BRAHMÃ

BRAHMĀ. — The belief in B., Brahman (v.), which had flourished in India throughout the epic age (4th century B.C.–4th century A.D.), declined with the rise of Hinduism (v.). Two minor Vedic deities, Viṣṇu and Rudra-Śiva, were associated with him in worship beginning in the 5th century, and in the triad (trimūrti) thus formed, B. is only nominally equal to his companions. Born of theological speculation, the god B. was never popular, and only one temple appears to have been dedicated to him in all India, at Pokkar (Puskara) near Ajmer in Rājputāna. In the older sections of the Mahābhārata, however, B. is regarded as the creator of men and gods, who are subject to him. On the occasion of the churning of the ocean (Mahābhārata, I, 18), he commands Viṣṇu to envelop the exhausted gods and Śiva to swallow the kālakūṭa poison, so as to preserve the world from destruction. As the First Cause of the universe, B. is the Self-existent (svayambhū), and the Mānava Dharmaśāstra (v. DHARMA-SĀSTRA) recounts his creation thus (I, 5 ff.): “The Self-existent arose from the primordial chaos; he created the waters and placed in them a seed that became a golden egg, from which he himself emerged as B. or Hiraṇyagarbha.” Sarasvatī, the ancient river-goddess identified with Vāc, became in the epic age the consort of B. In Pāli Buddhist texts, B. assumes the obscure epithet of Sahāmpati and continues to hold primacy over the other gods.