daśāvatāra āratī

A Marathi arati that takes the ten descents in order, its refrain hailing Vitthal as the supreme brahman — which is how the Varkari tradition names Vishnu, and which places the text in Maharashtra rather than in the Sanskrit literature around it. The opening line states the principle the ten are there to illustrate: in the straits of those devoted to him he establishes his own dharma by taking many forms. Then the descents are told one after another, a few lines to each, down to the Parashurama verse, where Renuka's distress is given as the reason Sahasrarjuna was killed. Thirty-one short lines carry the whole sequence, which the Sanskrit hymns on the ten generally take far longer to do.