Written documents and verbal traditions only hint at the Man-Lion's lila, for it is a complex subject that provokes the imagination: a ferocious and sanguinary incarnation of God that embodies both human and leonine features -- He descended to annihilate and tear apart the tyrant Hiranyakashipu with His bare hands, as Hiranyakashipu's son, the young Prahlad, looks on, offering loving prayers to his father's slayer.