BRAHMANIC THEORIES OF CREATION.

In Vedic polytheism, with its strain of pantheism, the act of creating the world[61] is variously attributed to different gods.  At the end of this period theosophy invented the god of the golden germ, the great Person (known also by other titles), who is the one (pantheistic) god, in whom all things are contained, and who himself is contain in even the smallest thing.  The Atharvan transfers the same idea in its delineation of the pantheistic image to Varuna, that Varuna who is the seas and yet is contained “in the drop of water” (iv. 16), a Varuna as different to the Varuna of the Rik as is the Atharvan Indra to his older prototype.  Philosophically the Rik, at its close, declares that “desire is the seed of mind,” and that “being arises from not-being.”

In the Br[=a]hmanas the creator is the All-god in more anthropomorphic form.  The Father-god, Praj[=a]pati, or Brahm[=a] (personal equivalent of brahma) is not only the father of gods, men, and devils, but he is the All.  This Father-god of universal sovereignty, Brahm[=a], remains to the end the personal creator.  It is he who will serve as creator for the Puranic S[=a]nkhya philosophy, and even after the rise of the Hindu sects he will still be regarded in this light, although his activity will be conditioned by the will of Vishnu or Civa.  In pure philosophy there will be an abstract First Cause; but as there is no religion in the acknowledgment of a First Cause, this too will soon be anthropomorphized.

The Br[=a]hmanas themselves present no clear picture of creation.  All the accounts of a personal creator are based merely on anthropomorphized versions of the text ‘desire is the seed.’  Praj[=a]pati wishes offspring, and creates.  There is, on the other hand, a philosophy of creation which reverts to the tale of the ’golden germ.’[62] The world was at first water; thereon floated a cosmic golden egg (the principle of fire).  Out of this came Spirit that desired; and by desire he begat the worlds and all things.  It is improbable that in this somewhat Orphic mystery there lies any pre-Vedic myth.  The notion comes up first in the golden germ and egg-born bird (sun) of the Rik.  It is not specially Aryan, and is found even among the American Indians.[63] It is this Spirit with which the Father-god is identified.  But guess-work philosophy then asks what upheld this god, and answers that a support upheld all things.  So Support becomes a god in his turn, and, since he must reach through time and space, this Support, Skambha, becomes the All-god also; and to him as to a great divinity the Atharvan sings some of its wildest strains.  When once speculation is set going in the Br[=a]hmanas, the result of its travel is to land its followers in intellectual chaos.[64] The gods create the Father-god in one passage, and in another the Father-god creates the gods.  The Father creates the waters, whence rises the golden egg.  But, again, the waters create the egg, and out of the egg is born the Father.  A farrago of contradictions is all that these tales amount to, nor are they redeemed even by a poetical garb.[65]