218 HINDOO MYTHOLOGY. 



scent was to vanquish Bali, an earthly king, who, by the 

 mysterious sacrifice of a hundred horses, had acquired 

 supernatural powers, and threatened the conquest of the 

 celestial regions. But the manner in which the deity is 

 made to effect this grand object is silly in the extreme. He 

 appeared as a Bramin of very diminutive stature, and sought 

 merely the gift of so much ground as he could pass over in 

 three steps. Having received this small boon, he suddenly 

 resumed his natural dimensions, placed one foot on heaven, 

 and another on earth ; a third then projected from his 

 belly, for which Bali, being unable to furnish a place, was 

 obliged to atone for this failure by descending to the world 

 beneath. 



The sixth, seventh, and eighth avatars were in the char- 

 acters of Parasu Rama, Rama, and Bala Rama, to deliver 

 the world from successive monsters and giants. His ex- 

 ploits as the second of these personages furnish the subject 

 of the celebrated sacred epic called the Ramayana. But 

 the transmutation upon which the Hindoo writers most 

 fondly dwell is that into their favourite Krishna, who has 

 already been alluded to as a powerful sovereign and formi- 

 dable warrior. Tradition represents him as having passed 

 his youthful days in a pastoral retirement, and the extrava- 

 gant fancy of the Hindoo poets caught hold of this legend. 

 They exhibit him at this period as the lover of sixteen 

 thousand milkmaids ; to gain whose favour he converted 

 himself into an equal number of sighing swains, while 

 each fond maiden fancied herself the sole object of Krishna's 

 tenderness. Under this character, much more than by 

 those warlike attributes which enabled him to vanquish the 

 giant Kungsu, this deity has acquired numerous and devoted 

 worshippers, and become the chief theme of lyric and amo- 

 rous poetry among the Hindoos. 



In the ninth avatar, Vishnu assumed the form of Boodh, 

 the author of a rival creed, distinct from that of Brama, 

 but which, notwithstanding, by this incarnation was ad- 

 mitted into a certain alliance with it. More will be said 

 hereafter on this subject. The tenth avatar, when Vishnu 

 will descend mounted on a white horse, and armed with a 

 scimitar, to root out evil from the earth, is as yet only the 

 object of fond expectation. 



Siva, the third member of the Hindoo triad, is represented 



