Vedic Mythology c5.s1.t5.5

c5.s1.t5.5

The reason why Viṣṇu took his three steps is a secondary trait. He thrice traversed the earthly spaces for man in distress (6, 49¹³); he traversed the earth to bestow it on man for a dwelling (7, 100⁴); he traversed the earthly spaces for wide-stepping existence (1, 155⁴); with Indra he took vast strides and stretched out the worlds for our existence (6, 69⁵⋅ ⁶). To this feature in the RV. may ultimately be traced the myth of Viṣṇu’s dwarf incarnation which appears in the Epic and the Purāṇas. The intermediate stage is found in the Brāhmaṇas (ŚB. 1, 2, 5⁵; TS. 2, 1, 3¹; TB. 1, 6, 1⁵), where Viṣṇu already assumes the form of a dwarf, in order by artifice to recover the earth for the gods from the Asuras by taking his three strides¹³.