Hiranyakashipuहिरण्यकशिपु

Hiranyakashipu, king of the daityas, is Hindu mythology's great study in the futility of loophole-proof power. Son of the sage Kashyapa and Diti, he swore vengeance on Vishnu for the killing of his brother Hiranyaksha, and by ferocious austerity extracted from Brahma a boon of interlocking conditions: he was not to die at the hands of man or beast, by day or by night, indoors or outdoors, on the earth or in the sky, by any weapon. So armed, he seized the three worlds and commanded that worship be offered to himself alone.

The undoing

His downfall came through his own son. The boy Prahlada would worship none but Vishnu, and survived every attempt his father made on his life. When the king struck a palace pillar, demanding to know if Vishnu lurked even there, the god emerged as Narasimha, neither man nor beast; at twilight, neither day nor night; dragged the king to the threshold, neither indoors nor out; laid him across his lap, neither earth nor sky; and killed him with his claws, which were no weapon. Every term of the boon was honoured, and every term was turned.

The doorkeepers' curse

The Bhagavata Purana frames his career within a longer design. Jaya and Vijaya, doorkeepers of Vishnu's heaven, were cursed by the four Kumaras for barring their way and chose three rapid births as Vishnu's enemies over many slow births as his friends. Hiranyakashipu and Hiranyaksha were the first of these births, Ravana and Kumbhakarna the second, Shishupala and Dantavakra the third. Read so, even the tyrant's hatred is a form of relation to the god, and his death a release. His name is usually explained as golden cushion, an emblem of the luxury and pride the man-lion tore through.