VISIIN'U (from via', enter," or "to pervade") occupies the second place in the Trim6rtti, or Triad of the Ifindua, and is the personification of the preserving principle. There is no doubt that his worship is of a very ancient date ; but at the same time it is evident that it has experienced successive and considerable changes, and that the forms under which Vishn'u is now worshipped in India are far from being authorised by the ancient scriptures of the Hindus. (For his place among Vaidik deities, see VEDA.) There is no trace of Vishn'u or anything relating to him in the Institutes of Manu, although the allusions which are made to idolaters and the worship of inferior gods (book iii., v. 152, 164) might possibly have some reference to him also. However, we might be led to expect that more notice would have been taken of him by Mann, since the two heroic poems, the Mahabharata and the Ramayan'a, which are generally believed to belong to the same period of Hindu literature as the Dharmma-S'a.stra, or Institutes, have for their subjects two of the latest incarnations of this god, who therein assumes the attributes of the one supreme god. He is stated to have appeared before the other celestials, and to have agreed, at their humble request, to become man for the purpose of destroying the demon ItAvan'alSoxsxarr LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE], and to remain incarnate among men for the space of eleven thousand years in order to protect the world after saving it. (' Itamayan'a,' book i., sect. xiii., s'L 23.) The Mahabharata relates the exploits of Vishn'u as Krishna ; and the Hari-Vansa, a sort of supplement to that poem, details his genealogy, and a variety of legends exalting his power and recommending his worship. From the numerous allusions which these poems make to the other Avataras, descents or incarnations of Vishn'u (` RAmayan'a, i., xxiv. 22; xxvii. 2; 15, &c.), we may safely conclude that at the time of their compo sition his history had already been brought into a system, where the miraculous deeds which he performs seem calculated to call forth the special adoration of the Hindus.
The order in which these different AvatAras are supposed to have taken place is by no means fixed, and the discrepancy in the different authorities with regard to Vishn'u's actions on earth is sometimes very great. The Vishn'u Purana, a System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition,' translated by the late H. H. Wilson, and published in 1840, contains a full account of them. The last Avatar is yet to come. These Avatars, there can be little doubt, represent some physical force or power. Professor Max Muller, in his paper on . Comparative Mythology,' published in the Oxford Essays' in 1856, has shown, from philological deductions, that much of the early mythology of most nations has been formed from "the absence of merely auxiliary words ;" and that "there arc many mythes in Hesiod, of late origin, where we have only to replace a full verb by an auxiliary in order to change mythical into logical language." But, he observes, the Puranas offer no assistance to the comparative mythologist. "The stories of S'iva, Vishn'u, Mahtldeva, Parvati, Kali, Krishna, &c., are of late growth, indigenous to India, and full of wild and fanciful conceptions." Still, as the believers in Viehn'u are numerous in India, it may be interesting to give a slight sketch of the various sects. First, we must state that Vishn'u's heaven is called Vaiktuit'a ; for a description of which we refer to the first volume of Ward's View of the Religion, Literature, A:c., of India.' His names are as numerous as those of S'iva, and may be found enumerated in the Kriehn'a-namasahasram, or "the thousand names of Krishna :" they are also partly given in the Amarakosha (i. i. L), and of these we shall adduce those which occur most frequently, and are sometimes the cause of a good deal of confusion. They are Kes'ava, Damodara, H rishlkes'a, Marlboro and Madhuripu, Janarddan'a, Achyuta, Govinda, Padmanabhi, VAsudeva, Trivikrama, Purtthhottamo, &c.