, the Per­vad­er ap­pears as a par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty who guides the evo­lu­tion and des­tiny of the dif­fer­ent or­ders of cre­ation, of species and forms of life. Hence the sto­ry of his "de­scents," of his "in­car­na­tions," of his "man­i­fes­ta­tions," is end­less. It would be im­pos­si­ble to give a full ac­count of the de­scents of the lim­it­less Per­vad­er in­to the world form. Fire, the sun, the wind, the Cre­ator, the Per­vad­er, the lord of de­struc­tion, the cos­mic in­tel­lect, the prin­ci­ple of ex­is­tence, the prin­ci­ple of in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty, the five prin­ci­ples of the el­e­ments, the liv­ing soul, all are em­bod­i­ments of di­vin­i­ty man­i­fest­ed through its pow­er of il­lu­sion.

Just as from an in­ex­haustible lake thou­sands of streams flow on all sides, so al­so from the re­mover of sor­row (Hari), sum of all re­al­i­ty, come forth count­less in­car­na­tions. The seers, the law­givers, the gods, the hu­man races, the lords of prog­e­ny, all are parts of him. When­ev­er, for a group of men or even for a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual, those forms of knowl­edge that are es­sen­tial for man's ful­fil­ment of his spir­i­tu­al des­tiny hap­pen to be be­yond reach and thus hu­man life fails in its pur­pose; Vish­nu is bound to make this knowl­edge avail­able again and thus a new rev­e­la­tion has to take place. There is, there­fore, a new in­car­na­tion for each cy­cle, to adapt the rev­e­la­tion to the new con­di­tions of the world. With the pur­pose of pro­tect­ing the earth, priests, gods, saints scrip­ture, right­eous­ness and pros­per­i­ty, the Lord takes a body. The his­to­ry of the present cre­ation is spanned by ten main cyclic in­car­na­tions. There has al­so been a com­par­i­son be­tween the Hin­du con­cept of Avatars and Dar­win's The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion as the in­car­na­tions gen­er­al­ly mir­ror.

The list of Avatars is as fol­lows: Mat­sya is a fish, Kur­ma is the tur­tle, Vara­ha is the boar, Nars­ingh is half man and half li­on, Var­man is de­pict­ed as a dwarf man, Par­suram (Avatar with axe�tool) is a for­est dweller, Ram is the ide­al man, Kr­ish­na is the di­vine man, with Bud­dha as spir­i­tu­al man. The tenth is Kal­ki, the high-tech savvy Avatar which is yet to make an ap­pear­ance! Since Feb­ru­ary, con­cerned Hin­dus have asked James Cameron who is heav­i­ly in­volved in the pro­duc­tion to at­tach a dis­claimer in the be­gin­ning and end of his forth­com­ing film Avatar, say­ing that it has noth­ing to do with Hin­duism or its con­cepts. Hin­du states­man Ra­jan Zed, in a state­ment in Neva­da (USA) on No­vem­ber 5, said that the term "Avatar" was one of the cen­tral themes of Hin­duism and in­sen­si­tive han­dling of faith tra­di­tions some­times re­sult­ed in pil­lag­ing se­ri­ous spir­i­tu­al doc­trines and revered sym­bols, there­by hurt­ing the devo­tees.

Zed, who is the pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­sal So­ci­ety of Hin­duism, ex­plains that Avatar, a san­skrit term, means de­scent or in­car­na­tion. Hin­duism is shaped by its tra­di­tion­al be­lief in the in­car­na­tion of Vish­nu (the pre­serv­er in?the Hin­du trin­i­ty) in­to ten forms to es­tab­lish dhar­ma (di­vine law).

?

Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the

sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha