Vishnu often incarnates to teach kings gone bad a good lesson. In this story, It's Hiranya Kashipu, whose military exploits are terrorizing the earth. Worse, Hiranya Kashipu is also persecuting his innocent son Prahlada who is guileless devotee of Vishnu. Well, this is the straw that broke the chamel's back !
The evil king had won a boon that he could not be killed at day or night, inside or outside, by man or by God. But no king is more clever than Vishnu. At twilight (neither day nor night) as Hiranya Kashipu stepped through a doorway (neither outdoors nor indoors), a statue of a half-man, half-lion (neither human nor God) fell on him, ripping him to pieces.
Zoroastrianism is closely related to Vedic religion. Interestingly, in the Zoroastrian tradition, the image of a half-man, half-lion represents the all-consuming face of time. As the Zoroastrians were long the Hindu hostile neighbors, it's possible Hiranya Kashipu was opposed to his son worshipping Vishnu because he was a follower of Zoroaster, who rejected the Hindu tradition.
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