Understanding The Concept Of Dashavatara

Transcript

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So are there any questions or comments? So the principle of Dashavataras is mentioned in the Garuda Purana and in the Srimad Bhagavatam explicitly these ten incarnations are not mentioned in an emphatic way. All the ten incarnations are mentioned but they are not mentioned as distinctive. And the Dashavataras are very significant incarnations of the Lord and they have been especially immortalized in a sense by Jaideva Goswami’s Dashavatarasutra.
So Jaideva Goswami is one of the most prominent Vaishnavacharyas who appeared before Mahashiv Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and he wrote a book which became in today’s language a devotional bestseller. Of course there was no selling of books at that time but it became immensely popular. That was the Gita Govinda.
And because the Gita Govinda talks about very intimate pastimes of Radha and Krishna to caution people that these are not mundane pastimes Jaideva Goswami prefaces the Gita Govinda with the Dashavatarasutra. So these are diverse personalities in one sense. If you look at, as we’ll discuss, the personality of Varshuram and then if you compare with the personality of Krishna, actually if we did not know these two were the incarnations of the same person, we would think they are two completely different personalities.
But he says that that same Govinda who is playing in the, sporting in the groves of Vrindavan, that is actually Vamana, that is actually Varaha, that is Matsya, that is Kurma. So he gives the Dashavatarasutra as a preface to the Gita Govinda. And since then these ten incarnations have been considered to be the most important among the various incarnations