Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 20.djvu/222

* VISCOUNT. 174 VISHNU. coronet consists of a eliased circlet of gold, round ■(vliich are ranged an indelinite number of pearls, nine of them being most generally shown, smaller than those of a baron's coronet, and in contact ■with each other. The mantle is scarlet, and has two doublings and a half of ermine. A viscount is styled "right honorable;' his wife is a viscount- ess; "his eldest son has no courtesy title of peer- age, but all his sons and daughters are styled 'honorable.' The title lias a not dissimilar his- tory in France, Italy, and Spain. VISCUM. See Mistletoe. VISH'NU (Skt. r!>H«; of uncertain etymol- ogy). The second god of the Hindu triad (see Tk'imurti), and regarded as the supreme deity by his worshipers, who are called Vaishnavas (q.v.). In the Eig-Veda Vishnu is the 'wide-stepprng" god who 'goes swiftly' and 'establishes the vault of heaven' and 'measures out the extreme spaces of earth,' while his 'dear i)ath' is the heaven of pious men, or along the highest heavens. The deity thus described is apparently the sun, though some scholars prefer to regard the Vedic Vishnu as a giant of earth, his famous 'three strides' through the universe being interpreted as across the ground rather than through the sky. In the second period of Hindu thought, however, the union of the sun-god and Vishnu is complete, and at the same time Vishnu becomes much more important and more generally recognized as one of the supreme gods, appearing even as the su- preme deity. The next phase of his character is that of a supreme All-god. About the time of the Christian Era this pantheistic Vishnu, who represents on the one hand the esoteric specula- tions of philosophy, and on the other the figure of a popular godling, entered into so close rivalry with the orthodox supreme god, Brahma, and with the sectarian god. Siva, that to reconcile the conflicting claims of each party the three were jnoclaimed to be foims of the same one supreme god. When this step was taken, Vishnu as a distinct personality disappeared, being merged with Brahma and Siva, and thencefor- ward he represented only a personal condition of the one All-god. While Brahma became more and more a deity of philosophers and Siva re- mained an object of fear, Vishnu became espe- cially the god of the easy-going, life-loving mid- dle classes, both in the northern and southern divisions of India, and ended his divine career by absorbing most of the local cults of the Hindu and barbarian natives. He was supposed to have descended from his heaven and become incorporate in various guises. These are the famous avatars of Vishnu. (See Avat.ab.) In them the Vishnu appeared only in part; for being the All-god. the inilividual form was only a ])ortion of the whole. This theory of avatars did more than anything else to make Vishnu a popular god; for. accord- ing to it, any local god might be a form of the All-god. This provided a means of bringing into the Brahmanic fold the worshipers of the most diverse divinities. The oldest legends of the avatars have to do with mythical animals; Ihen follow avatars in half human form, and finally come the great human avatars. Among these the oldest of all is the fish-avatar, ."^t first, before Vishnu was recognized as Allgod, we find the legend of a deluge, and the story of a monster fish, which preserved from death in the flood the ancestor of all mankind. The orthodox Brahmanic theo- logians assert that the saving fish was an incar- nation of the god Brahma. It is not till nmch later that Vishnu is substituted for the earlier god. In no other instance is the historical gen- esis of the avatar so plainly preserved as in this, wherein a popular tale is transferred from one divinity to another. The numerous avatars of Vishnu are given at first as ten, then as twenty, then again as twenty- two, and at last they become innumerable. First comes the fish-avatar already referred to; then the tortoise and boar avatars. These comprise the first grou]), in which possibly a totemic deity has been identified with ^'ishnu. The next group comprises the half-human man-lion form of Vishnu and the dwarf form, in which the deity is half beast and half god respectively. The tor- toise and boar forms, like that of the fish form, are assumed in order to save earth itself from disaster. Both tortoise and boar raise the sink- ing land, so that these are also merely forms of a deluge-myth. In the dwarf avatar Vishnu tricks an evil demon, who possesses earth, by soliciting as much earth as the petitioner can cover with three strides. On this request being granted, the god renounces his dwarf form and with his ancient three strides covers the whole earth. The last grovip of avatars comprises those of the two Ramas and of Krishna, together with the final claim or admission that Buddha was an avatar of Vishnu and the prediction that there is to be another avatar, that of the Saint Kalki. In this last group of avatars, beginning with the older Eama, the evil counteracted by Vishnu in human form is moral, not, as in the earlier legends, merely physical evil. The most important of these avatars are those in human form. As Eama or as Krishna, the god Vishnu is worshiped by millions of Hindus, whereas in other forms he has only a restricted circle of worshipers, generally limited to a local cult. Especially is this true of the sjieculative avatars, such as Buddha in the group of ten, or as Kapila (the reputed inventor of the San- khya philosophy) in the later group of twenty- two. In regard to these forms it may be said that the god is not really worshiped under them, but they are postulated merely on the general theory that the greatest men of the race, unless positively antagonistic to the Vishnu cult, must have been incarnations of tlie deity. All these h'gen<ls have resulted in swelling enormously the sectarian literature which clus- ters about Vishnu, and almost every legend has received its special gospel in the shape of a Purana (q.v.) or two. When freed from all avatars, Vishnu as the su- preme god, or as a member of the Trimurti and not as a mere name for the pantlieistic All-god, is conceived as having a special heaven, called Vaikuntha. His wife is l.akshmi (q.v.), or the goddess of good fortune, and he is re])rcsented as dark in color, with four hands, his emblems being a disk (due to his solar altrilnitcs) . a ooneh- shell or trumpet (such as he bore in battle), a lotus (from the heart of which Brahma is .sup- posed to have been born), and a mace or sword. Other rcpresi'Utations |iie(uro his avatars as a beautiful youth, to typify Krishna or Eama. The