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Modern Notions of Evolution and Ancient Hinduism

In an article titled ‘Ancient Hinduism enlightens modern notions of evolution’ in the Washington Post, Aseem Shukla, Co-founder, Hindu American Foundation, suggest that the concept of modern evolution is nothing new to Hinduism as the concept was detailed in Hindu scriptures.

Excerpts from the article
...cosmology, science, and the ancient Vedas--Hinduism’s sacred scripture--are eerily complementary.  Lord Brahma, the Lord of Creation, often depicted as one of the Hindu Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, is described as creating the universe in an unending cycle over each of his days and nights. 
If the Big Bang theory is posited to have occurred 13 billion years ago, Hindus would have no trouble at all agreeing that an Intelligent Designer, Lord Brahma, indeed guides the creation of the universe.  Even more, Swami Vivekananda, one of modern Hinduism’s intellectual giants wrote in the early 20th century, whether an intelligence made the material world, or whether, as some scientists believe, the material world led to the creation of intelligence, does not much matter.  For in his words, “Indian philosophy, however, goes beyond both intelligence and matter, and finds a Purusha, or Self, which is beyond intelligence, of which intelligence is but the borrowed light.” 
And as to evolution, more than 2,000 years before Darwin rocked Christendom with his heresy, the Hindu Puranas described the “Dasha Avataras”--the ten Avatars, or incarnations, of Lord Vishnu.  Lord Vishnu is said to assume an avatar at various periods in history to guide creation and preserve its eternal dharma--meaning that which is necessary to sustain and uphold.  And so God is described in the earliest of creation to have taken the avatar of a fish, followed by a tortoise (amphibian), boar, half man-half lion, short human (scientists only recently found that early humans were likely short-statured), and then a warrior with an axe.  The latter incarnations are the well known avatars of Lord Rama, Lord Krishna, and Lord Buddha as the most recent.   
The Hindu and Abrahamic conception of time, human origins, and creation, then, are diametrically divergent.  Hindus conceive of creation as part of an ongoing cycle of creation and destruction, with our current universe forming several billions of years ago, and God manifesting along the spectrum of evolutionary speciation when necessary.