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THE CALCI, OR TENTH, AVATAR OF INDIA. 



The Calci, or final, Avatar exhibits to us Veeshnu incarnate in the 

 form of an armed warrior, for the purpose of dissolving the universe. 

 The duration of the Cali period, or Yug, in which this is the only 

 incarnation, has already been stated to be 432,000 } r ears, during 

 which scarcely any vestiges of justice or piety will remain among 

 mankind, who, degraded equally in stature as intellectual vigour, are 

 considered at the end of that period as ripe for the scythe that is 

 doomed to mow them down. The Calci, it is recorded, will be in- 

 carnate in the house of the Brahmin BISHENJUN, the apparent 

 offspring of that sage by his wife AWEJSIRDENEE*, and will be 

 born in the city of Sambal, towards the close of the Cali, in the 

 month of VAISACH, the Scorpion. In one hand he is repre- 

 sented as bearing aloft a " cimeter, blazing like a comet-jV' to 

 destroy all the impure, who then shall inhabit the earth ; and, in 

 the other, he displays a circular ornament, or RING, the emblem 

 of cycles perpetually revolving, and of which the existing one, in- 

 cluding the ten grand Avatars above-recorded, is on the point of 

 being finally terminated. The Calci hero appears leading a white 

 horse, richly caparisoned, adorned with jewels, and furnished with 

 wings, possibly to mark the rapid flight of time. The horse is 

 represented standing not on terrestrial, but atherial, ground, on 

 three feet only, holding up, without intermission, the right fore- 

 leg, with which, say the Brahmins, when he stamps with fury upon 

 the earth, the present period shall close, and the dissolution of nature 

 take place. 



* Ayeen Akbery, vol. iii. p. 241. 



f See the Ode of Jayadeva on the Avatars of Veeshnu, at the commencement of vol. ii. 



VOL in. Q 



