ne of the "babblings of child humanity." I know not what
figure the greatest man could use more poetical, more full of meaning,
more sublime in its imagery, than that the whole world was gathered in
the dust of the foot of the Supreme. For what is the world save the dust
of His footsteps, and how would it have any life save as His foot has
touched it?

So we pass, still treading onwards in the Treta Yuga, and we come to
another manifestation--that of Parashurama; a strange Avatara you may
think, and a partial Avatara, let me say, as we shall see when we come
to look at His life and read the words that are spoken of Him. The Yuga
had now gone far and the Kshattriya caste had risen and was ruling,
mighty in its power, great in its authority, the one warrior ruling
caste, and alas! abusing its power, as men will do when souls are still
being trained, and are young for their surroundings. The Kshattriya
caste abused its power, built up in order that it might rule; the duty
of the ruler, remember, is essentially protection: but these used their
power not to protect, but to plunder, not to help but to oppress. A
terrible lesson must be taught the ruling caste, in order that it might
learn, if possible, that the duty of ruling was to protect and support
and help, and not to tyrannise and plunder. The first great lesson was
given to the kings of the earth, the rulers of men, a lesson that had to
be repeated over and over again, and is not yet completely learnt. A
divine manifestation came in order that that lesson might be taught; and
the Teacher was not a Kshattriya save by mother. A strange story, that
story of the birth. Food given to two Kshattriya women, each of whom was
to bear a son, the husband of one of them a Brahmana; and the two
women exchanged the food, and that meant to bring forth a Kshattriya son
was taken by the woman with the Brahmana husband. An accident, men
would say; there are no accidents in a universe of law. The food which
was full of Kshattriya energy thus went into the Brahmana family, for
it would not have been fitting that a Kshattriya should destroy
Kshattriyas. The lesson would not thus have been so well taught to the
world. So that we have the strange phenomenon of the Brahmana coming
with an axe to slay the Kshattriya, and three times seven times that axe
was raised in slaughter, cutting the Kshattriya trunk off from the
surface of the earth.

But while Parashurama was still in the body, a grea