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The Tenth Lesson: The Religions of India. Part II1319
whom she is held up as an eternal example of purity and goodness), but
afterwards either voluntarily relinquished the throne, or else was exiled
by his father for his religious austerities, and then lived in the jungle for
fourteen years. Sita, his wife, was stolen by the demon-king Ravana. Rama,
flying to her rescue, defeated and destroyed the hosts of Ravana, and saved
his wife; whereupon he returned to his own country and was crowned as
king. Influenced by the idle gossip and envious talk of the people, Rama
sent his wife Sita away from him, to the hermitage or convent, where she
bore him two sons, Kusa and Lava, and was afterward reunited to him in the
heaven-world. The story of Rama is forever preserved in the great Hindu
epic, the Ramayana, one of the master-pieces of Hindu literature, which
is highly regarded and venerated by the Hindu people, and which forms
a Bible to many who worship Rama as the avatar or human incarnation of
Vishnu, and the Savior of Mankind. These worshipers of Rama are known as
Ramat-Vaishnavas, and number many millions of people. They are noted for
their high degree of morality and ethics, and for their complete theological
system. They hold not only that Vishnu has qualities of positive goodness,
instead of being merely an abstract Being, but that moreover there is a
heaven of pure bliss in which the righteous emancipated soul will spend
eternity instead of being absorbed into the divine Being, as held by the
Advaitist Vedantists.
The Krishna Avatar.
The large body of the Vaishnavas, known as the Krishna-Vaishnavas,
worship Vishnu in his eighth avatar or human incarnation, in which he
appeared as Krishna, and whose history and teachings appear in the Hindu
epics known as the Mahabharata, with its supplementary writings known
as the Harivamsa, the Pancharata, and the Bhagavad-Gita, which compose
a gigantic Hindu epic, in the first part of which Krishna is represented as a
demi-god and powerful prince, the latter part (particularly in the Bhagavad-
Gita) showing him in his aspect of the avatar or full incarnation of Vishnu,