world has fallen out of equilibrium. The
root cause of such disequilibrium is usu-
ally a demon(asura) who has grown too
strong and uses that power to oppress
others. This imbalance prompts Vishnu
to take form as an avatar, destroy the
evildoers, and definitively restore the
cosmic balance.
Although there is some variation in
the list of Vishnu’s avatars, the generally
accepted list is as follows: Fish, Tortoise,
Boar, Man-Lion, Vamana (dwarf ),
Parashuram, Rama, Krishna, Buddha,
and Kalki. This list of avatars follows an
“evolutionary” sequence—the first three
are animals, the fourth a hybrid man-
animal, and the ones after that mythic
heroes and sages; the exception is the
Buddha, a real person who has been
incorporated into the Hindu pantheon.
The tenth form, Kalki avatar, is yet to
come, and his coming will herald the
end of the age. Vishnu’s partial avatars—
as sages, saints, and gods—are countless
and potentially limitless, providing a
ready-made way for new Hindu move-
ments to ascribe divine authority to
their founders.
Although the avatar concept is most
commonly associated with Vishnu, it
has been applied to other Hindu gods as
well. One example of partial avatars can
be seen in the Mahabharata, the later of
the two great Hindu epics, in which all
five of the Pandavabrothers are partial
incarnations of various gods. In addi-
tion, devotees of the god Shiva have
developed a list of his twenty-one
avatars, who are saints, sages, and minor
deities. This list was probably developed
in response to the Vaishnavadoctrine of
avatars, but Shiva’s forms are far less
important than Vishnu’s; Vishnu’s
avatars include Rama and Krishna,
who are major objects of worshipin
their own right.
For the Vaishnavas, the avatar
doctrine is generally seen as a way
to assimilate existing cults into
the pantheon by claiming that
various deities are merely different
manifestations of Vishnu. The Shaiva
avatars were developed much later,
essentially so that Shiva would also
have these forms. See also Jagannath
and Balarama.Avidya
(“lack of [true] knowledge”) Avidya is
the absence of true understanding
and is the fundamental problem in
almost all Hindu philosophical and
religious thought. The presence of
avidya leads people to misperceive the
true nature of reality and to act based on
these misperceptions.
The most fundamental of these false
perceptions is to identify the eternal Self
(atman) with the body. As a result of this
misidentification, egoism leads one to
try to protect and advance the Self (in its
particular embodied state) and incites
feelings and actions of greed, lust, and
hatred. These feelings create bondage
for the soul and entrap it in samsara, the
cycle of rebirth.
In most Hindu philosophical
schools, the avidya tends to be con-
ceived in epistemological rather than
metaphysical terms—that is, it is not an
actual thing in its own right but exists
as a function of how one comes to
know things, insofar as that knowledge
is inaccurate or incomplete. Once one’s
deficient awareness has been corrected,
the cause of bondage is removed,
resulting in the final liberation of the
soul (moksha).Avimukta
(“unforsaken”) The word Avimukta
carries two shades of meaning: in a
more general sense, it is a name for the
city of Benares; in a more specific sense,
it refers to the part of Benares consid-
ered to be the sacred heart of the city, in
the region centered around the
VishvanathTemple.
Avimukta gets its name from the
belief that Shiva never leaves this
place, and because of this its proponents
claim that it is the holiest spot on earth.
See Benares.Avimukta