Invitation to World Religions

The Teachings of Hinduism  107

of Diwali, as well as on the first day of a harvest festival observed in southern India. For Hindus, the worship of cows is an expression of respect for creatures that help humanity. Although Hinduism has a long history of rever- ence for natural entities, this has not always trans- lated into ecological awareness and activism. The worship of rivers does not mean that India’s sacred waterways are pristine. Because rivers are divine, they are said to be able to absorb the sins of wor- shipers and still remain unaffected. Thus, for many Hindus, rivers remain pure even if they are pol- luted by waste. In recent years, Hindu environmen- tal activists have begun to challenge these assumptions by employing Hindu beliefs about the divinity of the natural world to promote more in- formed ecological awareness.

God Comes Down: Avatars  Two of the most popular deities in Hinduism are Krishna and Rama. Each is an avatar , a “descent” (Sanskrit, avatara ) of God to earth in a physical form with the specific goal of aiding the world. Like most avatars, they are manifestations of Vishnu, whose primary function is the preservation of order in the world. Vishnu is believed to have ten such forms, of which nine have already appeared. As noted, the most popular of the avatars are Rama, Vishnu’s seventh form, and Krishna, his eighth. It is said that Vishnu’s final avatar, Kalki, will arrive at the end of the present age to usher in an era of peace. We have seen that Hindus often use the names of particular gods as a way of referring to divine reality. This is the case with avatars. For example, Hinduism’s best-known sacred text, the Bhagavad Gita (“The Song of the Lord”), presents Krishna as a manifestation of the supreme being. In the Bhagavad Gita , Krishna asserts the principle that although God’s essen- tial nature is unchangeable, God chooses to descend into the world in the form of an avatar when intervention is necessary to reinstate peace and harmony. Krishna says (4.6–8): Yamuna rivers, one of Hinduism’s important centers. PROPERTY OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Though myself unborn, undying, the lord of creatures, I fashion nature, which is mine, and I come into being through my own magic. A Hindu devotee performs rituals as he takes a holy dip in Allahabad, India, at the confluence of the Ganges and