Dashavatara

The Dashavatara (Sanskrit: दशावतार, IAST: daśāvatāra) are the ten primary avatars of Vishnu, a principal Hindu god. Vishnu is said to descend in the form of an avatar to restore cosmic order. The word Dashavatara derives from daśa, meaning "ten", and avatāra, roughly equivalent to "incarnation".
The list of included avatars varies across sects and regions, particularly with respect to the inclusion of Balarama (brother of Krishna) or the Buddha. In traditions that omit Krishna, he often replaces Vishnu as the source of all avatars. Some traditions include a regional deity such as Vithoba or Jagannath in penultimate position, replacing Krishna or Buddha. All avatars have appeared except one: Kalki, who will appear at the end of the Kali Yuga.
The order of the ancient concept of Dashavataras has also been interpreted to be reflective of modern Darwinian evolution, as a description of the evolution of consciousness.
"Dashavatara" or "daśāvatāra" (दशावतार) means "ten avatars" or "ten incarnations":
According to Swami Parmeshwaranand, although the avatars of Vishnu are countless in number and include hermits, Manus, sons of Manus, and other Devas (Hindu Deity), due to a curse by the Rishi Bhrigu, most are only partial (i.e. incomplete) incarnations. The Dashavatara is a list of the ten complete (i.e., full) incarnations.
Various versions of the list of Vishnu's avatars exist, varying by region and tradition. Some lists mention Krishna as the eighth avatar and the Buddha as the ninth avatar, while others, such as the Paripāṭal (c. 3rd-4th CE), which is the fifth of the Eight Anthologies (Ettuthokai) in the Sangam literature, and the Yatindramatadipika, a 17th-century summary of Sri Vaishnava doctrine, list Balarama as the eighth avatar and Krishna as the ninth. The latter version is followed by some Vaishnavas who do not accept the Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu. One list in the Mahabharata gives Rama (Bhargava), Rama (Dasharathi), Satvata (Krishna or Balarama), the Tri-Rama. The Tantric Prapanchasara (attributed to Adi Shankara, but disputed,) also omits the Buddha. Though no list can be uncontroversially presented as standard, the "most accepted list found in Puranas and other texts is [...] Krishna, Buddha."
The following table summarises the position of avatars within the Dashavatara in many but not all traditions:
The Agni, Padma, Garuda, Linga, Narada, Skanda and Varaha Puranas mention the common (Krishna, Buddha) Dashavatara list. The Garuda Purana has two lists, one longer list with Krishna and Buddha, and a list with Balarama and Buddha, which substitutes Vamana for Rama. The Shiva Purana has Balarama and Krishna. The list with Krishna and Buddha is also found in the Garuda Purana Saroddhara, a commentary or 'extracted essence' of the Garuda Purana (i.e. not the Purana itself, with which it seems to be confused):
The Buddha was included as one of the avatars of Vishnu under Bhagavatism by the Gupta period between 330 and 550 CE. The mythologies of the Buddha in the Theravada tradition and of Vishnu in Hinduism share a number of structural and substantial similarities. For example, states Indologist John Holt, the Theravada cosmogony and cosmology states the Buddha covered 6,800,000 yojanas in three strides, including earth to heaven and then placed his right foot over Yugandhara – a legend that parallels that of the Vamana avatar in Hinduism. Similarly, the Buddha is claimed in the Theravada mythology to have been born when dharma is in decline, so as to preserve and uphold the dharma. These similarities may have contributed to the assimilation of the Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu.
The adoption of Buddha as an avatar in Bhagavatism was a catalyzing factor in Buddhism's assimilation into Vaishnavism's mythic hierarchy. By the 8th century CE, the Buddha was included as an avatar of Vishnu in several Puranas. This assimilation is indicative of the Hindu ambivalence toward the Buddha and Buddhism, and there is also a tradition that there were two Buddhas. According to this tradition, the first was the ninth avatar of Vishnu, while the second was the historical Buddha. Conversely, Vishnu has also been assimilated into Sinhalese Buddhist culture, and Mahayana Buddhism is sometimes called Buddha-Bhagavatism. By this period, the concept of Dashavatara was fully developed.
Jayadeva, in his Pralaya Payodhi Jale from the Gita Govinda, includes Balarama and Buddha where Krishna is equated with Vishnu and the source of all avatars.The words from the poem describing ten avataras (translated) are as follows:
In traditions that emphasize the Bhagavata Purana, Krishna is the original Supreme Personality of Godhead, from whom everything else emanates. Gaudiya Vaishnavas worship Krishna as Svayam Bhagavan, or source of the incarnations. The Vallabha Sampradaya and Nimbarka Sampradaya, (philosophical schools) go even further, worshiping Krishna not only as the source of other incarnations, but also Vishnu himself, related to descriptions in the Bhagavata Purana. The Mahanubhavas, also known as the Jai Kishani Panth, consider Krishna as the supreme God and do not consider the list of Dashavatara, but instead, they consider another list of Panchavatara (5 Avatars).
Thirty-nine avatars are mentioned in the Pañcaratra including the likes of Garuda. However, despite these lists, the commonly accepted number of ten avatars for Vishnu was fixed well before the 10th century CE.
The term "Jyotisha" refers to Hindu or Vedic astrology, one of the six Vedangas or ancillary disciplines linked with the Vedas. The Brihat Parasara Hora Sastra mentions the Dashavatara as follows:
Notably, according to the Brihat Parasara Hora Sastra - an important Smriti Sastra or compilation of Indian astrology for prediction (i.e. fortune telling) - although all ten of the Dashavatara have corresponding astrological symbols, only four are considered as divine beings (i.e. Rama, Krishna, Narasimha and Varaha).
Some modern interpreters interpret Vishnu's ten main avatars as an ascending order from simple life-forms to more complex life-forms, and see the Dashavataras as a reflection, or a foreshadowing, of the modern theory of evolution. Such an interpretation was first propounded by the Gaudiya Vaishnava saint Bhaktivinoda Thakura in his 1873 book Datta-kaustubha and again in his 1880 book Kṛṣṇa-saṁhita. Theosophist Helena Blavatsky also reiterated this in her 1877 opus Isis Unveiled. Bhaktivinoda Thakura proposed the following ordering of the Dashavataras:
Blavatsky believed that the avatara-related Hindu texts were an allegorical presentation of Darwinian evolution. Some Orientalists and reformist Hindus in India picked up this idea to rationalize Hinduism as being consistent with modern science. Keshub Chandra Sen stated in 1882,
Similarly Aurobindo regarded "Avataric Evolutionism" as a "parable of evolution", one which does not endorse evolutionism, but hints at "transformative phases of spiritual progress". According to Nanda, the Dashavatara concept has led to some Hindus asserting that their religion is more open to scientific theories, and has not opposed or persecuted scientists midst them like the way Christianity and Islam has. But, adds Nanda, Hinduism has many cosmological theories and even the Vaishnava one with Dashavatara concept does not explicitly teach evolution of species, rather it states an endless cycles of creationism.
The Dashavatara concept appealed to other scholars. Monier Monier-Williams wrote "Indeed, the Hindus were ... Darwinians centuries before the birth of Darwin, and evolutionists centuries before the doctrine of evolution had been accepted by the Huxleys of our time, and before any word like evolution existed in any language of the world." J. B. S. Haldane (British-Indian scientist) suggested that Dashavatara gave a "rough idea" of vertebrate evolution: a fish, a tortoise, a boar, a man-lion, a dwarf and then four men (Kalki is not yet born). Nabinchandra Sen explains the Dashavatara with Darwin's evolution in his Raivatak. C. D. Deshmukh also remarked on the "striking" similarity between Darwin's theory and the Dashavatara.
Some Vaishnava Hindus reject this "Avataric Evolutionism" concept. For example, Prakashanand states that this apologeticism degrades the divine status of Rama and Krishna, unduly sequences Rama as inferior to Krishna, both to the Buddha. Rama and Krishna are supremely divine, each right and perfect for the circumstances they appeared in, states Prakashanand.