Balarama vs. Buddha (was Re: avatAra of Adishesha ?)

[Aravind Krishna]

>This is interesting, since both the VishhNu purANa and the shrImad
>bhaagavatam.h accept Buddha as an avataar of vishhNu who deludes the
>faithless.
>

There are many incarnations of Bhagavan apart from the main 10 like Kapila
Vasudeva, Dattaatreya, Rishaba yogishvara and so on. Srimad Bhagavatam lists
many such incarnations. The order of the 10 main incarnations are also
different in Bhagavatam. The first avatar is Varahavatara as per Bhagavatam.
There is a reference to Buddha avatara in Bhagavatam as well as in
ViShNupurANa, but both are totally different. And both do not point to the
famous Gautama Bhuddha.  Bhagavatam considers Bhuddha as a bhavishya avatara
and denotes that the lord will incarnate in kali as Bhuddha in Bihar for
deluding the enemies of devas.
tataH kalau sampravR^itte sammohaaya suradviShaam |
buddho naamnaajanasutaH kiikaTeShu bhaviShyati || 1.3.24 ||
The reference in ViShNu purANa also has nothing to do with the conventional
Buddha. Historically in around Gupta period Gautama Buddha was linked to the
Buddha specified in shastras. Jaya deva kavi who wrote Sri gIta govinda
mahakavya (who was before Chaitanya and Vallabha) remarks Gautama Budhha as
an avatara. Neither smArta nor Sri VaishNava sampradAyams accept Buddha as
an avatara. This problem did not exist in south of India. Balarama and
KrishNa were considered as separate incarnations of VishNu.

Aravind


>From: Sankaran Kartik Jayanarayanan <kartik at ECE.UTEXAS.EDU>
>Reply-To: List for advaita vedanta as taught by Shri Shankara
><ADVAITA-L at braincells.com>
>To: ADVAITA-L at LISTS.ADVAITA-VEDANTA.ORG
>Subject: Re: Balarama vs. Buddha (was Re: avatAra of Adishesha ?)
>Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 18:22:25 -0500
>
>On Wed, 26 Apr 2000, Vivek Anand Ganesan wrote:
>
>[..]
>
> >   I posed the same question to ( i.e. Is Buddha an Avatar
> > of VishNu? ) to a VaishNavite priest in Memphis, TN and to
> > a VaishNavite scholar independently.  They both said that
> > most "main-stream" VaishNavas do not consider the Buddha to
> > be an avatar of VishNu.
>
>[..]
>
> > -Vivek.
> >
>
>-Kartik
>
>--
>bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam
>
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