ith a sword,
and the sword fell broken from the neck of the child; how then he tried
to poison him, and Vishnu appeared and ate first of the poisoned
rice, so that the boy might eat it with the name of Hari on his lips;
how his father strove to slay him by the furious elephant, by the fang
of the serpent, by throwing him over a precipice, and by crushing him
under a stone. But ever the cry of "Hari, Hari," brought deliverance,
for in the elephant, in the fang of the serpent, in the precipice, and
in the stone, Hari was ever present, and his devotee was safe in that
presence: how finally when the father, challenging the omnipresence of
the Deity, pointed to the stone pillar and said in mocking language: "Is
your Hari also in the pillar?" "Hari, Hari," cried the boy, and the
pillar burst asunder, and the mighty form came forth and slew the Daitya
that doubted, in order that he might learn the omnipresence of the
Supreme. A story? facts, not fiction; truth, not imagination; and if you
could look back to the time of those struggles, there would seem to you
nothing strange or abnormal in the story; for you would see it repeated
with less vividness in the smaller struggles where the Sons of the Fire
were purging and redeeming the earth, in order that the later human
evolution might take place.

We pass from those four Avataras, every one of which comes within what
is called the Satya Yuga of the earth--not of the race remember, not the
smaller cycle, but of the earth--the Satya Yuga of the earth as a whole,
when periods of time were of immense length, and when progress was
marvellously slow. Then we come to the next age, that which we call the
Treta Yuga, that which is, in the theosophical chronology--and I put the
two together in order that students may be able to work their way out in
detail--the middle of the third Root Race, when humanity receives the
light from above, and when man as man begins to evolve. How is that
evolution marked? By the coming of the Supreme in human form, as Vamana,
the Dwarf. The Dwarf? Yes; for man was as yet but dwarf in the truly
human stature, although vast in outer appearance; and He came as the
inner man, small, yet stronger than the outer form; against him was
Bali, the mighty, showing the outer form, while Vamana, the Dwarf,
showed the man that should be. And when Bali had offered a great
sacrifice, the Dwarf as a Brahmana came to beg.

It is curious this question of the caste of the Avat