2017-04-12 Wed

Last week we saw the very first avatar of Lord Vishnu and today we will be discussing the second Avatar. We hope you are as excited as us to read about it!

So here it goes…

The sage Durvasa once presented a garland of flowers to Indra (The King of Gods), who carelessly gave it away to his elephant which trampled it. Due to this, Durvasa who was famous for his short temper cursed all the Gods (Devas) that they would lose all the strengths.

Caught in curse all the Devas went to Lord Vishnu. Vishnu asked them to churn the ocean of milk, Shirsagara, for the nectar (Amrita).

The Devas and Asuras started churning the Ocean of milk, in order to get amrita, the nectar of immortality, with serpent Vasuki as the rope and the mount Mandara as the churning staff. But as churning proceeded the mountain began to sink. To stop the mountain from sinking into the ocean Lord Vishnu took the form of the large turtle or Kurma and kept the mountain afloat on its back. This how the Lord Vishnu takes his second avatar!

This Avatar of Vishnu, the Kurma Avatar, was depicted in one of stamp commemorating Jayadeva’s Geet Govind.

As soon as the bowl of amrita, the nectar of immortality was out, the asuras grabbed it. Then Lord Vishnu took the form of an Apsara, a beautiful maiden, and seduced the asuras into letting her distribute the nectar and also to abide by her order of distribution. As soon as the devatas were served the maiden disappeared thus totally deceiving the asuras and making them totally weak.

Though the story ends here but the medieval Hindu theology extends it and says that when the Devas were carrying the amrita away from the Asuras, the drops of amrita fell at four places on the Earth. The four places where the amrita was spilled were- Haridwar, Prayag (Allahabad), Trimbak (Nashik) and Ujjain. These four places are supposed to acquire certain mystical power and spirituality. So, Kumbha Mela takes place on these four places and Hindus believe that bathing in this holy water will make them attain Moksha.

To start with our first article on Incarnations of Lord Vishnu on Earth (Part I) click here.

So now we end here…Hope our today’s article was helpful to you for knowing something new. Till then spread words and stay excited about our upcoming articles.