Brahma
Brahma South and Central AsiaThough regarded as one of the Hindu triad, whose other members are Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer, Brahma has lost his creative powers to these deities as well as to the Divine Mother. Red in colour, he has four heads; originally there were five, but one was burned off by the fire of Shiva's third eye because he had spoken disrespectfully. In his four hands Brahma holds a sceptre, or a rosary, a bow, an alms-bowl, and the manuscript of the Rig Veda. A late myth shows him presenting to the Supreme Goddess the pot of the mendicant ascetic and the magic wisdom of the scriptures, alongside the rest of the Hindu pantheon gathered to do homage to the female principle.
A creation legend concerns Brahma. The primeval essence, or unconditioned, self-existent substance, Brahman, created the cosmic waters and deposited in them a seed, which became a golden egg, the hiranyagarbha, in which it was...
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