To Emancipate, Empower, and Enrapture: The Bhagavad-gītā’s Early Formulation of the Avatāra Doctrine: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

When I first learned this issue of JVS was on avatāras, I inquired from the editors if there would be an article on the Bhagavad-gītā. I was taken aback by the answer: “No, this issue will be an in-depth study of avatāras—the Gītā doesn’t really get into that!” Although it is true that the term itself isn’t mentioned in the Gītā–-not once—the text does abundantly reward us with a dramatically animated avatāra theology. In fact, this concise “song of Bhagavān,” though framed as the individual’s reach for God through yoga, illustrates God’s outreach to humanity as well—it encapsulates his yoga to unite with us, to come down to our dimension (avatāra) for the purpose of sharing his mercy. So in this essay I attempt to show that this occurs by his progressive revelations in this world, foreshadowing the broader and systematic dimensions of a later avatāra theology.