Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [163]
But in Hindu mythology, Brahman becomes a real, living entity that gets involved in the affairs of the world by manifesting through a trinity of gods called the Trimurti. They are Brahma, creator of the universe; Vishnu, its preserver; and Shiva, its destroyer.
Confused by that? Consider for a moment the Christian notion of God—all-powerful, omniscient, creator of everything. But orthodox Christianity also teaches that this God exists in “three persons”—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Brahma, the Creator One of the three manifestations of Brahman, Brahma is called “lord and father of all creatures” and is regarded as the greatest of all sages as well as the first god. Born in one Creation account from a golden egg that floated in the primeval waters, Brahma is said in another version of the Creation to be the welling up of the Brahman’s primeval essence. In yet another Creation account, Brahma emerges from a lotus that grows from a seed in the navel of the god Vishnu. The image of the lotus, a beautiful flower that floats above swampy waters, represents the Hindu ideal of living in the world without being corrupted by it. Brahma is said to have thought up the world while meditating, and is the father of both gods and men.
When Brahma is born, he has only one head, but he grows five faces so that he is always able to gaze on the beautiful Sarasvati. (In a later legend, one of these five faces is destroyed, still leaving him with the four he is usually depicted as having.) An ancient agricultural fertility goddess, Sarasvati—which is also the name of another of India’s most sacred rivers—is born from Brahma’s side and is also goddess of the creative arts, poetry, music, science, and language. Not only does she get credit for inventing Sanskrit, she gives birth to the first man, Manu, who is sired by Brahma.
In one legend, Brahma and fellow god Vishnu argue about which of them created the universe. As they debate, a great lingam—the word for “phallus” in Hindu terminology—appears, rising out of the ocean, crowned with flame. Staring into its vastness, Brahma and Vishnu see a cave deep within this creative phallus in which the god Shiva resides. Awed by his sight, they concede that Shiva is the ultimate creator.
Finally, a word about Brahma, the cosmic clock-keeper. If you think that time spent waiting at the doctor’s office or in a supermarket checkout line is long, consider the awesome mystery of what might be called “Brahma-time.” In the incredibly complex mathematics of the Hindu universe, a day in the life of Brahma—called a kalpa—lasts the equivalent of 4,320 million earth years. A “night of Brahma” is the same length. Divided into constant, smaller cycles, each of these kalpas ultimately ends as the world is consumed by fire and the universe is destroyed and recreated. According to Hindu thought, the current age is called the Kali-Yuga, the final act of a kalpa begun eons ago, a dark age that is approaching its end, after which the world will be destroyed once more and prepared for another cycle of creation.
In Midnight’s Children, his prizewinning mythical novel of modern India, Salman Rushdie captures a sense of the vastness of this Indian concept of time and its impact on people:
Think of this: history, in my version, entered a new phase on August 15, 1947—but in another version, that inescapable date is no more than a fleeting instant in the Age of Darkness, Kali-Yuga, in which the cow of mortality has been reduced to standing, teeteringly, on a single leg! Kali-Yuga—the losing throw in our national dice-game; the worst of everything; the age when property gives a man rank, when wealth is equated with virtue, when passion becomes the sole bond between men and women, when falsehood brings success (is it any wonder, in such a time, that I too have been confused about good and evil?)…Already feeling somewhat dwarfed, I should add nevertheless that the Age of Darkness is only the fourth phase of the present Maha-Yuga cycle, which is, in total, ten times as long; and when you consider it takes