We trace the story as it has been told in the Puranas, the Vayu, Kurma and the Vishnu Purana and the Bhagwata which are the primary sources used by W J Wilkins in his book Hindu Mythology.
In the Varaha Purana, we saw that Vishnu as the boar rescues earth on his tusks, which is also what he gores the demon Hiranyaksha with. This incident travels into the Narasimha Avatara, as Hiranyaksha is the brother of the demon-king Hiranyakashipu.
This is the first time that we see the string of tales that makes up the dashavatara (or the 10 avataras of Vishnu) appear as a cohesive whole. In fact this is an avatara of many firsts—it is the first hybrid being that acts as a bookmark between previous animal forms and the human forms that follow in the series, it is the first with an elaborate story and many characters, it is also the first where we see an overt reference to religious identities as the demon is pitted against his own son, a worshipper of Vishnu.
The story goes that Hiranyakashipu hates Vishnu because he has killed his brother Hiranyaksha. The two belong to the yaksha/daitya clan that stood opposed to the devas but were as powerful and wealthy, if not more, than the devas. Also the differences between the two were more like lines drawn on sand and there are stories of valour and goodness as much as arrogance and cruelty on either side.
Hiranyakashipu was an arrogant king. He was mighty and powerful and also invincible, a boon from Brahma had ensured that no creature could kill him, he would not die in the morning, noon, evening or night and that death could not claim him either inside or outside his palace.
With such a boon to protect him, it was no surprise that Hiranyakashipu believed he was immortal. This ought to have made him ecstatic but his happiness was marred by the fact that his son Prahlad worshipped Vishnu.
Worshipped is perhaps a mild word in this case because Prahlad was a devotee like no other. Nothing his father did or said or threatened him with, changed Prahlad’s mind or shook his faith. Unable to bear such a transgression from his own, the king sent his son away to be suitably educated at a teacher’s ashram. However that turned out to be futile as every time Prahlad came home to visit his father, he spoke of none other than Vishnu.
Finally unable to get him to turn over, the father decided to kill his son. He tried every trick in the book: threw him into a snake pit but the snakes ended up defanged, dumped him into the ocean but Prahlad rose above the waters, mixed poison in his food but that turned into sweetness, set a herd of elephants upon him but they merely rushed towards him and bowed down at his feet. He then asked his danavas to set him on fire and they, in turn, asked Vayu, the god of wind, to rustle up a fire and burn down the pile of wood that Prahlad was seated upon. He was unscathed and reported, much to his father’s anger that through the fire all he could see were lotus flowers and a fragrant breeze had enveloped him as the fire burned everything else down.
The Brahmins who served the king offered to help. They created a magical being, a female who could burn down everything with a mere touch. But when she touched Prahlad, nothing happened. The rest died but they were brought back to life by Vishnu, at Prahlad’s request.
Undeterred by his son’s defiant resilience, Hiranyakashipu threw him into the sea, bound hand and foot. His men then piled up the ocean with rocks so that Prahlad could never emerge from its depths. But Vishnu helps him come out of that too. Here the Vishnu Purana says that when Prahlad makes his way bck to his father’s palace after the final assault, the king embraced his son and the two were reconciled. But then a few verses later, there is an account of Vishnu killing the demon king as Narasimha.
In the Bhagwat Purana, there are more details about the avatar and the encounter. In this, Hiranyakashipu bellows at his son to show him this god who is omnipresent and omniscient. Furious, he struck one of the pillars of the palace asking derisively if there was a god hidden in its depths. And from there emerged Narasimha who dragged the king to the threshold of court, so that it is neither inside nor outside, at the time when evening was just melting into the night and tore him apart.
This story is different from the other avataras that we have done thus far—in the Matsya, an angry god was destroying his people. The Kurma intervened in the battle between devas and asuras. The Varaha raises the earth from the depths of the ocean as she had sunk deep down in anguish, under assault from her own creations. The Kurma acted as a foundation for the churning of the ocean. But in this avatara, the conflict is very sharply defined as that between the supreme lord that is Vishnu and the rest.
Having achieved its purpose of killing the demon Hiranyakashipu, Lord Vishnu was supposed to go back to his original form. But Narasimha having tasted blood was in no hurry to return to his original form. There was a growing belief that Vishnu might not go back to his form, and so to tame it, Lord Shiva had to take a more dangerous form to subdue it. A battle ensued, where Narasimha tried to strike at Sharabha only to realise that Sharabha was invincible. On striking Sarabha, it was Vishnu who groaned in pain only to realise that it was none other than Lord Shiva, and thus was Narasimha subdued, who later sang praises of the Sharabha Deva!
Different Puranas have depicted Sharabha in different forms. While one describes Sharabha as thousand armed, and with a face of a lion and wings and many feet, another describes it with two heads, wings and legs of a lion with sharp claws and an excessively long tail. There exists yet another version, which describes it as black in colour with feet both downwards and upwards and a huge body, with long face and nose, tusks and so on. While there is variance in many Puranic versions, all in all, the form is grotesque and fearful.
This rationale of such a form of Shiva can be found in the conflict between the Shaivites and Vaishnavites. The Bhagvata Purana mentions Hiranyakashipu as a terror to mankind and to eliminate him, Lord Vishnu had to come to earth in the form of Narasimha. The Skanda Purana however, mentions Hiranyakashipu, as just an irritant on earth and not at all a terror. One must not forget here, that Hiranyakashipu was an ardent devotee of Lord Shiva, though the boon given to him was by Lord Brahma! The Shaivites believe in this form of Lord Shiva and find its rationale of taming a form of Vishnu, quite palatable, however, the Vaishnavites do not believe in Narasimha being defeated by Sharabha.
Believing in Sharabha Deva is left to ones individual inclination. Sharabha Deva in due course stands for the Lord who destroys those who cross moral and ethical boundaries.
Story collected by: Arundhuti Dasgupta & Utkarsh Patel
Source: Hindu Mythology, Wilkins, W. J.
Image details: Wikipedia
