Charles Darwin and Dasavatharam

I wrote the following piece to some of my friends almost a year ago, but the thought has been in my mind for much longer time. Thanks to my friend Dinesh for not deleting this from his mailbox and sending it back to me!

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Before I begin, let me inform you that Kamal Hassan does not have any connection to this post :-)

I was once listening to a religious discourse in a temple on 'Ramayana' - the ever interesting Hindu epic. During the course of the lecture, a thought struck me. May be it was an idea already imposed in my mind during my school days. But somehow the respective neuro-cells in my brain woke up only that beautiful evening at the temple. If you have a good understanding of Hindu religion and topics like this, I'm sure you would have come across a similar line of thought.

First, let me tell you what it is about. I'm trying to find an interesting connection between - Charles Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution' and Maha Vishnu's Dasavatharam.

Charles Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution' in its original form is quite complex to understand and needs a lot of explanation in Biological terms. So, let me not trouble anyone; only the concept is enough here. It says that, all living organisms in this world come from a common ancestor. Human beings, as you all know, came from Apes. As we trace back, everything started from a single cell which came to life under sea, as a result of an extremely complex and highly improbable chemical reaction. As a matter of fact, physical elements gave birth to inorganic material, from which came alive the organic stuffs. (Now, this makes me realize why my high school chemistry books were organized in this particular order!)

As the theory says, and as common sense suggests, the single cell multiplied in to multi-cellular organisms under water. As they came to land, we had the first 'Amphibian'. Some of them started flying (Birds) and the rest crawling. When they started walking, we had the first terrestrial organism. As they grew, we had higher-carnivorous animals. From then on, the evolution was amazing, as the Ape-era begins. Later on came the first 'Homo Sapien' (Though not exactly Homo Sapien let us name 'him' so, to make things easier). And then 'better' Human beings came.

So, this is the theory of evolution in a nutshell, as i understand it. Of course there are other minute details which are irrelevant to extablish this connection.

Let us now go to Maha Vishnu's - 'Dasavatharam' story.

According to Hindu mythology, Lord Maha Vishnu made ten incarnations to protect humanity. Let us not get into the mythological details, but concentrate only on the flow of the 10 avatars.

1: 'Macham': 'The Fish' - As the name suggests, it is an under-sea organism.
2: 'Koormam': 'The tortoise' - Lives in both land and sea - Amphibian.
3: 'Varaagam': 'The pig' - Terrestrial creature, but low-level organism.
4: 'Narasimham': 'Half Lion & Half human' - Violent carnivorous creature, but half human.
5: 'Vaamanam': 'Dwarf - 3 feet height' - Human, but not fully grown.
6: 'Parasurama': 'Animal minded Man' - He went on a killing spree; killed 21 men.
7: 'Rama': Maturing human, who underwent lots of troubles and lived a life of an ordinary man with no extra capabilities.
8: 'Balarama': Human; there are lots of different opinions about this avatar. I do not have a clear idea of him either.
9: 'Krishna': God, in the human form. This can be considered as a human evolved in to Godly character.
10: 'Kalki': God, with invisible form.

Hope you get the connection now.

But one thing which really surprises me is this: Charles Darwin proposed his theory in 1859-60. 'Dasavatharam' is found in 'Garuda puranam' - a holy book of Vaishnavite-Hindus, whose origin is unknown to me and must have been written at least few thousands of years ago.

If this seem sensible to you, let me know. I'd be greatful if you can provide me more insight on either the Theory of Evolution or Garuda puranam or Balarama Avatar.

--S--