Brahma in Hinduism and Buddhism
Well known as the preeminent creator god in Hinduism, the god Brahmā is famous for his ubiquitous appearance in myths whilst simultaneously having very few temples dedicated to him and rarely being the recipient of the most popular form of Hindu worship, called pūjā . In pictorial or sculptural form, he appears with four heads, four arms, a beard, and moustache. In his mythological persona, he is shown to be capable of fierce anger and rampant sexual desire, as well as the application of cool logic to achieve the resolution of cosmic problems. He has various wives, and his relations with them are often far from cordial. His wife called Sarasvatī is the most famous of these, and as the goddess of wisdom, she is still well known today. The other two are named Gāyatrī and Sāvitrī, and they are more specifically connected to vedic knowledge. He produces eight sons, but they are an endless source of frustration to him, and he always remains aloof from them. His name turns up everywhere in literature – in Sanskrit and vernacular languages – and he plays a central role in a series of myths concerned with the creation and preservation of the created world and, as a subset of this, with the origin and dissemination of knowledge fundamental to the functioning of a proper society.
It has long been a truism in Indological writing that the most significant aspect of the god Brahmā has been his apparent lack of worship in the face of his widespread appearance in mythology at a time (200 BCE–200 CE) when there occurred a substantial thematic reworking of Hindu mythology, beginning in the Mahābhārata and extending through to the Purāṇas. In many respects, Brahmā’s role in mythology is neglected in secondary works, where it is assumed that he must be understood primarily as the creator god, who, once he has completed the act of creation, is impotent to affect worldly affairs at the micro level. Beyond this, the only author to have looked seriously at Brahmā’s more-expansive roles in mythology has been W. Doniger, in her important early book on Śiva, where she focuses on the conflict between Śiva and Brahmā that persistently defines the relationship between both gods, thereby exploring the contrasting and complementary roles of sexuality and asceticism ( tapas ). She has shown definitively that Brahmā is an important god, if only because of his crucial roles within the overall thematic structures of Hindu mythology in its two renditions of Sanskrit literature and folk/vernacular oral texts. A monograph by the author of this article charts Brahmā’s rise to prominence in late vedic literature and analyzes his role in the Mahābhārata and the early Purāṇas. Two other monographs have appeared in the last 20 years, both focusing on the representation of the god in the Purāṇas.
Brahmā does not appear often (only 14 times definitely) in vedic literature, and a singular problem in dealing with these occurrences is the semantic baggage carried by the word brahman and its various forms. As a neuter word, brahman occurs frequently in the early Vedas, where it may denote the creative power of inspiration behind the holy word. Later, it comes to refer to the power behind the mechanism of the sacrifice that renders the sacrificial ritual efficacious. Finally, it evolves in the Upaniṣads to designate the foundation of reality – that which in the universe is regarded as being the real behind everything else that is merely considered appearance, and which has its microcosmic equivalence in the ātman , or the permanent self within the person. From this particular word, with its complex semantic shades, derives the word Brāhmaṇa (Brahman), the name of the priestly class, specifically designating the person who is the member of this class as being the one who possesses the brahman. All of this is relevant to the god Brahmā only to the extent that he is definitely masculine, not neuter, and is never really an abstraction in the manner associated with the particular meanings of brahman. Even so, some of the resonances of the word brahman, especially the general sense in which it implies the holy, may be seen to carry over to Brahmā in his very close association with the Vedas and the holy power inherent in them. As such, he becomes the personification of brahman insofar as it can designate, albeit imprecisely, vedic knowledge and especially the sacred quality associated with this form of knowledge and enshrined in the Brahmanic class. He retains this connection even when he is associated with new forms of knowledge, presented initially in the two epics, and so represents a continuity between the new and the old.
It cannot be assumed that the neuter word brahman predates the masculine brahmā, a word often occurring in the Vedas and postvedic literature as the name of one of the priests who collectively undertake the performance of the large public sacrifice called the Śrauta sacrifice. In this sacrifice, the brahmā (i.e. brāhmaṇa) priest is required to sit passively and observe closely the functioning of the other three groups of priests who actually perform the required physical actions and speech acts making up the total sacrifice. If a mistake is made, the brahmā priest, with his knowledge of vedic texts, must immediately be able to identify it and announce the appropriate expiatory ritual the others will then perform. As such, his role is essentially one of overseeing and directing the work of others with the intention of ensuring that a set of complex procedures interacts correctly to produce the optimum output involving many participants and a multiplicity of roles. He is both organizer and giver of advice, functions performed on a cosmic scale by Brahmā in the myth cycles of the epics and Purāṇas where he plays a part. This does not mean that when Brahmā appears in mythology he automatically becomes the brahmā priest of the gods. Agni is assigned the role of the priest of the gods in early vedic literature, and Bṛhaspati is the teacher of the gods. Brahmā inherits his distinctive teaching and advisory role from the latter and his connection with the sacrifice from the former.
In the Upaniṣads there is mention of a couch on which Brahmā (KauṣU. 1.5) sits, and where those seeking brahman (neuter) should go in order to give answers to questions he asks, almost as though undergoing a kind of initiation. In this very passage, the couch upon which he is seated is said to consist of the four Vedas and of certain hymns used in the sacrifice, while its pillow is prosperity (śrī). This certainly suggests a vedic milieu, and it is not common to see Brahmā associated with a quality such as śrī, which in postvedic literature is brought into connection with kingship and material wealth. In the Muṇḍakopaniṣad (1.1), he is said to have arisen as the first of the gods, the maker of everything, the protector of the worlds, and, importantly, as the initial source of spiritual knowledge) – attributes that summarize in embryonic form the main aspects of his mythological persona as it is developed in the Mahābhārata: creation, cosmic order, and dissemination of knowledge.
The Purāṇas, the earliest of which were composed several centuries after the Mahābhārata had taken its present form, systematize the narratives of creation into a more sequential form than is found in the Mahābhārata, but the material is a rearrangement of earlier material rather than the substantial inclusion of new material. In addition, the Purāṇas are more explicitly sectarian and theological than is the Mahābhārata, as they assume the theological superiority of Viṣṇu and Śiva and superimpose such claims on the creation narratives such that Brahmā retains his role as creator, but is declared as being subordinate to either of one of the two other gods. The roles of creation, preservation, and destruction are summarized in the trimūrti concept, where the role of creator remains with Brahmā, preservation of the created world with Viṣṇu, and the role of the destruction of the universe with Śiva. Each of these accurately encapsulates the roles of the individual gods as they are developed in puranic mythology in a way that is more than just an extension of what is found in the Mahābhārata. Yet there is a sense in which the three gods of the trimūrti are the principal protagonists in a set of myths where they jostle with one another for superiority – such as the set of myths involving Viṣṇu and Brahmā attempting unsuccessfully to find the extremities of Śiva when he takes his iconic form as liṅga , or where Śiva is cursed to wander the earth with a skull stuck to his hand after cutting off Brahmā’s fifth head. An element of cooperation is necessary for them, as each plays a different role in the cosmogony. However, given the overtly sectarian nature of the Purāṇas, one of these three gods is also said to be superior to the other two, such that twice (MkP. 43.11–15; PdP. 5.2.105ff.) Brahmā is said to create as Brahmā, preserve as Viṣṇu, and destroy as Śiva. More frequently, Viṣṇu (ViP. 1.2. 53–4) and Śiva (KūP. 1.4.12–13) assume theological superiority while still allowing the other two gods to perform their traditional roles.
Some of the major Purāṇas have titles connecting them directly to a particular god, such as Viṣṇu, Śiva, or Devī, and they usually glorify this god as the supreme god of the universe. This is not so of the two Purāṇas – the Brahmapurāṇa and the Brahmavaivartapurāṇa – containing Brahmā’s name. Both tend to favor Viṣṇu or Kṛṣṇa as the supreme deity, and the Brahmavaivartapurāṇa includes one long section on Gaṇeśa. Alone, the Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa (42–47) and the Padmapurāṇa (5.1–19) contain chapters that project an image of Brahmā as the supreme deity in the universe. In both cases he is the supreme god of the trimūrti, and in the latter there are explicit references to devotees of Brahmā (PdP. 5.9.82; 15.96.117).
It is in the second stratum of vedic literature, the Brāhmaṇas (800–500 BCE), that Prajāpati assumes a preeminent status in the pantheon of gods known from the earliest vedic literature. The name Prajāpati means “Lord of Progeny/Offspring,” and this substantially defines his predominant role in the large number of myths where he appears in the Brāhmaṇas. In such myths, and in the theological sections of the Brāhmaṇas, he is depicted performing the creation of living things in the variety of ways that have been extant since earliest vedic literature. Above all, he is associated with physical progenation as the favored mode of creation, and with masculinity, and to this end, is depicted as the bull and a virile stallion, which extends into a broader category of sexuality in which he is immersed. Equally, since the Brāhmaṇas as a body of literature are still coming to terms with the fecundating and fertilizing power of the sacrifice, his creative sexuality is strengthened by the sacrifice. The principal example of this is one myth from the Aitareyabrāhmaṇa (3.33–35) describing Prajāpati losing his semen when he lusts after his daughter Uṣas ("Dawn"). This semen is then placed in the sacrificial fire, and it gives birth to various gods, followed by various species of animals. The theme of lack of control seems fundamental here and may well be the reason why the Buddhists indirectly satirize this by use of a series of epithets laying stress on Brahmā’s claim to be self-controlled. However, Prajāpati is so strongly associated with sexuality that he does not know towards whom he should apply his lustful desires, and it may be overstating a negative interpretation of his behavior by focusing on the dichotomy of control and its absence. Desire as emotion is as important in motivating him to create as is the actual sexual act. In addition, he rarely performs sexual activity in an actual physical interaction with a female partner. Rather, his desire overcomes him, causing him to lose his semen so that it can then be worked upon to become the foundation of creation. Desire, too, will become fundamental in Brahmā’s creative role, but is interpreted negatively in a more philosophical sense than it is when it is considered to be the motivating act for Prajāpati’s activities.
Along with Prajāpati, another god named Bṛhaspati gives Brahmā his connection with the priesthood and the dissemination of sacred and secular knowledge in general. In Bṛhaspati’s close association with Indra, the king of the gods, in early vedic literature, whom he helps in an advisory capacity, and which is mirrored in the closeness between Brahmā and Indra in early Buddhist literature, there is a representation of the developing ideological relation between the Brāhmaṇa (Brahman) class and the warrior/king, so strongly chronicled and explored in the Mahābhārata. This relationship is not especially developed in the Buddhist texts, yet sculptured images of the Buddha accompanied by Brahmā on one side and Indra on the other are extremely common in all periods of Buddhist art. The relationship between Indra and Brahmā in the Mahābhārata is not heavily developed, and it is replaced by a complementary relationship between Brahmā and Viṣṇu, a reflection both of the decline in Indra’s status in postvedic literature and Viṣṇu’s emergence as an enforcer of correct behavior defined broadly by the body of cosmic/social precepts ( dharma ). Behind all of this is the normative reciprocity of duties defining the Brāhmaṇa (Brahman) and the Kṣatriya (warrior) class, where Brahmā represents the former.
In early Buddhist literature, Brahmā is widely known as the creator of the world who also possesses his own world, one that is sequentially inhabited by different Brahmās who rise and fall from it according to their accrued past action ( karman ). The kind of detail associated with the actual creation role as it is depicted in the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas is absent in Buddhist literature, which is substantially devoid of creation myths except for what is depicted in the Agaññasutta, and there Brahmā plays no role. The Buddhists had little interest in cosmology, except where it explains the origin of human society; they were much more interested in explaining the mechanism of individual transmigration across lives, which they did by means of the doctrine of the 12-linked chain of dependent origination, a theory of causality. This reflects a concern for an individual’s self-created fate in the cosmos and has no need of a general theory of creation. However, the number of places in the Pali canon where Brahmā’s role as creator is satirized, especially the sense of self-importance Brahmā derives from this, are indications that the function of creator had strongly crystallized around him after 400 BCE, even if this kind of development is explicitly manifested in Hindu literature only after about 200 BCE.
A passage like Dīghanikāya I.18 (repeated enough times elsewhere to be regarded as significant) accurately encapsulates in a series of 13 epithets Brahmā’s mythological roles as they are later developed in Hindu literature. He is called Brahmā, Mahābrahmā (“Great Brahmā”), Abhibhū (“Conqueror”), Anabhibhūta (“Unconquered”), Aññadatthudasa (“All-Seeing”), Vasavattī (“Controller”), Issara (“Lord”), Kattā (“Maker”), Nimmātā (“Creator”), Seṭṭho (“Chief”), Sajitā (“Assigner”), Vasī (“Master of Himself”), and Pitā (“Father”). Though this list is used in Buddhist literature as a marker of Brahmā’s self-importance, and therefore as a tool with which he can be brought down, it unambiguously defines his roles in terms of cosmogony and cosmology. All the epithets can easily be traced into functions he performs in the myths of the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas. Equally, these names also portray a deity who stands functionally at the top of the cosmos and is hardly involved in its running. He can be venerated or exalted as a superior divine figure, but not worshipped in a devotional sense.
Brahmā’s role of creator is connected in Buddhist literature with his association/connection with holy knowledge based on the Vedas. Several narratives in the Dīghanikāya (e.g. I.215–220) depict him being intellectually defeated by the Buddha in an understated manner in contexts where it is made clear Brahmā has a highly self-opined view about himself based on his belief that he is in possession of privileged spiritual knowledge. When, however, in these situations he is asked to impart this knowledge to other people and finds himself unable to do so, he must seek the help of the Buddha in order to maintain a status that this very action demonstrates his unworthiness to hold. Early Buddhist literature consistently undermines the status it considers was assumed by the Brahmans, based on their own claim to privileged access to vedic knowledge, and uses the figure of Brahmā as a means of what often becomes straightforward debunking. Once more it presents a stage in the development of Brahmā’s role that will only emerge substantively in the Mahābhārata and later literature. It does not present Brahmā as a heavenly representative of the Brahman class, yet in its bringing together of Indra and Brahmā, we can see a belief in the union of warrior and Brahman that will become so significant in the Mahābhārata. Nor is it similar to the kind of jostling among Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva where, when the latter two assume sectarian preeminence, Brahmā creates the world on their behalf.
Brahmā’s creative role manifests in two modes, each governed by the kind of creation taking place. In the first mode, he represents the principle of individuality that must be present before creation from undifferentiated matter can occur. This marks continuity with (and develops) the idea present as early as the Ṛgveda, that the establishment of difference, upon which all ontological and epistemological categories are based, must be brought into the cosmogonic process if the physical creation is to occur. In the second, the actual physical aspects of creation are described, but in the very visible realm of the three worlds, not just from the perspective of abstract principles consistent with the first aspect.
Both aspects relate to different spheres of Brahmā’s life span in divine years, the length of which is taken as the principal temporal measure of the duration of the creation and the corresponding period of destruction when the three worlds no longer exist. The first relates to the longest of cosmic cycles called kalpas, which consist of one thousand periods of four yugas, the lesser cosmic cycle, and encompasses one day of Brahmā, whereas the second associates directly with the yugas. The latter, in particular, encompasses mythic activity where the triple world is the focus of location and comprises the great majority of epic and puranic narratives. It is almost the equivalent of Brahmaloka, Brahmā’s world, though strictly speaking this term names one of the higher heavens located above the three worlds. It sets Brahmā’s mythological roles firmly within the context of creation and the values of worldly engagement stemming from this.
In the Mahābhārata, theories of creation are mostly presented in the 1st and 12th books, and in the latter, Brahmā’s role as creator is interpreted in terms of the guṇa theory (see below), associated with Sāṃkhya philosophy, and then it is correlated in turn with the larger behavioral framework epitomized in the two technical terms pravṛtti and nivṛtti, which can be paraphrased as “active engagement with worldly activities” and “active disengagement from worldly activities,” respectively. The former asserts that the world of rebirth ( saṃsāra ) is essentially a positive sphere conducive to the attainment of happiness, in contrast to the latter, which strenuously denies this. In this conception, and as applied to what will become the prākṛtasarga or primary creation, creation is seen to be analogous to the psychological development of the individual beginning with the permanent self and extending itself with the inclusion of the mind and body that ties the permanent self into the world until finally it realizes its ontological difference from mind and body, leading to a radical separation from the socioeconomic world. The word ahaṃkāra designates the sense of ego or individuation in this evolutionary scheme, implying the predominance of ego in the functioning of the mind, and it is defined in one text as such:
"The ahaṃkāra is traditionally said to be the sense of individual understanding, the doer of acts, the thinker, the individual self and the material living body. From it come all activities (pravṛttayaḥ) . . . The whole world is its offspring" (KūP. 1.4.19–20; trans. by author).
Brahmā is the only god identified with this concept. He is often identified (MBh. 12.175.16; 291.20; 299.9) with the ahaṃkāra, and this identification is an important innovation as it provides the basic motivation for his engagement in the creation. Attribution of a motivation for creation has often been absent in the narratives of creation, and the usual phrases, exemplified by statements such as “with a desire to create” (sisṛkṣu) or “he wished to reproduce himself” (akāmayata prajāyeyeti), tend only to assign the cause of creation as being almost an act of willed spontaneity. However, with the introduction of the ahaṃkāra, the idea of creation is linked with the idea of individuality, especially of reproducing oneself through one’s activities and intentions, as being the agent (kartṛ) of one’s own destiny, where Kartṛ ("Maker") is a common epithet of Brahmā.
Besides giving a reason for creative activity, it also directly connects Brahmā with worldly life, in contrast with the attitude of denial of integration with the sociopsychological world required to be cultivated by one who would transcend the influence of individuality in search for the ātman that is beyond any individuality. Correlatively, in being identified with the sense of ego that is necessary for a person to function effectively in the sociopsychological world, Brahmā is rarely ever associated with pathways to enlightenment (liberation). This tendency to connect Brahmā with a particular set of worldly values is strongly reinforced when the Sāṃkhya conception of evolutionary creation becomes the conceptual frame onto which other aspects of creation are hung and into which they are integrated. These aspects of creation (of the universe, the worlds, the earth, animals and gods, society) are often found individually in the Mahābhārata and brought into an integrated whole in the Purāṇas in the process of secondary creation.
Directly associated with the ahaṃkāra as the source of individual impulse is the psychological behavioral trait (guṇa) called rajas, which in its meaning embraces activity, desire, movement, and impetuosity. Like the other two traits (sattva and tamas), rajas derives from the material/psychological foundation of creation called prakṛti , and so it manifests as certain psychological dispositions as well as in particular classes of beings such as humans. Many textual references bear witness to Brahmā creating under the influence of rajas (MkP. 46.13; ViP. 1.4.50; ŚiP. 6,15.31; VmP. 2.22.19; BrāṇḍaP. 1.1.4.18). However, he is characterized by these motivating factors not just when specifically engaged in the act of creation. They also involve other aspects of his personality and often are taken to a highly exaggerated degree in his mythological persona. It is something of a paradox that Brahmā is directly associated with rajas and its near synonym tejas and other such forms of energy and vitality, yet remains as the absent overseer and instigator of creation and plays only an advisory role in it when it is completed, unlike Viṣṇu and Śiva.
The idea that Brahmā represents the principle of individuality and of its beginning is not made explicit in many of the creation myths found in the Mahābhārata, nor is it implicit in all of them. Many others show him preoccupied with bringing about the creation from his own body and using sexual means or practices of austerity bequeathed to him by his precursor, Prajāpati (MtP. 3.30–39; MkP. 47.1–11; PdP. 5.3.155–201; ViP. 1.7.1–33). The universe is never created in toto from within Brahmā’s body except for those instances where the model is the highly influential, ritualistic mode of creation first found in the Puruṣasūkta of the Ṛgveda. Rather, Brahmā sets up the initial conditions whereby creation will occur, such that creation must unfold as a process of sequential actions, with the creator god usually just beginning this process rather than encompassing it in its entirety. It does not burst forth fully completed all at once. Brahmā is sometimes depicted as giving birth to sons produced from his mind, sons who will finish the creation, or he impregnates a matriarch from whom the different species will be born. In both cases, it is the introduction of the idea of lineages into the stages of creation where Brahmā is the original part of the lineage. In Mahābhārata 12.160.11–21, for example, Brahmā is the firstborn from a bottomless ocean. Possessing vigor and virility, he emits air and fire, the physical parts of the universe, the periods of time, and the seasons. Next, he assumes a human body and causes the birth of nine sons who reproduced with Dakṣa’s daughters in order to give rise to all of the different living beings who inhabit the earth and the heavens. Finally, he arranges the law according to how it is defined in the Vedas. Each of the three verbs denoting the different forms of creation described here convey the various modes of creation Brahmā employs and the purposes of these aspects of the creation. And in each case, the motivation for the individual acts of creation is not given. Twice, verbs derived from the root jan-, "to be born," are used, the first simply indicating that Brahmā was born, but not stating why. In its second usage, it is Brahmā himself who gives birth to his sons, implying birth without proper sexual progenation. The other verb used here is derived from the root sṛj-, "to emit," "to gush out," and describes the distinctive physical components of the creation emerging directly from the body of the creator.
The puranic myth of the re-creation of the world after a period of yugas includes all the methods of creation that have been bequeathed from earlier models of creation, and in these, sexual intercourse is an important model. Hence, while it does not preclude other forms of the creative act (such as Brahmā emitting from his body fully formed humans, gods, and so forth), sexual progenation is often utilized when primordial creatures such as Manu must be born, as he is the first human and must be born in a manner befitting humanity – that is, by a sexual act. Besides functioning as a prototype, it also provides a motivation for Brahmā to create. The motivation that he wished to create evokes the idea of desire, yet it is a much more neutral desire than what is associated with the idea of kāma , which means sensual desire, and is also the name of the god of love, whose obligatory role is to fill people with lust. Sex involves lust, although its socially legitimate function is supposed to be to produce sons who will eventually perform the monthly sacrificial rite of feeding the lineage’s deceased ancestors. However, there is a clear impression emerging from the creation myths that sex, like heat (tapas) produced from the performance of austerities, can easily go out of control, and even where it functions in a utilitarian mode, there is apprehension about it. Both are creative acts, and both are modes of creation used effectively by Brahmā, but both must be used judiciously, and one cannot immerse oneself in the one without the other.
The Matsyapurāṇa illustrates this in a manner paradigmatic of what is found in many other Purāṇas. Following a lengthy description of the creation of the earth and of Brahmā himself as the principle of individuality, the creation is summarized and its composition into 25 elements asserted. Then, it seems as though creation will proceed by sexual progenation, and Brahmā split his body, from one half of which came a man’s body and from the other half a woman’s body. She is named Śatarūpā, but is also called Sāvitrī, Gāyatrī, and Brahmaṇī – all names of Brahmā’s wife. He realized she was born from his own body, possibly indicating a direct kin relation. Even so, under the influence of desire, he became agitated and declared her to be a great beauty, and the sons whom he had previously created from his mind abused him. But he ignored them, looking only at her face. She walked around him, and he grew a new face corresponding to each direction. Each of the faces was sick with desire as a result of the sight of her. Immediately, he lost all of his built-up austerities because of his uncontrollable desire. Then he ordered his sons to create various groups of creatures, which they did. After this, he married Śatarūpā and produced Manu Svāyambhū from her, the ultimate source of many lineages of beings. Finally, he placed a curse on the god Kāma that Śiva would burn his body to ashes (MtP. 3.14–47).
Desire and austerities can easily be transformed into each other. Both are related, to the extent that each is motivated by the achievement of a distinct goal. For Brahmā, this goal will always be the achievement of a successful creation, whereas for many ascetics, the performance of austerities can only be part of a general cultivation of dispassion towards the psychomaterial world. Brahmā knows that austerities form a kind of currency and that this currency can be exchanged for promises to be redeemed in the future, but he has no option in his use of austerities. He must complete the creation because he is trapped within his role, even if this entrapment is concealed beneath his sometimes-rabid desire and his use of contemplative techniques and austerities as a means not to disguise his desire but to enhance it. Sometimes he produces sons from his mind who are required to complete the creation, but they refuse because they are ascetics who declare themselves entirely disengaged from the world of limitations and social expectations. Such refusal causes frustration in Brahmā, and his rampant sexuality or his strong anger leading to the act of cursing often come from this. In both cases he demonstrates an incapacity to maintain mental control, a cardinal flaw from the ascetic perspective.
Given the need to establish limitations on behavior and the broad classification of social groups, the sources of knowledge sanctioning these classifications and limitations must be included as part of the creation process. In the Mahābhārata this is intimately tied in with Brahmā’s creator role. This is wholly to be expected because he is associated with sacred knowledge in all of its sources, and his creation always fits in with recurring divine prototypes. When applied to cosmology, such prototypes define a clear cosmic, social, and occupational order, each of which establishes in turn clearly defined roles and behavioral expectations. This sense of order is very highly profiled, as it can be so easily overturned, and there are many narratives illustrating this. One of the most celebrated means of countering the rise of disorder is reflected in the avatāra myths, with its underlying presence of forms of knowledge provided by the creator to delineate precisely the parameters of order and disorder.
A foundational myth expositing Brahmā’s role in the establishment of order is the famous myth (MBh. 12.59) of Pṛthu, a myth sanctioning the development of kingship at a time when the Vedas and dharma are said to have disappeared because of the tendency for humans to become filled with confusion, greed, desire, and passion (MBh. 12.59.15–20). In such an environment, it is emotions and ignorance alone – and, above all, naked egoism – that provide the motivation for behavior, not the presence of boundaries. The stages of degeneration are expressed in psychological terms that have material implications. It begins with moha, a kind of conceptual delusion about the true nature of the world, leads to lobha (avarice or greed), then leads on to desire (kāma), which leads on to passion (rāga) – then the failure to distinguish boundaries becomes endemic. The resulting state is one of disorder or submergence (viplūta), one from which both the Vedas and dharma are absent.
This describes an environment where creation has not really occurred, if it is accepted that the principal hallmark of creation is the existence of behavioral boundaries that provide standards of judgment determining the correctness or incorrectness of actions for human groups. Brahmā’s role is to lay down the fundamental conditions that sanction the very notion of order and boundaries, and which gave some shape to this. All of this rests on the one principle, whose activation takes varying narrative forms. This is the principle of prescribing and determining, both words being encompassed in the root dhā-, "to put," preceded by the prefix vi-, which implies the sense of difference or distinction and is reflected in one of Brahmā’s epithets, Vidhātṛ ("Creator"). In the present narrative, Brahmā was approached by the gods after the degeneration of human behavior, and he created out of his own mind a text of one hundred thousand verses dealing with dharma (wordly responsibility), artha (success and wealth), kāma (sensual enjoyment), and mokṣa (liberation). Many verses follow that enumerate the specific subjects taught here, most of them dealing with the duty of the king, but they are so comprehensive as to include all knowledge necessary for the normative ordering of society (MBh. 12, 59, 80–85).
This is the most comprehensive of such examples, but there are many others illustrative of why Brahmā’s activity in this area fades off into a more general teaching role, leading to him being given the epithet of Lokaguru (“Teacher of the Worlds”). As examples of this role, in the Purāṇas he is frequently depicted creating the Vedas (MkP. 45.31–34; ViP. 1.4.7–11; KūP. 1.6.7–24), and the puranic versions of the Pṛthu myth show Brahmā milking the earth of her riches in the manner of the primordial king, then creating the fundamental social institutions such that
"[t]he illustrious self-born Brahmā devised a means of livelihood for the people’s prosperity and created economic success arising from manual work. After that plants arose which would ripen after cultivation. Then when their livelihood was successfully established the lord himself established boundaries of behavior consistent with custom and their characteristics, the rules of the classes and the stages of life, O best of those who uphold the Law, and of people, inclusive of all the classes which correctly sustain the law and wealth" (MkP. 46, 73–77; trans. by author).
A related set of examples is more specific than this. They are represented by Brahmā’s role in encouraging the Buddha to teach his foundational teachings, and Vyāsa and Vālmīki to recite the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa , respectively. Each of these three cases illustrates the need to universalize a teaching that would otherwise have been kept within the grasp of a single individual, and each shows that Brahmā’s intention is directed to the cosmos as such, not to the benefit of a single individual. None of these operate within the ordered sequences of cosmological process, but each one serves to help the propagation of a particular form of dharma, as well as to give the authority of tradition to the texts subsequently disseminated. Brahmā’s association with dharma builds on his direct connection with the Vedas (PdP. 5.15.117–18), even though dharma operates alongside the Vedas as a source of knowledge of correct behavior and has a much greater profile in postvedic literature than it did before. Given Brahmā’s impeccable vedic connections, he could not fail to be associated with the Vedas as texts, but because of the new centrality given to dharma in postvedic literature, it was also necessary for him to be associated with its dissemination and preservation, particularly given its centrality within Buddhism. Iconographic portrayals of Brahmā only bring out his connections with the Vedas after 500 CE, his earliest depictions being in Buddhist art in northwestern India, where he is simply an accompanist of the Buddha and no symbols of vedic learning are present. In medieval tantric literature, images of Brahmā with four arms are prescribed, the arms holding a beaded necklace, a sacrificial spoon, a sacrificial ladle, and a copy of the Vedas in book form (Banerjea, 1974, 516).
Brahmā creates the conditions for the three worlds and society to prosper if their inhabitants follow the rules that are put in place. However, there is always an instability built into this system – one that threatens to destroy it but never finally succeeds in doing this. This threat is exemplified by the ongoing conflict between the gods as one group and the demons as another, where the gods represent the normative order of the world and the demons its opposite, even if in practice the gods often violate the dharmic order more than the demons. Specifically this involves Brahmā regulating a particular form of sacrificial activity directly associated with the performance of austerities or tapas. It was and is believed that the performance of bodily austerities in conjunction with mental discipline could allow the accumulation of a tremendous reservoir of psychic energy that could be released into the world as fire. Performance of tapas was an individual practice and did not involve the group behavior associated with the performance of the sacrifice. Yet, it was a form of self-sacrifice, and the gods were required to respond in a reciprocal manner when a particular figure engaged in tapas. Demonic figures in particular, who as part of their own prescribed activities (svadharma) were always trying to overthrow the normative order of the triple world established by Brahmā, saw tapas as a means of enhancing their bodily strength, which they typically used in their conflict with the gods. The gods, however, being the recipients of sacrificial offerings, usually did not perform such austerities, with the exception of Brahmā and Śiva.
Whenever a demon performs austerities, his actions alarm the gods and he explicitly approaches Brahmā, as he is known to respond positively to the austerities (Bailey, 1983, ch. 9). Brahmā’s response is to offer an open-ended boon to the demonic figure in return for his cessation of austerities. Inevitably, the demon will request immortality as his boon – a request Brahmā refuses – giving physical inviolability, except for some very specific conditions where the demon can be killed. On receipt of this boon, the demon takes up the fight with the gods using his physical strength and his revitalized confidence. The gods are unable to stand up to his strength – they flee in disarray, and the demon takes over the role of the gods. The gods usually go to Brahmā, who dispatches Viṣṇu or Śiva to kill the demon, using the loophole that Brahmā has established with his boon. Whilst this allows the newly emergent devotional gods (Viṣṇu and Śiva) to demonstrate their heightened capacity over the other gods, it also provides a framework in which the normative order of the rule-governed worlds can be maintained in the face of a source of power that appears to violate these rules.
Brahmā does not intervene actively in the resulting situations of conflict, as that is normally Viṣṇu’s task. Instead, he maintains a watching brief and provides advice to the gods when a crisis arises. Usually it is the earth that is first affected by the decay in dharma, and she will approach Brahmā to help her (MBh. 1.57.37; 1. 89.4; 7.69.51), and he in turn will direct the gods to begin the necessary countermeasures to rectify the situation in the medium term. In doing this, he continues the precedent set by the Brahman priest, who plays an advisory role in recommending the expiatory rituals necessary to rectify mistakes in the ritual. He also gives shape to the figure of Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata, who intervenes at particular times in the story, especially to maintain the continuity of lineages and to ensure that Yudhiṣṭhira does finally become king – leading to the renewal of the earth and the resuscitation of dharma. The common feature of all of these is the explicit delineation and dissemination of rule governed behavior, the expectation that it will be violated, and this in turn requires the development of strategies that it be supported in times of stress.
Brahmā’s association with disorder is as heavily marked, as is his association with order. Myths of creation from the Brāhmaṇas onwards explore the subject of disorder and boundary-breaking activities that constantly violate the theoretical blueprints that creation myths want to provide. In the case of the creation myths developed in the epics and Purāṇas, Brahmā himself participates in some of the boundary-breaking behavior, and in many Purāṇas, he is also shown to be responsible for creating those negative aspects of life such as hunger, death, and inauspiciousness, which assume a positive role when demarcating the mortality of humans from the immortality of the deities. Creation of these inauspicious qualities is sanctioned because they represent the other side of an ordered society and are wholly acceptable in a worldview that recognizes the temporal limitations associated with life and the presence of good and evil in a variety of forms. They offer a realistic view of the limitations under which people will act. In addition, in several passages from the Mahābhārata (1.189, 4–7; 12.248; 13.249.4), Brahmā creates death, as well as associated negative psychological states such as grief, falsehood, old age, thirst, and anger – all reflective of the expanded range of philosophical interpretation within which the Mahābhārata is operating. The motivation for the creation of death is to prevent the number of humans from expanding on the earth, as the earth expresses deep concern about the extra burden being placed on her.
In the first category of myths, Brahmā’s exuberance at wishing to create by sexual means is overplayed, and a daughter or wife is produced from his body. On such occasions he is chastised by his own sons, who have already been born prior to the birth of the woman Brahmā lusts after. Here the drive to complete the creation justifies the aberrant behavior. The second category is different in that it involves Brahmā manifesting lust for a woman associated with Śiva, usually his wife, Pārvatī. Typically such events occur in Śaiva Purāṇas, and they should not necessarily be directly connected with his role as creator, except that the mode of his behavior is virtually identical with what happens in the other cases. One version in the Śivapurāṇa (2.2.19.1–27) has Brahmā entering into a state of delusion (moha) after he has officiated at the wedding of Śiva and Satī. Misled by Śiva’s illusion-making power ( māyā ), he sees Satī’s feet and becomes filled with passion. He makes the fire become smoke, looks at her face, loses control, and spills his semen. Regaining his senses, he tries to cover up his semen, but Śiva locates it with his divine vision and threatens to kill him. After intercession by Brahmā’s sons and Viṣṇu, Śiva relents, instead cursing him to wander the earth with one hand stuck on his head and to perform austerities. He declared that people would look at him and scorn him, and the drops from his semen would become the clouds at the time of the cosmic destruction (ŚiP. 2.2.19.1–27).
The considerable humor in this passage sharply contrasts with Brahmā’s other associations with worldly and spiritual wisdom, and with his general aloofness. As in the other category, this one too turns on an incapacity to maintain self-control in highly delicate circumstances. Such a fault contradicts the strong tone of emotional and physical control that marks the image of the Brahman’s life, but is perfectly concordant with the influence of the ahaṃkāra and rajas on the workings of the mind, and through the mind onto one’s immediate conduct. Because of his association with rajas and the important paradigm of sex as creation, it is also inevitable that he is associated with misdemeanors in this area. That is, the value systems shaping postvedic mythology were such as to require the creator god also to be a figure embodying sexuality and sensuality. And in the figure of Brahmā, this aspect can easily be highly profiled since it contrasts so strongly with the image of restraint, self-control, and social aloofness he derives from his close association with Brahmanical knowledge and the idea of disengagement from the social world as one image of the Brahman (Brahmāṇa) presented in the Mahābhārata. Given Brahmā’s identification with rajas, it would not have been possible for him to avoid the emotional impetuosity of kāma and rāga (passionate attachment, love) that this psychological quality produces. Brahmā’s emotional outbursts are associated either with sensual behavior or with anger, both frowned upon strongly in a Brahman’s behavior. Yet in both cases they are manifested as being an essential part of the process of creation – the first because it provides a motive for the creation to occur, the second because it is the response that occurs when the right sequence of events is prevented from working effectively.
Fig. 1: Brahmā
The tendency to interpret these episodes as an expression of rampant, if unconsummated, sexuality makes sense within the psychological template that the three guṇas of sattva, rajas, and tamas display, and yet usually the three gods of the trimūrti are assigned an identity with one of the guṇas primarily for theological purposes of systematization, bringing creation, preservation, and destruction together as sequential processes. As such, the question becomes whether Brahmā’s creative function is exhausted by his association with the psychological and physical impetuosity so successfully defining rajas, or whether this association has to be developed further. The problem may be that he tests the limits of the system he creates, and that this in fact should be seen as one of his roles. By acting in an entirely uncontrolled manner, he establishes the need for limits by going beyond them. In addition, he is always initially unaware of his sexual lust as if he is driven to it, just as he is unreflectively driven to create.
In oral tradition among the Tulus in northwestern Karnataka, Brahmā comes up in many folk narratives under the name of Brahmadeva, Bomma, Bharma, and Bemmeru. Several of these allude to temples of Bemmeru and tell stories of him in the appearance of an old Brahman and warning a messenger against going on a certain path, turning the messenger’s horse to stone, or making the messenger invisible. Reports from the 19th century describe Brahmā being worshipped in the same area as both god and as spirit or bhūta. He is said to be worshipped in his own place of worship on every large estate, with the image being dressed each day and offered cooked rice. In addition, each year a great festival for Brahmā is held where both Brahmans and lower-class people are in attendance and a pūjā is performed. Folk tales explain his worship there as being a consequence of his severed fifth head praying to Śiva, who advised it to descend to the earth and to associate with the bhūtas. Ano ther version has Śiva cutting off one of Brahmā’s four heads and telling the head to unite with a nāga (an embodied snake) and torment mankind. These are typical means of blending Sanskritic traditions with folk traditions and can also be found in the myths of the Dhangar shepherd groups located in Maharashtra.
The mention of a yearly festival to Brahmā in Tulu country has a correspondence with an annual festival to Brahmā described in some detail in the Padmapurāṇa (and the Puṣkaramāhātmya) in a long section dealing with the important pilgrimage spot Pushkara in Rajasthan, which contains a large and widely patronized temple of Brahmā. The 17th chapter of the section of the Padmapurāṇa (1.17.224–259) dealing with the creation of Brahmā’s wife Gāyatrī describes a ritual for the installation in a temple of an image of Brahmā, followed by a description of the procession of an image of Brahmā on the full-moon day in the month of kārttika (Oct–Nov). What is described is a typical pūjā, but it is not known whether this was ever performed anywhere other than Pushkara. Nor is it known why Pushkara has survived as a Brahmā temple when the majority of the others have fallen into disuse. One suggestion is that it represented the status and identity of the Brahmanical-Hindu culture and that its preservation made sense in the 18th and 19th centuries in relation to the confrontation with (political) Islam.
A recent development in Thailand sheds a wholly new light on the question of Brahmā worship. Over the last 30 years, many Brahmā shrines have appeared in Thailand and receive constant worship. Of these, the most celebrated is the shrine located at Erawan in Bangkok. Several Web sites describe the shrine and the pūjās performed before the image. It was built in 1956, but was so vandalized in May 2006 that it had to be rebuilt. After a new image was placed in it, the Thai prime minister visited it and performed a pūjā there. Many of the devotees are Buddhists – there are no formal priests, and devotees conduct their own worship. Brahmā is considered auspicious, and worship of him is conducive to prosperity such that many of the shrines are located outside of commercial centers and businesses. This is comparable to the role Gaṇeśa performs in contemporary India.
This constitutes most of the available evidence of Brahmā worship. Some have argued that wherever Brahmā images are found, that indicates his worship in those places, yet most of these images are simply found in temples that, according to the rules of construction, require the presence of images of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva. In sum, Brahmā has been worshipped only intermittently over the past two thousand years; even if he occurs everywhere in mythology and has a special popularity in this regard, this popularity does not translate into active worship.
It has long been a truism in Indological writing that the most significant aspect of the god Brahmā has been his apparent lack of worship in the face of his widespread appearance in mythology at a time (200 BCE–200 CE) when there occurred a substantial thematic reworking of Hindu mythology, beginning in the Mahābhārata and extending through to the Purāṇas. In many respects, Brahmā’s role in mythology is neglected in secondary works, where it is assumed that he must be understood primarily as the creator god, who, once he has completed the act of creation, is impotent to affect worldly affairs at the micro level. Beyond this, the only author to have looked seriously at Brahmā’s more-expansive roles in mythology has been W. Doniger, in her important early book on Śiva, where she focuses on the conflict between Śiva and Brahmā that persistently defines the relationship between both gods, thereby exploring the contrasting and complementary roles of sexuality and asceticism ( tapas ). She has shown definitively that Brahmā is an important god, if only because of his crucial roles within the overall thematic structures of Hindu mythology in its two renditions of Sanskrit literature and folk/vernacular oral texts. A monograph by the author of this article charts Brahmā’s rise to prominence in late vedic literature and analyzes his role in the Mahābhārata and the early Purāṇas. Two other monographs have appeared in the last 20 years, both focusing on the representation of the god in the Purāṇas.
History
The roles of gods in Hindu mythology develop or contract over time, and some gods who are well represented in earlier periods disappear and reemerge again in still later periods. A distinct body of mythology can be recognized as early as the Ṛgveda, the earliest specimen of Sanskrit literature. It introduces themes that continue to be reworked right up until the present, and some gods, goddesses, and demonic figures have maintained a presence for over three thousand years. But during this long period, there have been shifts in the importance attributed to the themes constitutive of the mythology, and there has been an imposition of theological thought that both coalesces and interprets the mythology.Brahmā does not appear often (only 14 times definitely) in vedic literature, and a singular problem in dealing with these occurrences is the semantic baggage carried by the word brahman and its various forms. As a neuter word, brahman occurs frequently in the early Vedas, where it may denote the creative power of inspiration behind the holy word. Later, it comes to refer to the power behind the mechanism of the sacrifice that renders the sacrificial ritual efficacious. Finally, it evolves in the Upaniṣads to designate the foundation of reality – that which in the universe is regarded as being the real behind everything else that is merely considered appearance, and which has its microcosmic equivalence in the ātman , or the permanent self within the person. From this particular word, with its complex semantic shades, derives the word Brāhmaṇa (Brahman), the name of the priestly class, specifically designating the person who is the member of this class as being the one who possesses the brahman. All of this is relevant to the god Brahmā only to the extent that he is definitely masculine, not neuter, and is never really an abstraction in the manner associated with the particular meanings of brahman. Even so, some of the resonances of the word brahman, especially the general sense in which it implies the holy, may be seen to carry over to Brahmā in his very close association with the Vedas and the holy power inherent in them. As such, he becomes the personification of brahman insofar as it can designate, albeit imprecisely, vedic knowledge and especially the sacred quality associated with this form of knowledge and enshrined in the Brahmanic class. He retains this connection even when he is associated with new forms of knowledge, presented initially in the two epics, and so represents a continuity between the new and the old.
It cannot be assumed that the neuter word brahman predates the masculine brahmā, a word often occurring in the Vedas and postvedic literature as the name of one of the priests who collectively undertake the performance of the large public sacrifice called the Śrauta sacrifice. In this sacrifice, the brahmā (i.e. brāhmaṇa) priest is required to sit passively and observe closely the functioning of the other three groups of priests who actually perform the required physical actions and speech acts making up the total sacrifice. If a mistake is made, the brahmā priest, with his knowledge of vedic texts, must immediately be able to identify it and announce the appropriate expiatory ritual the others will then perform. As such, his role is essentially one of overseeing and directing the work of others with the intention of ensuring that a set of complex procedures interacts correctly to produce the optimum output involving many participants and a multiplicity of roles. He is both organizer and giver of advice, functions performed on a cosmic scale by Brahmā in the myth cycles of the epics and Purāṇas where he plays a part. This does not mean that when Brahmā appears in mythology he automatically becomes the brahmā priest of the gods. Agni is assigned the role of the priest of the gods in early vedic literature, and Bṛhaspati is the teacher of the gods. Brahmā inherits his distinctive teaching and advisory role from the latter and his connection with the sacrifice from the former.
In the Upaniṣads there is mention of a couch on which Brahmā (KauṣU. 1.5) sits, and where those seeking brahman (neuter) should go in order to give answers to questions he asks, almost as though undergoing a kind of initiation. In this very passage, the couch upon which he is seated is said to consist of the four Vedas and of certain hymns used in the sacrifice, while its pillow is prosperity (śrī). This certainly suggests a vedic milieu, and it is not common to see Brahmā associated with a quality such as śrī, which in postvedic literature is brought into connection with kingship and material wealth. In the Muṇḍakopaniṣad (1.1), he is said to have arisen as the first of the gods, the maker of everything, the protector of the worlds, and, importantly, as the initial source of spiritual knowledge) – attributes that summarize in embryonic form the main aspects of his mythological persona as it is developed in the Mahābhārata: creation, cosmic order, and dissemination of knowledge.
The Purāṇas, the earliest of which were composed several centuries after the Mahābhārata had taken its present form, systematize the narratives of creation into a more sequential form than is found in the Mahābhārata, but the material is a rearrangement of earlier material rather than the substantial inclusion of new material. In addition, the Purāṇas are more explicitly sectarian and theological than is the Mahābhārata, as they assume the theological superiority of Viṣṇu and Śiva and superimpose such claims on the creation narratives such that Brahmā retains his role as creator, but is declared as being subordinate to either of one of the two other gods. The roles of creation, preservation, and destruction are summarized in the trimūrti concept, where the role of creator remains with Brahmā, preservation of the created world with Viṣṇu, and the role of the destruction of the universe with Śiva. Each of these accurately encapsulates the roles of the individual gods as they are developed in puranic mythology in a way that is more than just an extension of what is found in the Mahābhārata. Yet there is a sense in which the three gods of the trimūrti are the principal protagonists in a set of myths where they jostle with one another for superiority – such as the set of myths involving Viṣṇu and Brahmā attempting unsuccessfully to find the extremities of Śiva when he takes his iconic form as liṅga , or where Śiva is cursed to wander the earth with a skull stuck to his hand after cutting off Brahmā’s fifth head. An element of cooperation is necessary for them, as each plays a different role in the cosmogony. However, given the overtly sectarian nature of the Purāṇas, one of these three gods is also said to be superior to the other two, such that twice (MkP. 43.11–15; PdP. 5.2.105ff.) Brahmā is said to create as Brahmā, preserve as Viṣṇu, and destroy as Śiva. More frequently, Viṣṇu (ViP. 1.2. 53–4) and Śiva (KūP. 1.4.12–13) assume theological superiority while still allowing the other two gods to perform their traditional roles.
Some of the major Purāṇas have titles connecting them directly to a particular god, such as Viṣṇu, Śiva, or Devī, and they usually glorify this god as the supreme god of the universe. This is not so of the two Purāṇas – the Brahmapurāṇa and the Brahmavaivartapurāṇa – containing Brahmā’s name. Both tend to favor Viṣṇu or Kṛṣṇa as the supreme deity, and the Brahmavaivartapurāṇa includes one long section on Gaṇeśa. Alone, the Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa (42–47) and the Padmapurāṇa (5.1–19) contain chapters that project an image of Brahmā as the supreme deity in the universe. In both cases he is the supreme god of the trimūrti, and in the latter there are explicit references to devotees of Brahmā (PdP. 5.9.82; 15.96.117).
Mythological Precursors
Similarly, Brahmā does not fully emerge in the Mahābhārata or in early Buddhist literature without inheriting something from earlier predecessors. In both bodies of literature, he brings together role models that can be identified with other gods more prominent in vedic than in postvedic literature. Of these gods, the two most influential are Prajāpati and Bṛhaspati, the former because of his role as creator, the latter through his direct association with knowledge and its dissemination. In the Mahābhārata, their distinctive roles have crystallized into a broader role for Brahmā that brings together cosmogony and creation of knowledge in a cosmological framework, together with the establishment of the intellectual parameters of society once the physical act of creation has been completed. It is not known how this happened, and it forms part of the general transformation, marking a shift from one mythological system to another without the previous one being completely eradicated.It is in the second stratum of vedic literature, the Brāhmaṇas (800–500 BCE), that Prajāpati assumes a preeminent status in the pantheon of gods known from the earliest vedic literature. The name Prajāpati means “Lord of Progeny/Offspring,” and this substantially defines his predominant role in the large number of myths where he appears in the Brāhmaṇas. In such myths, and in the theological sections of the Brāhmaṇas, he is depicted performing the creation of living things in the variety of ways that have been extant since earliest vedic literature. Above all, he is associated with physical progenation as the favored mode of creation, and with masculinity, and to this end, is depicted as the bull and a virile stallion, which extends into a broader category of sexuality in which he is immersed. Equally, since the Brāhmaṇas as a body of literature are still coming to terms with the fecundating and fertilizing power of the sacrifice, his creative sexuality is strengthened by the sacrifice. The principal example of this is one myth from the Aitareyabrāhmaṇa (3.33–35) describing Prajāpati losing his semen when he lusts after his daughter Uṣas ("Dawn"). This semen is then placed in the sacrificial fire, and it gives birth to various gods, followed by various species of animals. The theme of lack of control seems fundamental here and may well be the reason why the Buddhists indirectly satirize this by use of a series of epithets laying stress on Brahmā’s claim to be self-controlled. However, Prajāpati is so strongly associated with sexuality that he does not know towards whom he should apply his lustful desires, and it may be overstating a negative interpretation of his behavior by focusing on the dichotomy of control and its absence. Desire as emotion is as important in motivating him to create as is the actual sexual act. In addition, he rarely performs sexual activity in an actual physical interaction with a female partner. Rather, his desire overcomes him, causing him to lose his semen so that it can then be worked upon to become the foundation of creation. Desire, too, will become fundamental in Brahmā’s creative role, but is interpreted negatively in a more philosophical sense than it is when it is considered to be the motivating act for Prajāpati’s activities.
Along with Prajāpati, another god named Bṛhaspati gives Brahmā his connection with the priesthood and the dissemination of sacred and secular knowledge in general. In Bṛhaspati’s close association with Indra, the king of the gods, in early vedic literature, whom he helps in an advisory capacity, and which is mirrored in the closeness between Brahmā and Indra in early Buddhist literature, there is a representation of the developing ideological relation between the Brāhmaṇa (Brahman) class and the warrior/king, so strongly chronicled and explored in the Mahābhārata. This relationship is not especially developed in the Buddhist texts, yet sculptured images of the Buddha accompanied by Brahmā on one side and Indra on the other are extremely common in all periods of Buddhist art. The relationship between Indra and Brahmā in the Mahābhārata is not heavily developed, and it is replaced by a complementary relationship between Brahmā and Viṣṇu, a reflection both of the decline in Indra’s status in postvedic literature and Viṣṇu’s emergence as an enforcer of correct behavior defined broadly by the body of cosmic/social precepts ( dharma ). Behind all of this is the normative reciprocity of duties defining the Brāhmaṇa (Brahman) and the Kṣatriya (warrior) class, where Brahmā represents the former.
Pali Canon and Brahmanical Values
The Buddhist Pali canon shows evidence of a belief in some of the gods who will assume importance in the Mahābhārata and beyond, and it also shows a reaction to the underlying beliefs that the very existence of these gods represents. Often the Buddha was deliberately commenting upon roles attributable to gods and the epistemological foundations of mythological systems in general. Gods such as Śiva and Viṣṇu, and goddesses such as Śrī-Lakṣmī, and Pārvatī – all so important in the Hinduism emerging from the Mahābhārata and beyond – play virtually no role at all in this body of literature. Instead, judging from the number of times their names are mentioned, the most important Hindu gods from the perspective of the Buddhists are Brahmā and Indra, usually called Sakka. Sakka is known in these texts, as in the Vedas, as the king of the gods and as a figure who can cause rain to fall. This is a reflection of his preeminence in the mythology of the Vedas and of his importance as a fertility god. But Brahmā’s frequent appearance cannot be interpreted in the same way. He is presented as a figure who is in no sense uniform, because there are several Brahmās, including Brahmā Sahampati and Brahmā Sanatkumāra, the youthful Brahmā, who appears to have no precedent in Hindu texts, where the impression given of Brahmā is that he is an aged patriarch.In early Buddhist literature, Brahmā is widely known as the creator of the world who also possesses his own world, one that is sequentially inhabited by different Brahmās who rise and fall from it according to their accrued past action ( karman ). The kind of detail associated with the actual creation role as it is depicted in the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas is absent in Buddhist literature, which is substantially devoid of creation myths except for what is depicted in the Agaññasutta, and there Brahmā plays no role. The Buddhists had little interest in cosmology, except where it explains the origin of human society; they were much more interested in explaining the mechanism of individual transmigration across lives, which they did by means of the doctrine of the 12-linked chain of dependent origination, a theory of causality. This reflects a concern for an individual’s self-created fate in the cosmos and has no need of a general theory of creation. However, the number of places in the Pali canon where Brahmā’s role as creator is satirized, especially the sense of self-importance Brahmā derives from this, are indications that the function of creator had strongly crystallized around him after 400 BCE, even if this kind of development is explicitly manifested in Hindu literature only after about 200 BCE.
A passage like Dīghanikāya I.18 (repeated enough times elsewhere to be regarded as significant) accurately encapsulates in a series of 13 epithets Brahmā’s mythological roles as they are later developed in Hindu literature. He is called Brahmā, Mahābrahmā (“Great Brahmā”), Abhibhū (“Conqueror”), Anabhibhūta (“Unconquered”), Aññadatthudasa (“All-Seeing”), Vasavattī (“Controller”), Issara (“Lord”), Kattā (“Maker”), Nimmātā (“Creator”), Seṭṭho (“Chief”), Sajitā (“Assigner”), Vasī (“Master of Himself”), and Pitā (“Father”). Though this list is used in Buddhist literature as a marker of Brahmā’s self-importance, and therefore as a tool with which he can be brought down, it unambiguously defines his roles in terms of cosmogony and cosmology. All the epithets can easily be traced into functions he performs in the myths of the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas. Equally, these names also portray a deity who stands functionally at the top of the cosmos and is hardly involved in its running. He can be venerated or exalted as a superior divine figure, but not worshipped in a devotional sense.
Brahmā’s role of creator is connected in Buddhist literature with his association/connection with holy knowledge based on the Vedas. Several narratives in the Dīghanikāya (e.g. I.215–220) depict him being intellectually defeated by the Buddha in an understated manner in contexts where it is made clear Brahmā has a highly self-opined view about himself based on his belief that he is in possession of privileged spiritual knowledge. When, however, in these situations he is asked to impart this knowledge to other people and finds himself unable to do so, he must seek the help of the Buddha in order to maintain a status that this very action demonstrates his unworthiness to hold. Early Buddhist literature consistently undermines the status it considers was assumed by the Brahmans, based on their own claim to privileged access to vedic knowledge, and uses the figure of Brahmā as a means of what often becomes straightforward debunking. Once more it presents a stage in the development of Brahmā’s role that will only emerge substantively in the Mahābhārata and later literature. It does not present Brahmā as a heavenly representative of the Brahman class, yet in its bringing together of Indra and Brahmā, we can see a belief in the union of warrior and Brahman that will become so significant in the Mahābhārata. Nor is it similar to the kind of jostling among Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva where, when the latter two assume sectarian preeminence, Brahmā creates the world on their behalf.
Consolidation: Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas
While the Buddhist texts imply a more extensive image of Brahmā than appears in late vedic literature, this image only receives firm shape in the Mahābhārata, where the god’s full role as creator and organizer of the cosmos emerges and is explained in all its detail. His more expansive role may be regarded as an expanded narrative representation of the functions suggested by the list of epithets commonly found in Buddhist literature cited earlier. The Mahābhārata itself provides a strong interpretative frame for these functions with its set of ideas that also sharply distinguishes the thought world of the two epics from that of the Vedas. The direct effect of this is that if Brahmā continues to undertake a variety of modes of creation he has taken over from his predecessor Prajāpati, then these are connected to a larger set of ideological options not present in the earlier literature – options contrasting in their positive or negative evaluation of the very nature of worldly existence. As such, where the very act and fact of creation was not evaluated at all in this way in vedic literature, it is sometimes evaluated negatively in the Mahābhārata and beyond. And where the Mahābhārata tends to portray several different processes of creation, the Purāṇas become highly systematized, the process seemingly more important than the instigator of the process.Brahmā’s creative role manifests in two modes, each governed by the kind of creation taking place. In the first mode, he represents the principle of individuality that must be present before creation from undifferentiated matter can occur. This marks continuity with (and develops) the idea present as early as the Ṛgveda, that the establishment of difference, upon which all ontological and epistemological categories are based, must be brought into the cosmogonic process if the physical creation is to occur. In the second, the actual physical aspects of creation are described, but in the very visible realm of the three worlds, not just from the perspective of abstract principles consistent with the first aspect.
Both aspects relate to different spheres of Brahmā’s life span in divine years, the length of which is taken as the principal temporal measure of the duration of the creation and the corresponding period of destruction when the three worlds no longer exist. The first relates to the longest of cosmic cycles called kalpas, which consist of one thousand periods of four yugas, the lesser cosmic cycle, and encompasses one day of Brahmā, whereas the second associates directly with the yugas. The latter, in particular, encompasses mythic activity where the triple world is the focus of location and comprises the great majority of epic and puranic narratives. It is almost the equivalent of Brahmaloka, Brahmā’s world, though strictly speaking this term names one of the higher heavens located above the three worlds. It sets Brahmā’s mythological roles firmly within the context of creation and the values of worldly engagement stemming from this.
In the Mahābhārata, theories of creation are mostly presented in the 1st and 12th books, and in the latter, Brahmā’s role as creator is interpreted in terms of the guṇa theory (see below), associated with Sāṃkhya philosophy, and then it is correlated in turn with the larger behavioral framework epitomized in the two technical terms pravṛtti and nivṛtti, which can be paraphrased as “active engagement with worldly activities” and “active disengagement from worldly activities,” respectively. The former asserts that the world of rebirth ( saṃsāra ) is essentially a positive sphere conducive to the attainment of happiness, in contrast to the latter, which strenuously denies this. In this conception, and as applied to what will become the prākṛtasarga or primary creation, creation is seen to be analogous to the psychological development of the individual beginning with the permanent self and extending itself with the inclusion of the mind and body that ties the permanent self into the world until finally it realizes its ontological difference from mind and body, leading to a radical separation from the socioeconomic world. The word ahaṃkāra designates the sense of ego or individuation in this evolutionary scheme, implying the predominance of ego in the functioning of the mind, and it is defined in one text as such:
"The ahaṃkāra is traditionally said to be the sense of individual understanding, the doer of acts, the thinker, the individual self and the material living body. From it come all activities (pravṛttayaḥ) . . . The whole world is its offspring" (KūP. 1.4.19–20; trans. by author).
Brahmā is the only god identified with this concept. He is often identified (MBh. 12.175.16; 291.20; 299.9) with the ahaṃkāra, and this identification is an important innovation as it provides the basic motivation for his engagement in the creation. Attribution of a motivation for creation has often been absent in the narratives of creation, and the usual phrases, exemplified by statements such as “with a desire to create” (sisṛkṣu) or “he wished to reproduce himself” (akāmayata prajāyeyeti), tend only to assign the cause of creation as being almost an act of willed spontaneity. However, with the introduction of the ahaṃkāra, the idea of creation is linked with the idea of individuality, especially of reproducing oneself through one’s activities and intentions, as being the agent (kartṛ) of one’s own destiny, where Kartṛ ("Maker") is a common epithet of Brahmā.
Besides giving a reason for creative activity, it also directly connects Brahmā with worldly life, in contrast with the attitude of denial of integration with the sociopsychological world required to be cultivated by one who would transcend the influence of individuality in search for the ātman that is beyond any individuality. Correlatively, in being identified with the sense of ego that is necessary for a person to function effectively in the sociopsychological world, Brahmā is rarely ever associated with pathways to enlightenment (liberation). This tendency to connect Brahmā with a particular set of worldly values is strongly reinforced when the Sāṃkhya conception of evolutionary creation becomes the conceptual frame onto which other aspects of creation are hung and into which they are integrated. These aspects of creation (of the universe, the worlds, the earth, animals and gods, society) are often found individually in the Mahābhārata and brought into an integrated whole in the Purāṇas in the process of secondary creation.
Directly associated with the ahaṃkāra as the source of individual impulse is the psychological behavioral trait (guṇa) called rajas, which in its meaning embraces activity, desire, movement, and impetuosity. Like the other two traits (sattva and tamas), rajas derives from the material/psychological foundation of creation called prakṛti , and so it manifests as certain psychological dispositions as well as in particular classes of beings such as humans. Many textual references bear witness to Brahmā creating under the influence of rajas (MkP. 46.13; ViP. 1.4.50; ŚiP. 6,15.31; VmP. 2.22.19; BrāṇḍaP. 1.1.4.18). However, he is characterized by these motivating factors not just when specifically engaged in the act of creation. They also involve other aspects of his personality and often are taken to a highly exaggerated degree in his mythological persona. It is something of a paradox that Brahmā is directly associated with rajas and its near synonym tejas and other such forms of energy and vitality, yet remains as the absent overseer and instigator of creation and plays only an advisory role in it when it is completed, unlike Viṣṇu and Śiva.
The idea that Brahmā represents the principle of individuality and of its beginning is not made explicit in many of the creation myths found in the Mahābhārata, nor is it implicit in all of them. Many others show him preoccupied with bringing about the creation from his own body and using sexual means or practices of austerity bequeathed to him by his precursor, Prajāpati (MtP. 3.30–39; MkP. 47.1–11; PdP. 5.3.155–201; ViP. 1.7.1–33). The universe is never created in toto from within Brahmā’s body except for those instances where the model is the highly influential, ritualistic mode of creation first found in the Puruṣasūkta of the Ṛgveda. Rather, Brahmā sets up the initial conditions whereby creation will occur, such that creation must unfold as a process of sequential actions, with the creator god usually just beginning this process rather than encompassing it in its entirety. It does not burst forth fully completed all at once. Brahmā is sometimes depicted as giving birth to sons produced from his mind, sons who will finish the creation, or he impregnates a matriarch from whom the different species will be born. In both cases, it is the introduction of the idea of lineages into the stages of creation where Brahmā is the original part of the lineage. In Mahābhārata 12.160.11–21, for example, Brahmā is the firstborn from a bottomless ocean. Possessing vigor and virility, he emits air and fire, the physical parts of the universe, the periods of time, and the seasons. Next, he assumes a human body and causes the birth of nine sons who reproduced with Dakṣa’s daughters in order to give rise to all of the different living beings who inhabit the earth and the heavens. Finally, he arranges the law according to how it is defined in the Vedas. Each of the three verbs denoting the different forms of creation described here convey the various modes of creation Brahmā employs and the purposes of these aspects of the creation. And in each case, the motivation for the individual acts of creation is not given. Twice, verbs derived from the root jan-, "to be born," are used, the first simply indicating that Brahmā was born, but not stating why. In its second usage, it is Brahmā himself who gives birth to his sons, implying birth without proper sexual progenation. The other verb used here is derived from the root sṛj-, "to emit," "to gush out," and describes the distinctive physical components of the creation emerging directly from the body of the creator.
Puranic Pratisarga
The descriptions of the primary creations (sarga) continue to present Brahmā’s role as being the introduction of individuality, either in psychological form as ahaṃkāra or in a material form as the first embodied being. All of these are standardized by their being framed within a Sāmkhya emanation theory. So, too, there is a degree of standardization in the description of the re-creation or pratisarga, a form of creation where temporality is defined by the four cosmic yugas and the cosmological focus is the earth. Brahmā is very involved in the forms of creation found here, and these are summarized below in the typical sequence in which they occur in most of the puranic creation myths. The one on p. 506 is taken from the Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa (chs. 42–47).| Chapter | Mode of Creation | Content of Creation |
| 42 | Sequential emanation from psychological and material elements, finishing with the primeval egg which contains the three worlds. | Creation of the fundamental psychological and material elements and individuality. |
| 43 | Description of Brahmā and the temporal span of his life | Summary of the trimūrti and the periods of time. |
| 44 | Brahmā raises the Earth from the primeval ocean. He shapes the Earth physically and creates the other worlds. He creates various classes of beings through meditation, reflecting his own state of mind as it sequentially alters. | Earth, vegetation, cattle, gods, humans, psychological traits, all classified according to their capacity to attain spiritual advancement, |
| 45 | He conceptualizes in his mind and then creates by progenation from different bodies he assumes, and by emission from his own body. He constructs things and establishes diversity amongst things. | Demons, gods, deceased ancestors, humans, all created in terms of their correlation with one of the three guṇas. Then day, night, twilight, rākṣasas, yakṣas, snakes, cows, trees, the Vedas, verses |
| 46 | Creation of the classes from his body. | The four varṇas. Decline of behaviour across the yugas. Brahmā establishes the conditions for society to prosper. |
| 47 | Creation by meditation and sexual progenation. | Two sets of sons, Rudra, the rudras, lineages of beings. |
The Matsyapurāṇa illustrates this in a manner paradigmatic of what is found in many other Purāṇas. Following a lengthy description of the creation of the earth and of Brahmā himself as the principle of individuality, the creation is summarized and its composition into 25 elements asserted. Then, it seems as though creation will proceed by sexual progenation, and Brahmā split his body, from one half of which came a man’s body and from the other half a woman’s body. She is named Śatarūpā, but is also called Sāvitrī, Gāyatrī, and Brahmaṇī – all names of Brahmā’s wife. He realized she was born from his own body, possibly indicating a direct kin relation. Even so, under the influence of desire, he became agitated and declared her to be a great beauty, and the sons whom he had previously created from his mind abused him. But he ignored them, looking only at her face. She walked around him, and he grew a new face corresponding to each direction. Each of the faces was sick with desire as a result of the sight of her. Immediately, he lost all of his built-up austerities because of his uncontrollable desire. Then he ordered his sons to create various groups of creatures, which they did. After this, he married Śatarūpā and produced Manu Svāyambhū from her, the ultimate source of many lineages of beings. Finally, he placed a curse on the god Kāma that Śiva would burn his body to ashes (MtP. 3.14–47).
Desire and austerities can easily be transformed into each other. Both are related, to the extent that each is motivated by the achievement of a distinct goal. For Brahmā, this goal will always be the achievement of a successful creation, whereas for many ascetics, the performance of austerities can only be part of a general cultivation of dispassion towards the psychomaterial world. Brahmā knows that austerities form a kind of currency and that this currency can be exchanged for promises to be redeemed in the future, but he has no option in his use of austerities. He must complete the creation because he is trapped within his role, even if this entrapment is concealed beneath his sometimes-rabid desire and his use of contemplative techniques and austerities as a means not to disguise his desire but to enhance it. Sometimes he produces sons from his mind who are required to complete the creation, but they refuse because they are ascetics who declare themselves entirely disengaged from the world of limitations and social expectations. Such refusal causes frustration in Brahmā, and his rampant sexuality or his strong anger leading to the act of cursing often come from this. In both cases he demonstrates an incapacity to maintain mental control, a cardinal flaw from the ascetic perspective.
Creation: Order and Disorder
Brahmā’s loss of control in this kind of situation stands in sharp contrast to his sustained efforts to create a cosmology – an ordered framework for the survival of the different classes of inhabitants in the three worlds. It is broader than cosmology because it encompasses the very sources of knowledge and occupational functions associated with the image of the normative society. In establishing these conditions, and the possibilities potentially arising from them, a blueprint of normatively sanctioned behavior is made available that can be added to or modified as time goes on. The details of this blueprint are not as far-reaching as what can be found in the formal literature listing such rules. Rather, they lay bare the conceptual principles giving shape to the long lists of precepts found in this literature.Given the need to establish limitations on behavior and the broad classification of social groups, the sources of knowledge sanctioning these classifications and limitations must be included as part of the creation process. In the Mahābhārata this is intimately tied in with Brahmā’s creator role. This is wholly to be expected because he is associated with sacred knowledge in all of its sources, and his creation always fits in with recurring divine prototypes. When applied to cosmology, such prototypes define a clear cosmic, social, and occupational order, each of which establishes in turn clearly defined roles and behavioral expectations. This sense of order is very highly profiled, as it can be so easily overturned, and there are many narratives illustrating this. One of the most celebrated means of countering the rise of disorder is reflected in the avatāra myths, with its underlying presence of forms of knowledge provided by the creator to delineate precisely the parameters of order and disorder.
A foundational myth expositing Brahmā’s role in the establishment of order is the famous myth (MBh. 12.59) of Pṛthu, a myth sanctioning the development of kingship at a time when the Vedas and dharma are said to have disappeared because of the tendency for humans to become filled with confusion, greed, desire, and passion (MBh. 12.59.15–20). In such an environment, it is emotions and ignorance alone – and, above all, naked egoism – that provide the motivation for behavior, not the presence of boundaries. The stages of degeneration are expressed in psychological terms that have material implications. It begins with moha, a kind of conceptual delusion about the true nature of the world, leads to lobha (avarice or greed), then leads on to desire (kāma), which leads on to passion (rāga) – then the failure to distinguish boundaries becomes endemic. The resulting state is one of disorder or submergence (viplūta), one from which both the Vedas and dharma are absent.
This describes an environment where creation has not really occurred, if it is accepted that the principal hallmark of creation is the existence of behavioral boundaries that provide standards of judgment determining the correctness or incorrectness of actions for human groups. Brahmā’s role is to lay down the fundamental conditions that sanction the very notion of order and boundaries, and which gave some shape to this. All of this rests on the one principle, whose activation takes varying narrative forms. This is the principle of prescribing and determining, both words being encompassed in the root dhā-, "to put," preceded by the prefix vi-, which implies the sense of difference or distinction and is reflected in one of Brahmā’s epithets, Vidhātṛ ("Creator"). In the present narrative, Brahmā was approached by the gods after the degeneration of human behavior, and he created out of his own mind a text of one hundred thousand verses dealing with dharma (wordly responsibility), artha (success and wealth), kāma (sensual enjoyment), and mokṣa (liberation). Many verses follow that enumerate the specific subjects taught here, most of them dealing with the duty of the king, but they are so comprehensive as to include all knowledge necessary for the normative ordering of society (MBh. 12, 59, 80–85).
This is the most comprehensive of such examples, but there are many others illustrative of why Brahmā’s activity in this area fades off into a more general teaching role, leading to him being given the epithet of Lokaguru (“Teacher of the Worlds”). As examples of this role, in the Purāṇas he is frequently depicted creating the Vedas (MkP. 45.31–34; ViP. 1.4.7–11; KūP. 1.6.7–24), and the puranic versions of the Pṛthu myth show Brahmā milking the earth of her riches in the manner of the primordial king, then creating the fundamental social institutions such that
"[t]he illustrious self-born Brahmā devised a means of livelihood for the people’s prosperity and created economic success arising from manual work. After that plants arose which would ripen after cultivation. Then when their livelihood was successfully established the lord himself established boundaries of behavior consistent with custom and their characteristics, the rules of the classes and the stages of life, O best of those who uphold the Law, and of people, inclusive of all the classes which correctly sustain the law and wealth" (MkP. 46, 73–77; trans. by author).
A related set of examples is more specific than this. They are represented by Brahmā’s role in encouraging the Buddha to teach his foundational teachings, and Vyāsa and Vālmīki to recite the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa , respectively. Each of these three cases illustrates the need to universalize a teaching that would otherwise have been kept within the grasp of a single individual, and each shows that Brahmā’s intention is directed to the cosmos as such, not to the benefit of a single individual. None of these operate within the ordered sequences of cosmological process, but each one serves to help the propagation of a particular form of dharma, as well as to give the authority of tradition to the texts subsequently disseminated. Brahmā’s association with dharma builds on his direct connection with the Vedas (PdP. 5.15.117–18), even though dharma operates alongside the Vedas as a source of knowledge of correct behavior and has a much greater profile in postvedic literature than it did before. Given Brahmā’s impeccable vedic connections, he could not fail to be associated with the Vedas as texts, but because of the new centrality given to dharma in postvedic literature, it was also necessary for him to be associated with its dissemination and preservation, particularly given its centrality within Buddhism. Iconographic portrayals of Brahmā only bring out his connections with the Vedas after 500 CE, his earliest depictions being in Buddhist art in northwestern India, where he is simply an accompanist of the Buddha and no symbols of vedic learning are present. In medieval tantric literature, images of Brahmā with four arms are prescribed, the arms holding a beaded necklace, a sacrificial spoon, a sacrificial ladle, and a copy of the Vedas in book form (Banerjea, 1974, 516).
Brahmā creates the conditions for the three worlds and society to prosper if their inhabitants follow the rules that are put in place. However, there is always an instability built into this system – one that threatens to destroy it but never finally succeeds in doing this. This threat is exemplified by the ongoing conflict between the gods as one group and the demons as another, where the gods represent the normative order of the world and the demons its opposite, even if in practice the gods often violate the dharmic order more than the demons. Specifically this involves Brahmā regulating a particular form of sacrificial activity directly associated with the performance of austerities or tapas. It was and is believed that the performance of bodily austerities in conjunction with mental discipline could allow the accumulation of a tremendous reservoir of psychic energy that could be released into the world as fire. Performance of tapas was an individual practice and did not involve the group behavior associated with the performance of the sacrifice. Yet, it was a form of self-sacrifice, and the gods were required to respond in a reciprocal manner when a particular figure engaged in tapas. Demonic figures in particular, who as part of their own prescribed activities (svadharma) were always trying to overthrow the normative order of the triple world established by Brahmā, saw tapas as a means of enhancing their bodily strength, which they typically used in their conflict with the gods. The gods, however, being the recipients of sacrificial offerings, usually did not perform such austerities, with the exception of Brahmā and Śiva.
Whenever a demon performs austerities, his actions alarm the gods and he explicitly approaches Brahmā, as he is known to respond positively to the austerities (Bailey, 1983, ch. 9). Brahmā’s response is to offer an open-ended boon to the demonic figure in return for his cessation of austerities. Inevitably, the demon will request immortality as his boon – a request Brahmā refuses – giving physical inviolability, except for some very specific conditions where the demon can be killed. On receipt of this boon, the demon takes up the fight with the gods using his physical strength and his revitalized confidence. The gods are unable to stand up to his strength – they flee in disarray, and the demon takes over the role of the gods. The gods usually go to Brahmā, who dispatches Viṣṇu or Śiva to kill the demon, using the loophole that Brahmā has established with his boon. Whilst this allows the newly emergent devotional gods (Viṣṇu and Śiva) to demonstrate their heightened capacity over the other gods, it also provides a framework in which the normative order of the rule-governed worlds can be maintained in the face of a source of power that appears to violate these rules.
Brahmā does not intervene actively in the resulting situations of conflict, as that is normally Viṣṇu’s task. Instead, he maintains a watching brief and provides advice to the gods when a crisis arises. Usually it is the earth that is first affected by the decay in dharma, and she will approach Brahmā to help her (MBh. 1.57.37; 1. 89.4; 7.69.51), and he in turn will direct the gods to begin the necessary countermeasures to rectify the situation in the medium term. In doing this, he continues the precedent set by the Brahman priest, who plays an advisory role in recommending the expiatory rituals necessary to rectify mistakes in the ritual. He also gives shape to the figure of Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata, who intervenes at particular times in the story, especially to maintain the continuity of lineages and to ensure that Yudhiṣṭhira does finally become king – leading to the renewal of the earth and the resuscitation of dharma. The common feature of all of these is the explicit delineation and dissemination of rule governed behavior, the expectation that it will be violated, and this in turn requires the development of strategies that it be supported in times of stress.
Brahmā’s association with disorder is as heavily marked, as is his association with order. Myths of creation from the Brāhmaṇas onwards explore the subject of disorder and boundary-breaking activities that constantly violate the theoretical blueprints that creation myths want to provide. In the case of the creation myths developed in the epics and Purāṇas, Brahmā himself participates in some of the boundary-breaking behavior, and in many Purāṇas, he is also shown to be responsible for creating those negative aspects of life such as hunger, death, and inauspiciousness, which assume a positive role when demarcating the mortality of humans from the immortality of the deities. Creation of these inauspicious qualities is sanctioned because they represent the other side of an ordered society and are wholly acceptable in a worldview that recognizes the temporal limitations associated with life and the presence of good and evil in a variety of forms. They offer a realistic view of the limitations under which people will act. In addition, in several passages from the Mahābhārata (1.189, 4–7; 12.248; 13.249.4), Brahmā creates death, as well as associated negative psychological states such as grief, falsehood, old age, thirst, and anger – all reflective of the expanded range of philosophical interpretation within which the Mahābhārata is operating. The motivation for the creation of death is to prevent the number of humans from expanding on the earth, as the earth expresses deep concern about the extra burden being placed on her.
Excess Sexuality and Loss of Control
Brahmā himself does engage in boundary-breaking behavior in the area of sex. The occasions where a sexual incident occurs can be divided into two basic categories: those embedded within creation myths of the type where he gives birth to a woman who becomes his own wife, and those found in a context where Brahmā lusts after a woman associated with Śiva. In both cases, Brahmā loses self-control, and so these myths can help us understand the very nature of the preexisting boundaries (which Brahmā himself never seems to set up) and the consequences of going beyond them. It would be wrong, however, to read these myths as if they are setting hard and fast interpretative lines. Nothing could be further from the truth, as sexuality and its opposite – an aggressive asexuality – overlap in many myths and are played out frequently within the developed mythic personas of individual gods such as Brahmā and Śiva.In the first category of myths, Brahmā’s exuberance at wishing to create by sexual means is overplayed, and a daughter or wife is produced from his body. On such occasions he is chastised by his own sons, who have already been born prior to the birth of the woman Brahmā lusts after. Here the drive to complete the creation justifies the aberrant behavior. The second category is different in that it involves Brahmā manifesting lust for a woman associated with Śiva, usually his wife, Pārvatī. Typically such events occur in Śaiva Purāṇas, and they should not necessarily be directly connected with his role as creator, except that the mode of his behavior is virtually identical with what happens in the other cases. One version in the Śivapurāṇa (2.2.19.1–27) has Brahmā entering into a state of delusion (moha) after he has officiated at the wedding of Śiva and Satī. Misled by Śiva’s illusion-making power ( māyā ), he sees Satī’s feet and becomes filled with passion. He makes the fire become smoke, looks at her face, loses control, and spills his semen. Regaining his senses, he tries to cover up his semen, but Śiva locates it with his divine vision and threatens to kill him. After intercession by Brahmā’s sons and Viṣṇu, Śiva relents, instead cursing him to wander the earth with one hand stuck on his head and to perform austerities. He declared that people would look at him and scorn him, and the drops from his semen would become the clouds at the time of the cosmic destruction (ŚiP. 2.2.19.1–27).
The considerable humor in this passage sharply contrasts with Brahmā’s other associations with worldly and spiritual wisdom, and with his general aloofness. As in the other category, this one too turns on an incapacity to maintain self-control in highly delicate circumstances. Such a fault contradicts the strong tone of emotional and physical control that marks the image of the Brahman’s life, but is perfectly concordant with the influence of the ahaṃkāra and rajas on the workings of the mind, and through the mind onto one’s immediate conduct. Because of his association with rajas and the important paradigm of sex as creation, it is also inevitable that he is associated with misdemeanors in this area. That is, the value systems shaping postvedic mythology were such as to require the creator god also to be a figure embodying sexuality and sensuality. And in the figure of Brahmā, this aspect can easily be highly profiled since it contrasts so strongly with the image of restraint, self-control, and social aloofness he derives from his close association with Brahmanical knowledge and the idea of disengagement from the social world as one image of the Brahman (Brahmāṇa) presented in the Mahābhārata. Given Brahmā’s identification with rajas, it would not have been possible for him to avoid the emotional impetuosity of kāma and rāga (passionate attachment, love) that this psychological quality produces. Brahmā’s emotional outbursts are associated either with sensual behavior or with anger, both frowned upon strongly in a Brahman’s behavior. Yet in both cases they are manifested as being an essential part of the process of creation – the first because it provides a motive for the creation to occur, the second because it is the response that occurs when the right sequence of events is prevented from working effectively.
Fig. 1: Brahmā
The tendency to interpret these episodes as an expression of rampant, if unconsummated, sexuality makes sense within the psychological template that the three guṇas of sattva, rajas, and tamas display, and yet usually the three gods of the trimūrti are assigned an identity with one of the guṇas primarily for theological purposes of systematization, bringing creation, preservation, and destruction together as sequential processes. As such, the question becomes whether Brahmā’s creative function is exhausted by his association with the psychological and physical impetuosity so successfully defining rajas, or whether this association has to be developed further. The problem may be that he tests the limits of the system he creates, and that this in fact should be seen as one of his roles. By acting in an entirely uncontrolled manner, he establishes the need for limits by going beyond them. In addition, he is always initially unaware of his sexual lust as if he is driven to it, just as he is unreflectively driven to create.
Evidence of Worship
Textual examples of Brahmā worship are not common. Several Buddhist texts (Jātakas, Milindapanho, Saṃyuttanikāya [I, 140]) mention Brahmā worshippers (brahmabhattas) and rites being offered to Brahmā. In the Mahābhārata there are only a few texts (MBh. 1.36.22; 1.46.3) where Brahmā is depicted as being worshipped in a devotional manner. Nor is it possible to find many examples in the Purāṇas, except for the Padmapurāṇa, which is a special case. In addition, existing research has only come up with approximately five temples in Rajasthan, besides the famous Pushkara temple, and six in Gujarat, though the nature of worship at these temples is uncertain. As late as 1931, there is record of a temple of Brahmā being erected by Brahmans in Rajasthan at a place called Navatapura. At Gaya in a Bihar, there are also sacred places that have long been dedicated to Brahmā, as they are mentioned in the third book of the Mahābhārata. At Rajgir, located about 70 km north of Gaya, there is a hot spring named Brahmakund, and a number of shrines are built around this. There are 12 images of Brahmā on the side of the wall of the bathing pool (kuṇḍ) located there, and people still perform pūjā there to the god. At the nearby Buddhist site of Nalanda, some seals have been discovered on which Brahmā figures have been inscribed along with an inscription stating that the seal’s owner is a traividyā Brahman, or a Brahman who is proficient in the three Vedas. These date to around the 7th–8th centuries CE. In central India, two shrines have been identified in Madhya Pradesh and one in Karnataka. One has been identified in Maharashtra near Kolhapur and four in different parts of Tamil Nadu, one still in use in the 19th century.In oral tradition among the Tulus in northwestern Karnataka, Brahmā comes up in many folk narratives under the name of Brahmadeva, Bomma, Bharma, and Bemmeru. Several of these allude to temples of Bemmeru and tell stories of him in the appearance of an old Brahman and warning a messenger against going on a certain path, turning the messenger’s horse to stone, or making the messenger invisible. Reports from the 19th century describe Brahmā being worshipped in the same area as both god and as spirit or bhūta. He is said to be worshipped in his own place of worship on every large estate, with the image being dressed each day and offered cooked rice. In addition, each year a great festival for Brahmā is held where both Brahmans and lower-class people are in attendance and a pūjā is performed. Folk tales explain his worship there as being a consequence of his severed fifth head praying to Śiva, who advised it to descend to the earth and to associate with the bhūtas. Ano ther version has Śiva cutting off one of Brahmā’s four heads and telling the head to unite with a nāga (an embodied snake) and torment mankind. These are typical means of blending Sanskritic traditions with folk traditions and can also be found in the myths of the Dhangar shepherd groups located in Maharashtra.
The mention of a yearly festival to Brahmā in Tulu country has a correspondence with an annual festival to Brahmā described in some detail in the Padmapurāṇa (and the Puṣkaramāhātmya) in a long section dealing with the important pilgrimage spot Pushkara in Rajasthan, which contains a large and widely patronized temple of Brahmā. The 17th chapter of the section of the Padmapurāṇa (1.17.224–259) dealing with the creation of Brahmā’s wife Gāyatrī describes a ritual for the installation in a temple of an image of Brahmā, followed by a description of the procession of an image of Brahmā on the full-moon day in the month of kārttika (Oct–Nov). What is described is a typical pūjā, but it is not known whether this was ever performed anywhere other than Pushkara. Nor is it known why Pushkara has survived as a Brahmā temple when the majority of the others have fallen into disuse. One suggestion is that it represented the status and identity of the Brahmanical-Hindu culture and that its preservation made sense in the 18th and 19th centuries in relation to the confrontation with (political) Islam.
A recent development in Thailand sheds a wholly new light on the question of Brahmā worship. Over the last 30 years, many Brahmā shrines have appeared in Thailand and receive constant worship. Of these, the most celebrated is the shrine located at Erawan in Bangkok. Several Web sites describe the shrine and the pūjās performed before the image. It was built in 1956, but was so vandalized in May 2006 that it had to be rebuilt. After a new image was placed in it, the Thai prime minister visited it and performed a pūjā there. Many of the devotees are Buddhists – there are no formal priests, and devotees conduct their own worship. Brahmā is considered auspicious, and worship of him is conducive to prosperity such that many of the shrines are located outside of commercial centers and businesses. This is comparable to the role Gaṇeśa performs in contemporary India.
This constitutes most of the available evidence of Brahmā worship. Some have argued that wherever Brahmā images are found, that indicates his worship in those places, yet most of these images are simply found in temples that, according to the rules of construction, require the presence of images of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva. In sum, Brahmā has been worshipped only intermittently over the past two thousand years; even if he occurs everywhere in mythology and has a special popularity in this regard, this popularity does not translate into active worship.
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