|
 |
|
|
|
The Indian religion of Vishnu, or Bhagavan, fared rather better than Brahmism. Vaishnism is a devotional theistic religion, not unlike Christianity. That is, it sees God, the supreme being (usually referred to by the title of "Bhagavan"), as having a personal relationship with the devotee, and incarnating in human form for the sake of beings on Earth. Unlike the Christian God, and in keeping with the Indian doctrine of cycles, the Vaishnuite God does not incarnate just once, but any number of times, (a doctrine known as avatar - "descent") the last two incarnations being Rama and Krishna. The Vaishnuite goal, like the Catholic Christian, is to attain heaven, or the spiritual world, which means nearness to God. The mythological stories of the incarnations of Vishnu are presented in various texts such as the Puranas and the two great Epics, the Ramayana, which tells of Rama, and the Mahabharata, concerning Krishna. An extract from the last-named, the Bhagavad Gita is the greatest of the Vaishnuite texts; perhaps even the greatest of the sacred writings ever to come out of the Indian subcontinent. A prominent, but historically very recent, Vaishnuite sect is the Hare Krishna movement or "Krishna Consciousness" founded by A. C. Prabhupada, which inverts the relationship between Vishnu and Krishna by having the latter as the supreme God.
