2. His incarnations.
He is generally considered to have had ten incarnations, of which nine are past and one is still to come. The incarnations were as follows:
1. As a great fish he guided the ark in which Manu the primeval man escaped from the deluge.
2. As a tortoise he supported the earth and poised it in its present position; or according to another version he lay at the bottom of the sea while the mountain Meru was set on its peak on his back, and with the serpent Vāsuki as a rope round the mountain the ocean was churned by the gods for making the divine Amrit or nectar which gives immortality.
3. As a boar he dived under the sea and raised the earth on his tusks after it had been submerged by a demon.
4. As Narsingh, the man-lion, he delivered the world from the tyranny of another demon.
5. As Wāman or a dwarf he tricked the King Bali, who had gained possession over the earth and nether world and was threatening the heavens, by asking for as much ground as he could cover in three steps. When his request was derisively granted he covered heaven and earth in two steps, but on Bali’s intercession left him the nether regions and refrained from making the third step which would have covered them.
6. As Parasurama[2] he cleared the earth of the Kshatriyas, who had oppressed the Brāhman hermits and stolen the sacred cow, by a slaughter of them thrice seven times repeated.
7. As Rāma, the divine king of Ajodhia or Oudh, he led an expedition to Ceylon for the recovery of his wife Sīta, who had been abducted by Rawan, the demon king of Ceylon. This story probably refers to an early expedition of the Aryans to southern India, in which they may have obtained the assistance of the Munda tribes, represented by Hanumān and his army of apes.
8. As Krishna he supported the Pāndavas in their war against the Kauravas, and at the head of the Yādava clan founded the city of Dwārka in Gujarāt, where he was afterwards killed. The popular group of legends about Krishna in his capacity of a cowherd in the forests of Mathura was perhaps at first distinct and afterwards combined with the story of the Yādava prince.[3] But it is in this latter character as the divine cowherd that Krishna is most generally known and worshipped.
9. As Buddha he was the great founder of the religion known by his name; the Brāhmans, by making Buddha an incarnation of Vishnu, have thus provided a connecting link between Buddhism and Hinduism.
In his tenth incarnation he will come again as Nishka-lanki or the stainless one for the final regeneration of the world, and his advent is expected by some Hindus, who worship him in this form.
Image of Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth, the consort of Vishnu, with attendant