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INTRODUCTION
11
Partha's charioteer and drove his chariot; how it was that he became a dwarf and, like a begger, begged of Bali in humiliating germs a piece of land; and how it was that the All-knowing, the All-pervading, the Unchangeable Protector of the world, was oppressed in every way by the fire of separation from Sita like a mortal lover. "If Visnu does things like this, no mortal can be blamed for doing them; if a motherin-law is ill-conducted, the daughter-in-law cannot be reproached foracting likewise. When the whole world is in the inside of him, how can Sita be taken away from him ? Nothing existing in space can be taken out of space. If the god is all-pervading, how can he be separated from his beloved ? If he is eternal, how can he be afflicted with separation ? How can the Lord of the world do the behests of others? Kings do not do the work of their servants. How can the All-knowing ask others ( what he does not know ); how can the Ruler of all ) beg; how can the Wakeful sleep, or the Unsensual be a lover? How can He, like an ordinary miserable being become a fish, a tortoise, a boar, a man-lion, a dwarf and three Ramas successively ?"
After having argued thus with the Brahmans he went to the garden and spoke to his friend in the same strain : "Friend, I will tell you another thing. There are six periods mentioned in the Bharata in order, having each its peculiarity like the seasons. In the fourth period there were sixty-three eminent men: the twelve Supreme Sovereigns, the twenty-four Arhantas (Jinas ), and nine Ramas, nine Kesavas, and the nine enemies of these nine. All of them have passed away; there is no substance existing that is not destroyed by death (time). The last of the Visnus ( Kesavas ) was the son of Vasudeva; and his Brahman devotees call him the Pure, the Supreme Being. (They say ) 'He who meditates on the god Visnu, who is all-pervading, a whole without parts, indestructible and unchangeable, and who frees a man from old age and death, is free from misery'. He is traditionally known to have ten ( forms ) :-A fish, a tortoise, a boar, a man-lion, Vamana, Rama, Rama and Rama, Buddha, and Kalkin. Having spoken of him as a whole without parts, they represent him to have ten different forms though there is inconsistency".
It will be seen that the idea of the ten incarnations of Visnu had become quite an article of ordinary belief by the year 1070 of the Vikrama era or 1014 A.D., and Buddha had been received into the popular Brahmanic pantheon. In the first of the two verses quoted in the notes, the two last incarnations have been omitted, probably because the object was to represent the birth of Visnu in previous ages of the world; while the ninth belongs to the present and the tenth to a future age,
On another occasion Manovega transforms himself into a Pulinda and his friend into a cat without ears, and offers the cat for sale, saying that the smell of the cat drove mice away for ten or twelve Yojanas on all sides. In the story he told of the cat the Brahmanas discovered an incongruity : and Manovega, on his part, tells the following story as occurring in one of the Puranas of the Brahmans containing like incongruities.
There was a recluse of the name of Mandapa Kausika. On one occasion he sat down to dinner along with other recluses. Seeing him sitting in their company, the recluses rose up, afraid to touch him as if he were a Candala. Mandapa Kausika
