Brahma

Brahma is the first member of the
Trimurti, the “three forms” of divinity
made up of the dominant male deities
in the Hindu pantheon: Brahma as the
creator of the universe, Vishnu as the
preserver or sustainer, and Shiva as the
destroyer. Brahma is usually portrayed
with four heads (the fifth having been
cut off by Bhairava, a wrathful form of
Shiva), and his animal vehicle is the
hamsa, or Indian goose.
According to one widely held myth,
during the time of cosmic dissolution
between world cycles, Vishnu floats in
the middle of the cosmic ocean, lying
on the giant serpent Shesha. When the
time for creation comes, a lotus
sprouts from Vishnu’s navel and opens
to reveal Brahma inside. Brahma takes
up the work of creation, and at the end
of the world cycle, Brahma returns to
the lotus, which is reabsorbed into
Vishnu. Because of his spontaneous
appearance at the beginning of every
cosmic age, one of the names for
Brahma is Svayambhu (“self-born”).
Unlike the Judeo-Christian belief, the
world is not created from nothing.
Brahma merely arranges the existing
elements of the universe into a coherent and ordered cosmos.
Brahma is a major figure in the pantheon and is prominent in many
episodes in Hindu mythology. His mythic presence often obscures the fact that
he is never worshiped as a primary
deity. In fact, he has only one temple
devoted to him in all of India, in
119
Brahma
Pushkar. Some Hindus have attributed
this lack of worship to his status as the
creator. After all, since creation has been
completed, why should one bother with
Brahma, whose work is done? In the
puranas, texts on Hindu mythology, this
lack of worship is usually ascribed to a
curse—sometimes by the god Shiva but
in other stories by the sage Bhrgu.