Time, Kingship and Incarnation in Ancient India

Although the ideas of cyclical time and the periodic incarnation of Visnu as avatara are well-known features of Hinduism, they make their first appearance in the tradition relatively late, in the texts of the classical period such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana. In these texts the theories of cyclical time, in particular, are found in a highly developed form, and there is little trace of the processes through which their development occurred in texts prior to this. Previous attempts to find antecedents for the classical theories have focused on specific features, such as the names of the ages that mark the stages of the cycle, and have yielded relatively few results. In this project I focus on the broader structure of the cycle as the starting point for the search, and attempt to trace a stage in its development by looking at temporal cycles of creation, decline and renewal in earlier texts, particularly the Brahmanas.

In the course of this, the project also examines the relationship between the theories of time and the doctrine of Visnu's periodic incarnation as an avatara, where he takes an animal or human form in order to establish dharma: the moral, social and physical well-being of the cosmos. My research in this area suggests that the ideas of both cyclical time and the avatara were closely linked in their development and that early statements of the avatara doctrine should be read against this background. Through previous work on theories of time in the Mahabharata, I have come to think that the relationship between time and the king is a crucial point of entry for the development of both ideas. The Mahabharata contains many statements that 'the king makes the age' and in my analysis of these statements (Research on South Asia, 2007) I concluded that the idea of the four ages may have developed within the specific context of the text's understanding of the relationship between the king, time and the cosmos. I also argued that this understanding followed on from that found in the earlier Brahmana texts, where, according to Heesterman's analysis, the king played a crucial role in the ritual regeneration of the cosmos in an annual cycle. This project explores the relationship between these ideas within the context of the development of the classical Hindu theories of time and incarnation. It posits a broad developmental sequence in which an annual cycle of disintegration and renewal centred on the ritual role of the king in the Brahmanas formed the model and conceptual basis for a network of ideas about the nature of the king, time and the cosmos which appear to have been crucial for the development of the classical theories.

The role of the king, the renewal of time, and the idea of the avatara most obviously coalesce in the Mahabharata in the figure of Kalkin, a king who inaugurates the renewal of the classical yuga cycle and who comes to be identified as an avatara by later tradition. By exploring the nature and role of Kalkin more closely, and connecting it with ideas of kingship, time and renewal found in the earlier texts, the project explores the hypothesis that the avatara's establishment of dharma in the classical yuga cycle is a development of the regenerative role of the king in the annual cycles of the earlier texts.