Brahma

BRAHMA. - The faith in B., the masculine personification of Brahman (v.), after having been alive in India throughout the entire epic age (4th century B.C.-4th century A.D.), declines with the predominance of Hinduism (v.). Two divinities of little importance in the Rgveda, Viṣṇu and Rudra-Śiva, come to be associated with him in worship from the 5th century onward, and in the triad (trimūrti) thus formed, B. is equal to his two companions only in name. Born of theological speculation, the god B. was never popular, and only one temple seems to be dedicated to him in all of India, at Pokkar (Puṣkara) near Ajmer, in Rājputāna. In the oldest parts of the Mahābhārata, however, B. is considered the creator of men and of the gods, who are subject to him. On the occasion of the churning of the ocean no (Mahābhārata, I, 18) he orders Viṣṇu to invigorate the exhausted gods, and Śiva to swallow the poison kālahāta, in order to preserve the world from destruction. As the First Cause of the universe, B. is the Self-Begotten (suvyambhā) and the code of Manu (v. DHARMAŚĀSTRA) thus recounts his creation (1, 5 ff.): "The Self-Begotten arose from the primordial chaos; he created the waters and deposited in them a seed which became a golden egg, from which he himself was reborn as B. or Hiraṇyagarbha." Sarasvatī, an ancient goddess of river waters, identified with Vāc, became in the epic age the consort of B. In the texts of Pāli Buddhism, B. assumes the obscure epithet of Sahāmpati and continues to have predominance over the other gods.

Ferdinando Belloni Filippi