Dasavatara

Dashavatara (Sanskrit: दशावतार, daśāvatāra) refers to the ten avatars of Vishnu, the Hindu god of preservation. Vishnu is said to descend in form of an avatar to restore cosmic order.

The list of Dashavatara varies across sects and regions. The standard list is as follows: Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parashurama, Rama, Krishna, Buddha and Kalki. Sometimes, Krishna replaces Vishnu as the source of all avatars and Balarama takes Krishna's place in the list. In some South and North-East Indian versions, Buddha may be dropped from the list and substituted by Balarama. In other versions, Mohini or regional deities like Vithoba, Jagannath and Srinivasa replace Buddha. In the lists that exclude Mohini from the canonical ten, she is often quoted as an 11th minor avatar.

The order of the Dashavataras has been interpreted to be reflective of Darwinian evolution by modern scholars of Hindu literature.

The word Dashavatara derives from daśa, meaning 'ten' and avatar (avatāra), meaning 'incarnation'.

God Vishnu incarnates on Earth from time to time to eradicate evil forces, to restore the dharma and to liberate the worthy ones or devotees from the cycle of births and deaths. Vishnu in his avatar as Krishna speaks in the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 4 Shloka 8: "To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of righteousness, I manifest myself, millennium after millennium".

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