Aryan Invasion/migration Theories & Debates -2

[Hauma Hamiddha]

I think that a precursor to the familiar avatAra concept was there is some form even amongst the Proto-Indoeuropeans. Or in the least it was there in the ancestor of all IE peoples after the branching off of Hittite. In the Greek world we see it as Herakles or Dionysus born of a deity on Earth and performing deeds similar to the gods on earth. This is closely paralleled by the "avatAra-s" of the mahAbhArata and rAmAyaNa like the pANDava and the vAnara-s. rAmachandra of the rAmAyaNa is seen as some kind of projection of the vR^itra-killing indra on earth, in a similar vein to the hero Herakles. In the avesta we have the 10 incarnations of verethraghna, some of which overlap with those of viShNu. In the Germanic world too we see the projection of the twin ashvin-like deities Horsa and Hengst as the Haddings who were founders of early northern Germanic dynasties. So we might say that these kinds of "avatAra-s" as indicating divine descent existed in the PIE world (see vedic term ardha-deva used to describe early ikShvAku king trasadasyu). Later with the rise of early vaikhAnasa and pA~ncharAtra vaiShNava traditions and the lAkulIsha shaiva tradition we saw the more familiar avatAra system take root. In fact in the core rAmAyaNa and mahAbhArata it is still not yet there.

One of the reasons why I do not participate much in the AIT etc threads on this forum is comparable to those outlined by K. Elst. I think there is much lack of clarity or insufficient effort at studying the sources by a subset of people getting excited about bashing the AIT straw man.