Vishnu

Vishnu, 'the Preserver,' the second god of the Hindu triad, now the most worshipped of all Hindu gods. Originally in the oldest Vedas a sun-god, he gradually increased in influence at the expense of other gods (see INDIA, Vol. VI. p. 105, 106), and in the later Purāna (q.v.) is the supreme god. Always a friendly god, he became specially the friend and benefactor of man in his avatars or incarnations, of which in some reckonings there were ten, in others twenty-two—as fish, tortoise, boar, &c. But his chief incarnations were the seventh as Rāma, hero of the Rāmāyana, and the eighth as Krishna, the more human hero of the Mahābhārata. The Vishnute doctrines were gathered into one body in the 11th century as the Vishnu-Purāna (see SANSKRIT). Innumerable sects of Vishnutes grew up, Vaishnavas, some of whom are named after reforming teachers, such as the Chaitanyas (see SANSKRIT). Of twenty principal sects and a hundred minor brotherhoods some are merely local, others are wealthy bodies and wide-spread, and one has grown into a warlike nation, the Jains (q.v.).