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The story of Brahma is one of the most puzzling aspects of Indian
religious evolution, for a god who had bid fair for supreme status,
and seemed poised to achieve it, suddenly fell in the regard of
men and has almost no worshippers today. He has not suffered oblivion
like the other Vedic gods who were his contemporaries. He has just
shrunk into insignificance, the god who was once great and is now
living off past glories. Brahma is the god who used to be.
His place in the myths of India is pan-Indian, he is a constant
presence in all of them but almost always he is merely the opening
act for the cosmic crisis that will follow. It is for other gods
to perform heroics and save the universe; other gods bring meaning
and value to the lives of the faithful, not Brahma. Not any more
at least.
This was not always the case. Brahma is perhaps
unique in all the gods of India for never losing his primary function
as the God of Creation. Every other god has evolved, changed, been
assigned a different cosmic role but Brahma in all his various aspects
has always been a God of Creation. This is an unchanged belief system
for at least five thousand years in India now; India has never looked
to any other god to bring forth creation. Other gods and goddesses
may be nominally superior to him, but their part in Genesis stops
once they produce Brahma. The real business of ordering and structuring
the universe is always and forever Brahma's. I believe this
to be a unique myth structure in the entire world. No other Godly-function
myth has endured so strongly with almost no change at all thus.
In the Veda he is known as Prajapati, the All-Father,
which is what Odin was called in Norse mythology too. He comes to
our notice when he begins to people the universe with life forms
engendered by an act of cosmic incest he is committing with his
daughter. They take many animal and organic shapes and all the offspring
take on the shape of the moment of copulation. Which is how a barren
universe fills up with vegetable and animal life. This myth is not
shocking by the standards of ancient cultures, many of which had
as a Primal Cause an act of incest. However the other Vedic deities
are not entirely comfortable with this action, but they are powerless
to punish the All-Father. It is then that Brahma is overcome
by the foe that will pursue him throughout the ages and will finally
vanquish him - Rudra-Shiva, the dark outsider god, peculiar,
outside the ambit of Vedic ritual, fearfully respected because grimly
powerful. Rudra shoots his irresistible arrow at the Prajapati and
wounds him into weakness, a punishment that reduces his stature.
In this primary myth is already encapsulated Brahma's fall from
grace into an object of derision and the replacement of his values
by the wilder and freer norms of Shiva.
By the time the Upanishads and the Brahmanas were being written, Prajapati was having trouble controlling his offspring
who did not want any part of his mission to create, and instead chose
to remain immersed in meditation. These were the Dakshas as well
as the divine sage Narada, mind-born son of Brahma. In a fit of
frustration Brahma curses Narada to fall and undergo the travails
of human existence, for refusing to get married and raise a new
race of humans. But Narada is a god too, as well as a great rishi,
and he retaliates by cursing Brahma to lose his worshipers for this
entire Cycle of Creation. It is only in the next Yuga that Brahma
will again be worshiped. In this myth is given the first explanation
for the loss of Brahma's status, a matter that has lurked as an
unacknowledged trauma in the Indian Psyche, for there are many stories
which seek to explain away this totally unthinkable fact. He was
the God of Creation, the All-Father and if he could fall, then what
certainty was there in the universe. The second noteworthy aspect
of this myth is the first acknowledgement in Indian thought that
celibacy is superior to the expression of sexuality. With retrospective
effect this notion served to tinge the original act of incest that
Prajapati committed in even darker hues.
There was a time when Brahma seemed to have climbed out of this downward spiral. This was the time between the 3rd century
to the 10th century. He was even part of the Buddhist pantheon at
the time, as great as Indra, and the god who persuaded the Enlightened
One to risk teaching what the Buddha regarded as a difficult doctrine
that might confuse people. There were many temples built to him
and I am reasonably certain there were some lost Puranas too. But
once his decline was certain there was no incentive to preserve
the texts and they died out. The Brahma Purana that survives today
is named after him but it does not in any sense indicate his supremacy
as a god. The only halfhearted exceptions are the Padma
Purana and the Markandeya Purana. It was at this time that a key
template in the perception of Brahma was created. This is the standard
Brahma myth after stories of creation. There is a bellicose demon
who performs great austerities and gains many boons from Brahma.
Puffed up with this divine strength he assaults all creation and
ascends to a temporary position of supreme dominance. The gods are
cast out of heaven and hell is let loose on earth. At this stage
one of the other gods - Shiva, Vishnu, the Great Goddess or any
of their many variants take a hand and after some gory adventuring
they destroy the demon. So typical had this become that Ravana,
Hinduism's Uber-villain, is actually the grandson of Brahma and
always in good standing with him.
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