Talk:Rama/@comment-2.223.143.39-20140608013135/@comment-81.230.165.31-20140622050642

There are several possibilites. I'm going to list the two I find most likely here.

First of all, I personally believe the most likely option by far is Vishnu. Vishnu has ten Avatars, parallelling Verethragna and Godou. He is the Supreme God, having replaced Indra (known as Verethragna in Zoroastrianism). In some scripture, one of his avatars state that, millenium after millenium, he will manifest in order to eliminate evil. Basically, he manifests in order to protect the people against those who would oppose the gods and their worship, I suppose. His personal weapon is the Narayanastra. It creates millions of missiles in the form of countless different weapons (sounds pretty familiar, yeah?)

The tenth avatar is Kalki; the destroyer of darkness. His descent marks the end of this epoch. He is depicted as riding a white horse (his name also has the meaning of White Horse, which is a symbol of many things, such as a savior of the end times) and wielding a sword as blazing as the sun. At the time of his descent, it is said that Evil Kings will be feeding on the pious. Kings also described as being "thieves".

As far as powerful gods goes, Vishnu is pretty much as high as you can possibly ever go. The big problem with this theory though is that, as far as I know, there is no real connection between Vishnu and the Argo.

The second theory is that he's some sort of amalgamation of the various "invincible heroes" throughout European and Asian myths. Starting with Gilgamesh, but including others that came after. Achilles, for example. Cú Chulainn is very similar to Achilles, and owns a sword that causes wounds that will not heal. He's also closely related with a Persian hero called Rostam, and with Heracles. All of these heroes are also demigods; with one mortal parent and one divine.

It's his identity as the "King of the End" that confuses me in this scenario. His manifestation marks the end of an era; in Gilgamesh's case, his appearance heralds the START of a new one.

I think it has to do with Ragnarrök; the end of the world in Norse mythology, and the herald of it's rebirth. A true "end" to an era, where the majority of the gods and all but two humans die. There isn't really an equivalent to the other heroes in Norse myth, though. The one most interesting possibility would be Vidar, Odins son.. Known as the Silent God, and associated with revenge.. Interestingly enough, there are theories connecting him with Vishnu. There's also Surt, the giant wielding a blazing sword; he kills Freyr, a god symbolizing amongst other things Kingship, and unleashes the fire that destroys the earth, ending creation and letting it be reborn.

It's all so very fascinating!