Brahma
Brahma is a Hindu god, referred to as "the Creator" within the Trimurti, the trinity of supreme divinity that includes Vishnu and Shiva. He is associated with creation of everything, knowledge, and the Vedas. Brahma is prominently mentioned in creation legends. In some Puranas, he created himself in a golden embryo known as the Hiranyagarbha.
Brahma is frequently identified with the Vedic god Prajapati. During the post-Vedic period, Brahma was a prominent deity and his sect existed; however, by the 7th century, he had lost his significance. He was also overshadowed by other major deities like Vishnu, Shiva, and Mahadevi and demoted to the role of a secondary creator, who was created by the major deities.
Brahma is commonly depicted as a red or golden-complexioned bearded man with four heads and hands. His four heads represent the four Vedas and are pointed to the four cardinal directions. He is seated on a lotus and his vahana is a hamsa. According to the scriptures, Brahma created his children from his mind and thus, they are referred to as Manasaputra.
In contemporary Hinduism, Brahma does not enjoy popular worship and has substantially less importance than the other two members of the Trimurti. Brahma is revered in the ancient texts, yet rarely worshipped as a primary deity in India, owing to the absence of any significant sect dedicated to his reverence.Few temples dedicated to him exist in India, the most famous being the Brahma Temple, Pushkar in Rajasthan. Some Brahma temples are found outside India, such as at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok, which in turn has found immense popularity within the Thai Buddhist community.
Origin and meaning
The origins of the term are uncertain, partly because several related words are found in the Vedic literature, such as Brahman for the 'Ultimate Reality' and Brāhmaṇa for 'priest'. A distinction between the spiritual concept of brahman and the god Brahmā is that the former is a genderless abstract metaphysical concept in Hinduism, while the latter is one of the many masculine gods in Hindu tradition. The spiritual concept of brahman is quite old and some scholars suggest that the god Brahma may have emerged as a god and visible icon of the impersonal universal principle of brahman. The existence of a distinct god named Brahma is evidenced in late Vedic texts.Grammatically, the nominal stem Brahma- has two distinct forms: the neuter noun bráhman, whose nominative singular form is ' ; and the masculine noun brahmán, whose nominative singular form is '. The former, the neuter form, has a generalized and abstract meaning while the latter, the masculine form, is used as the proper name of the deity Brahma.
However, Brahman was sometimes used as a synonym for Brahma's name during the time the Mahabharata was written.
Literature and legends
Vedic literature
One of the earliest mentions of Brahma with Vishnu and Shiva is in the fifth Prapathaka of the Maitrayaniya Upanishad, probably composed around the late 1st millennium BCE. Brahma is first discussed in verse 5,1, also called the Kutsayana Hymn, and then expounded in verse 5,2.In the pantheistic Kutsayana Hymn, the Upanishad asserts that one's Soul is Brahman, and this Ultimate Reality, Cosmic Universal or God is within each living being. It equates the atman within to be Brahma and various alternate manifestations of Brahman, as follows, "Thou art Brahma, thou art Vishnu, thou art Shiva, thou art Agni, Varuna, Vayu, Indra, thou art All."
In verse, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva are mapped into the theory of Guṇas, that is qualities, psyche and innate tendencies the text describes can be found in all living beings. This chapter of the Maitrayaniya Upanishad asserts that the universe emerged from darkness, first as passion characterized by innate quality, which then refined and differentiated into purity and goodness. Of these three qualities, rajas are then mapped to Brahma, as follows:
While the Maitrayaniya Upanishad maps Brahma with one of the elements of the guṇas theory of Hinduism, the text does not depict him as one of the trifunctional elements of the Hindu Trimurti idea found in later Puranic literature.
Post-Vedic, Epics and Puranas
During the post-Vedic period, Brahma was a prominent god and his sect existed during the 2nd century CE to 6th century CE. Early texts like the Brahmanda Purana describe that there was nothing but an eternal ocean. From this, a golden egg called Hiranyagarbha, emerged. The egg broke open and Brahma, who had created himself within it, came into existence. Then, he created the universe, the earth, and other things. He also created people to populate and live on his creation.However, by the 7th century CE, Brahma lost his importance. Historians believe that some of the major reasons for Brahma's downfall were the rise of Shaivism and Vaishnavism, their replacement of him with Tridevi in the Smarta tradition, and the frequent attacks by Buddhists, Jains, Hindus who worship Indra and all the other Hindu gods.File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Beeld van Brahma op de Candi Lara Jonggrang oftewel het Prambanan tempelcomplex TMnr 10016204.jpg|thumb|Sculpture of Brahma in Prambanan, Java Indonesia|leftVarious Puranic legends mention various reasons for his decline in worship now. There are primarily two prominent versions of why Brahma lost his ground in worship popularly. The first version refers to the Shiva Purana, where Brahma and Vishnu argued about who was the greatest among them. While they debated, they saw a huge column of fire piercing through the sky which was Shiva as Lingodbhava. They decided to locate the beginning and end of this column of fire which is Shiva. Vishnu assumed the form of a boar as Varaha and journeyed towards the earth and Brahma assumed the form of a swan as Hamsa and journeyed towards the sky. Vishnu found about his defeat, revealing that he had been unable to locate the end, which was at the end of the universe and he got tired before he reached that so he was defeated in it there. However, Brahma had recruited the ketaki flower which fell from Shiva's head by his powers to end the debate here now, which was at the beginning of the universe with his beginning at there now and he got tired before he reached that so he was defeated in it there and this came to him and he took him as a false witness to support his lie that he had located the beginning. Shiva then took his true form and cut off one of Brahma's five heads for his dishonesty, proclaiming that he would no longer receive an active following to his worship and would get a low status of popularity. Pleased with Vishnu's honesty, he offered him a high status of popularity and an active following dedicated to his worship and took the ketaki flower as an ornament on his head then and fused that head into him then. The second version refers to the Vishnu Purana, where Vishnu created Brahma and Shiva from his navel and forehead respectively, thus making Brahma along with Shiva both as inferior to Vishnu, who created them both as the supreme god above them in all aspects of power in this universe and after that, when the creation of the universe was completed, Brahma lost all of his importance after his role as creator of the universe ended and was removed from worship by everyone in the world, while Shiva was always worshipped as the destroyer of the universe after his role of the destruction of the universe was always happening and Vishnu was always worshipped as he was the preserver of the universe and his preserving role in the universe was always happening and he was the supreme god of this universe.
The post-Vedic texts of Hinduism offer multiple theories of cosmogony, many involving Brahma. These include Sarga and Visarga, ideas related to the Indian thought that there are two levels of reality, one primary that is unchanging and other secondary that is always changing, and that all observed reality of the latter is in an endlessly repeating cycle of existence, that cosmos and life we experience is continually created, evolved, dissolved and then re-created. The primary creator is extensively discussed in Vedic cosmogonies with Brahman or Purusha or Prakrti among the terms used for the primary creator, In contrast the Vedic and post-Vedic texts name different gods and goddesses as secondary creators, and in some cases a different god or goddess is the secondary creator at the start of each cosmic cycle.
Brahma is a "secondary creator" as described in the Mahabharata and Puranas, and among the most studied and described. Vishnu-focused Puranas describe that Brahma was born from a lotus emerging from the navel of the god Vishnu and Shiva was born from a fire emerging from the forehead of the god Vishnu. In contrast, the Shiva-focused Puranas describe Brahma and Vishnu to be born from Shiva's right and left sides of his waist; and in other Puranas, Shiva and Vishnu were born from Brahma's right and left sides of his waist or Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma creating each other cyclically in different aeons. Yet others describe that the Tridevi created Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and these texts then state that Brahma is a secondary creator of the world working respectively on their behalf. Brahma creates all the forms in the universe, but not the primordial universe itself. Thus in most Puranic texts, Brahma's creative activity depends on the presence and power of a higher god or higher goddess. Further, the medieval era texts of these major theistic traditions of Hinduism assert that the saguna Brahma is Vishnu, Shiva, or Tridevi, respectively.
In the post-Vedic Puranic literature, Brahma creates but neither preserves nor destroys anything. He is envisioned in some Hindu texts to have emerged from the metaphysical Brahman along with Vishnu, Shiva, all other deities, matter and other beings. In theistic schools of Hinduism where the deity Brahma is described as part of its cosmology, he is a mortal god like all deities and dissolves into the abstract immortal Brahman when the universe ends, and then a new cosmic cycle restarts and all of them are recreated.
File:Sculpture of Brahma, Tamil Nadu.jpg|thumb|left|A sculpture of Brahma flanked by Yama and Chitragupta, Tamil Nadu, 10th century CE, Melakadambur Amirtakadeshvarar Temple
In the Bhagavata Purana, Brahma is portrayed several times as the one who rises from the "Ocean of Causes". Brahma, states this Purana, emerges at the moment when time and universe are born, inside a lotus rooted in the navel of Vishnu, along with Shiva, who emerged inside a fire rooted in the forehead of the god Vishnu. This Purana states that both Brahma and Shiva are drowsy, err, are temporarily incompetent as they put together the universe. They then become aware of their confusion and drowsiness, meditates as two ascetics, then realizes Vishnu in their bodies, see the beginning and end of the universe, and then their creative powers are revived. Brahma and Shiva, states the Bhagavata Purana, thereafter combine Prakriti and Purusha to create a dazzling variety of living creatures, and a tempest of causal nexus. The Bhagavata Purana thus attributes the creation of Maya to Brahma and Shiva, wherein they creates for the sake of creation, imbuing everything with both the good and the evil, the material and the spiritual, a beginning and an end.
The Puranas describe Brahma as the god creating time. They correlate human time to Brahma's time, such as a mahākalpa being a large cosmic period, correlating to one day and one night in Brahma's existence.
The stories about Brahma in various Puranas are diverse and inconsistent. In Skanda Purana, for example, the Tridevi are called the "mothers of the universe", and they are credited with creating Brahma, all the complete other gods including Vishnu, Shiva, the three worlds, the entire universe. They are the ones, states Skanda Purana, who combined the three Gunas - Sattva, Rajas, Tamas - into matter to create the empirically observed world.
The Vedic discussion of Brahma as a Rajas-quality god expands in the Puranic and Tantric literature. However, these texts state that his wife Sarasvati has Sattva, thus complementing Brahma's Rajas with her Sattva qualities.