The Significance of Dashavatar

                       As per the Vaishnava Philosophy, Lord Vishnu has a total of ten avatars, of which, one is yet to come. It is interesting to see that, the ten incarnations of Vishnu relates to the various stages of the human evolution.

                       Based on the observations of British biologist, J B S Haldane, it is found that the dasavataras are the sequential depiction of evolution.

Let us now see few interesting things...

Life Evolution:

• Life originated in water in unicellular form.
• It was followed by aquatic life forms.
• It was then followed by Amphibians.
• Then, the transformation of 'animal to Ape' took place
• Then, another transformation from 'Ape to Human' took place. This phase had Dwarf people.
• Then, proper human beings evolved - Initially Hunters, followed by farmers, Businessmen and Philosophers.

Now, let us see how the same thing can be correlated:

                      As per the vaishnava philosophy, Lord Vishnu took nine incarnations till now starting with a fish, then a amphibian, and then ape etc. Here is the list:

•    First -

            Matsya Avatar (The Fish) - It signifies that life started in the water.

•    Second - 

            Kurma Avatar (The Tortoise) - Amphibian - It means, life moved from water to the land.

•    Third - 

            Varaha Avatar (The Boar) - A Total animal - This phase refers to the stage where life got  adapted to live on land.

•    Fourth -

            Narasimha Avatar (Half ape) - This is the time where transformation from animal to ape took place.

•    Fifth - 

            Vamana avatar (Dwarf Human) - At this stage, the transformation from ape to human took place and man developed intelligence by asking for just three steps of land and killing the king, Bali.

•    Sixth -

            Parasurama avatar (Forest dweller) - Human started civilizing and developing stone tools.

•    Seventh - 

            Sree Rama avatar (The Hunter, King) - It is this stage of evolution, where human beings used superior weapons, bows and arrows, settled in villages, had a king to take care of the settlement etc.,

•    Eighth - 

            Sree Krishna avatar (Businessman) - This stage of evolution saw the domestication of animals and development of economy. Sri Krishna's brother, Balarama was a farmer and hence it can be assumed that humans started agriculture in this stage.

•    Ninth - 

            Buddha Avatar (Philosopher) - In this stage, people started thinking and evaluating things.Some guidelines were framed in the name of philosophy for the betterment of mankind.  

•    Tenth - 

           Kalki avatar - This is yet to arrive. It is believed that this avatar would be the end of the world. It could even be a virus.

                    One observation is, the average height of human beings when compared to that of their  grand fathers is increasing generation-by-generation. May be this is also a part of evolution. Let us see what happens in the next stage of evolution.