Page:Hindu Gods and Heroes.djvu/114

be recognised as themselves orthodox. Brahmā, as his name implies, is the ideal Brahman sage, and typifies Vēdic orthodoxy. He is represented as everlastingly chanting the four Vēdas from his four mouths (for he has four heads), and he bears the waterpot and rosary of eleocarpus berries, the symbols of the Brahman ascetic. But Vēdic orthodoxy had to make way for more fascinating cults, and the Vēdic Brahman typified in the god Brahmā sank into comparative unimportance beside the sectarian ascetics. Still the old god, though shorn of much of his glory, was by no means driven from the field. The new churches looked with reverence upon his Vēdas, and often claimed them as divine authority for their doctrines; and though each of them asserted that its particular god, Śiva or Vishṇu, was the Supreme Being, and ultimately the only being, both of them allowed Brahmā to retain his old office of creator, it being of course understood that he held it as a subordinate of the Supreme, Śiva or Vishṇu as the case might be. Meanwhile, at any rate between the third and the sixth centuries, there existed a small fraternity who regarded Brahmā as the Supreme, and therefore as identical with the abstract Brahma; but although they have left a record of their doctrines in the Mārkaṇḍēya-purāṇa and the Padma-purāṇa, they have had little influence on Indian religion in general.