Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/222

214 soul prepares its own body, the body is not prepared for it without any reference to the soul. Are we then to suppose an eternal or continual Avatar himself evolving, we might say, his own fit mental and physical body according to the needs and pace of the human evolution and so appearing from age to age, yuge yuge? Iu some such spirit some would interpret the ten incarnations of Vishnu, first in animal forms, then in the animal man, then in the dwarf man- soul, Vamana,the violent Asuric man, Rama of the axe, the divinely-natured man,a greater Rama, the awakened. spiritual man, Buddha, and, preceding him in time, but final in place, the complete divine manhood, Krishna,— for the last Avatar, Kalki, only accomplishes the work Krishna .- began,—he fulfills in power the great struggle which the previous Avatars prepared in all its. potential- ities. It is a difhicult assumption to our modern mentality, but the language of the Gita seems to demand it. Or since the Gita does not expressly solve the problem, we may solve it in some other way of our own, as that the body is prepared by the Jiva but assumed from birth by the Godhead or that it is prepared by one of the four Manus, chatviro manavah, of the Gita, the spiritual Fathers of every human mind and body. This is going far into the mystic field from which the modern reason is still averse ; but once we admit Avatarhood, we have already entered into it and, once entered, may as well tread in it with firm footsteps.

There the Gita’s doctrine of Avatarhood stands. We have had to advert to it at length in this aspect of its method, as we did to the question of its possibility, because it is necessary to look at it and tace the diffii-