Overview
The Dashavatara (Sanskrit: दशावतार, IAST: daśāvatāra) refers to the ten principal avatars of Vishnu, one of the principal deities in Hindu traditions. The term derives from daśa, meaning "ten", and avatāra, roughly translated as "incarnation" or "descent". According to these traditions, Vishnu descends in the form of an avatar to restore cosmic order whenever it is threatened.
The composition of the list varies across sects, regions and texts, particularly regarding the inclusion of Balarama, the brother of Krishna, or the Buddha. While no single list is universally accepted as standard, the most commonly cited sequence found in the Puranas and related texts is: Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parashurama, Rama, Krishna (or Balarama), Buddha (or Krishna), and Kalki.
In traditions that omit Krishna from the list of avatars, he is often regarded instead as the source of all avatars, taking the position otherwise associated with Vishnu. Certain regional traditions include local deities such as Vithoba or Jagannath in the penultimate position, in place of Krishna or the Buddha. According to these traditions, all the avatars have already appeared except Kalki, who is said to appear at the end of the Kali Yuga.
The sequential order of the Dashavatara—beginning with aquatic forms such as Matsya (fish) and Kurma (tortoise), proceeding through Varaha (boar) and the part-human Narasimha, and culminating in fully human figures—has, in modern interpretations, sometimes been compared with the idea of biological evolution. Some commentators have read the sequence as a symbolic description of the evolution of consciousness, though this is a modern interpretive framework rather than a feature of the classical texts themselves.
References
Adapted from the English Wikipedia article on Dashavatara.