Brahma

The waters had no shore and no surface, only depth, and from the navel of the sleeping god a lotus opened. A four-faced figure sat inside it and found that he was alone. There was nothing to see. Brahma looked in every direction and grew a face to meet each one, and still the looking gave him nothing back. So he set to work.

What he made first was sound. From his four mouths came the four Vedas, the hymns and formulas that hold the world’s instructions, and after the words came the things the words described: the sky, the waters parted from the waters, time itself cut into ages. The texts disagree about how he arrived to do this. In one telling he hatches from Hiranyagarbha, the golden egg that forms in the primordial sea and splits into heaven and earth. In another he is self-born on that navel-lotus while Vishnu dreams the universe beneath him. Either way he opens his eyes into emptiness and is expected to fill it.

He is usually shown with red skin, the color of the sacrificial fire, and a long white beard on each of his four faces, the eyes half-closed as if still reciting. His four arms carry the tools of his office rather than weapons: a string of beads to count the turning of time, a water pot, a sacrificial ladle, and a manuscript of the Vedas he first spoke. He keeps no bow, no discus, no trident. Beneath him waits the Hamsa, the white swan or wild goose said to separate milk from water the way wisdom separates the true from the false, and on its back he crosses the worlds he assembled.

The faces were not always four. The story most often told gives him five, and the fifth is the reason he lost one. Brahma created Saraswati, goddess of speech and learning, and then could not stop watching her. She moved to avoid his gaze and he sprouted a head in whatever direction she fled, until heads ringed him on every side and one rose above to follow her into the sky. Accounts split on what came next. In some, Saraswati curses him for the impropriety. In the more common version, the topmost head speaks arrogantly, or insults Shiva, and Shiva produces from his own fury a black figure named Bhairava and tells him to remove it. Bhairava takes the head with a thumbnail. The guilt of killing a brahmin clings to him afterward as the severed skull clings to his palm, and he wanders the earth as a beggar until it finally falls away.

There is a second account of how Brahma fell from favor, and it is the one that explains the empty temples. He and Vishnu once argued over which of them was greater. A pillar of fire appeared between them with no top and no bottom, and Shiva’s voice told them that whoever found its end would win. Vishnu flew down as a boar and dug toward the base for an age and returned honestly defeated. Brahma flew up, found nothing, and on his way back met a falling ketaki flower and persuaded it to lie for him, swearing to Shiva that he had touched the summit. Shiva stepped out of the pillar and stripped him of his worship for the lie. That is the explanation the tradition gives for a strange fact: the creator of everything has almost no shrines. The temple at Pushkar in Rajasthan is the rare exception, and pilgrims who want Brahma must go out of their way to find him.

His real power is measured in time rather than force. A single day of Brahma, one kalpa, runs to more than four billion human years, and the night that follows is just as long. During that night the worlds dissolve back into the waters and he sleeps. When he wakes he makes them again. His own life lasts a hundred of his years, after which even he ends and the whole arrangement returns to the dreaming god and begins once more from the lotus. He builds, and what he builds is meant to come apart.

What he can do follows from what he is. He speaks worlds into being and emits the first creatures from his own mind, the mind-born sons who become the great sages and the progenitors of the living. He holds the Vedas because he uttered them. He keeps the long count of creation, the yugas and the kalpas, the slow breathing in and out of existence.

What he cannot do follows just as plainly. A god whose work is finished the moment it is done has little left to offer a worshipper, and the curses only formalize what his role already implies. He has been outranked within his own trinity by the one who keeps the world and the one who ends it. He can be deceived and can deceive, can be beheaded, can be cursed. The creator turns out to be the most expendable of the three, indispensable at the beginning and largely unemployed thereafter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Brahma?

Brahma is the creator god of Hindu mythology and the first member of the Trimurti, the cosmic triad he forms with Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. He brings the universe into being and is credited with speaking the four Vedas, the foundational sacred texts, from his four mouths.

Why is Brahma rarely worshipped?

Brahma has almost no temples because, according to the most common myth, Shiva cursed him for lying. When Brahma falsely claimed to have found the top of Shiva’s infinite pillar of fire, Shiva stripped him of worship as punishment for the deception. The tradition also reasons that a creator whose task ends once creation is complete has little ongoing role for devotees, unlike the gods who sustain and destroy the world. The temple at Pushkar in Rajasthan is one of his few significant shrines.

Why does Brahma have four heads?

Brahma’s four faces gaze in the four cardinal directions and are linked to the four Vedas he recites. Myth says he originally had five heads, growing them to keep watching the goddess Saraswati as she moved to avoid his gaze, until the fifth head was severed by Shiva’s fierce form Bhairava. The remaining four are typically depicted bearded, with eyes half-closed in meditation.

How long is a day of Brahma?

A single day of Brahma, called a kalpa, lasts more than four billion human years, and his night of equal length follows it, during which the worlds dissolve and he sleeps. Brahma’s entire life spans one hundred of his own years, after which he too ends and the cosmos returns to its source before creation begins again.

Who is Brahma’s consort?

Brahma’s consort is Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, speech, music, and learning. In myth he created her himself, and his fixation on her watching her wherever she moved is one explanation given for his multiple heads.

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