Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/197

Rh CHAP, racter of Brahma is not less flexible. At first the word is but a name for the self-existent principle, and the various mythical acts recorded of him are not only susceptible of a spiritual or metaphysical interpretation, but are actually so interpreted in all the Hindu comments on the sacred literature of the country. As in the Orphic theogony, the generation of Brahma begins sometimes with the great mundane egg ; but it is Brahma who therein produces himself. The self- existent lord, "desiring to produce various creatures from his own body, first, with a thought, created the waters, and deposited in them a seed. This seed became a golden egg, resplendent as the sun, in which he himself was born as Brahma, the progenitor of all worlds." ^ He is the first god of a later Indian Trimiirtti ; but the threefold deity of Yaska is Agni, Vayu, and Surya, and thus Dr. Muir con- cludes that the conjunction of Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra (? Siva) was unknown to that ancient commentator.^ Even in the Maha- bharata, Brahma is both created and uncreated. In that poem Maha- deva (//.eyas 6eo?, the great god) is the creator of Brahma, Vishnu, and Indra. " From his right side he produced Brahma, the originator of the worlds, and from his left side Vishnu, for the preservation of the universe, and when the end of the age had arrived, the mighty god created Rudra " ' But jMahadeva is identified by the poets of the Mahabharata with Rudra, Siva, Agni, Surya, Varuna, the Asvins, and a host of other deities, and, as the originator of all life, even assumes the forms and functions of the Hellenic Priapos.* Mahadeva, again, is himself also the destroyer Siva, and like Vishnu he wields a dreadful bow made by Visvakarman. These bows are used by the two gods in a terrible battle, the result being that the bow of Mahadeva is relaxed and Vishnu is esteemed the superior.

' Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. 134-6. To the objection that the p. 27. Puranic mythology, of which the Tri- are with him mere names for one object. part, might have grown up along with
 * The three names given by Yaska miirtti of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva is a

"These deities," he says, "receive the Vedic, Dr. Muir answers that "if many designations in consequence of Yaska had been cognisant of any other their greatness, or from the diversity of than the Vedic mytholog}' (at least, if their functions, as (the appellations of) he had attached any authority to any hotri, adhvar}-u, brahman, and udgatri other), he would not have failed to are applied to one and the same make some reference to the latter, and person." The functions connected with would have endeavoured to blend and these names carry us back to the old reconcile it with the former. As we mythical phrases. " Indra's function find no attempt of the kind in his work, is to bestow moisture, to slay Vritra ; we must conclude either that the and all exertions of force are the^ work I'uranic mythology had no existence in of Indra." "The function of Aditya his day, or that he regarded it as un- (the sun) is to draw up moisture and to deserving of any attention." — lb. 137. retain it by his rays : and vhatever is * Ih. pp. 156, 162. * lb. 160. mysterious is the work of Aditya." — * lb. 146, 147. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. pp.