row against that form? As the two Ramas stand
face to face, the energy of the elder, it is written, passes into the
younger; the energy of Vishnu, the energy of the Supreme, leaves the form
in which it had been dwelling and enters the higher manifestation of the
same divine life. The bow was stretched and the arrow waiting, but Rama
would not shoot it forth lest harm should come, until He had pacified His
antagonist; then feeling that energy pass, Parashurama bows before Rama,
diviner than Himself, hails Him as the Supreme Lord of the worlds, bends
in reverence before Him, and then goes away. That Avatara was over,
although the form in which the energy had dwelt yet persisted. That is why
I said it was a lesser Avatara. Where you have the form persisting when the
influence is withdrawn, you have the clear proof that there the incarnation
cannot be said to be complete; the passing from the one to the other is the
sign of the energy taken back by the Giver and put into a new vessel in
which new work is to be done.

The story of Rama you know; we need not follow it further in detail; we
spoke of it yesterday in its highest aspect as combating the forces of
evil and starting the world, as it were, anew. We find the great reign
of Rama lasting ten thousand years in the Dvapara Yuga, the Yuga at the
close of which Shri Krishna came.

Then comes the Mighty One, Shri Krishna Himself, of whom I
speak not to-day; we will try to study that Avatara to-morrow with such
insight and reverence as we may possess. Pass over that then for the
moment, leaving it for fuller study, and we come to the ninth Avatara as
it is called, that of the Lord Buddha. Now round this much controversy
has raged, and a theory exists current to some extent among the Hindus
that the Lord Buddha, though an incarnation of Vishnu, came to
lead astray those who did not believe the Vedas, came to spread
confusion upon earth. Vishnu is the Lord of order, not of
disorder; the Lord of love, not the Lord of hatred; the Lord of
compassion, who only slays to help the life onward when the form has
become an obstruction. And they blaspheme who speak of an incarnation of
the Supreme, as coming to mislead the world that He has made. Rightly
did your own learned pandit, T. Subba Row, speak of that theory with the
disdain born of knowledge; for no one who has a shadow of occult
learning, no one who knows anything of the inner realities of life,
could thus speak of that beaut