Thus grew up, from amid the spiritual pantheism into which all Hindoo religion seemed to have settled, another system, that of the Trimurtti, or Divine Triad; the Indian Trinity of Brahma, Vischnu, and Siva.  This Triad expresses the unity of Creation, Destruction, and Restoration.  A foundation for this already existed in a Vedic saying, that the highest being exists in three states, that of creation, continuance, and destruction.

Neither of these three supreme deities of Brahmanism held any high rank in the Vedas.  Siva (Civa) does not appear therein at all, nor, according to Lassen, is Brahma mentioned in the Vedic hymns, but first in a Upanishad.  Vischnu is spoken of in the Rig-Veda, but always as one of the names for the sun.  He is the Sun-God.  His three steps are sunrise, noon, and sunset.  He is mentioned as one of the sons of Aditi; he is called the “wide-stepping,” “measurer of the world,” “the strong,” “the deliverer,” “renewer of life,” “who sets in motion the revolutions of time,” “a protector,” “preserving the highest heaven.”  Evidently he begins his career in this mythology as the sun.

BRAHMA, at first a word meaning prayer and devotion, becomes in the laws of Manu the primal God, first-born of the creation, from the self-existent being, in the form of a golden egg.  He became the creator of all things by the power of prayer.  In the struggle for ascendency which took place between the priests and the warriors, Brahma naturally became the deity of the former.  But, meantime, as we have seen, the worship of Vischnu had been extending itself in one region and that of Siva in another.  Then took place those mysterious wars between the kings of the Solar and Lunar races, of which the great epics contain all that we know.  And at the close of these wars a compromise was apparently accepted, by which Brahma, Vischnu, and Siva were united in one supreme God, as creator, preserver, and destroyer, all in one.

It is almost certain that this Hindoo Triad was the result of an ingenious and successful attempt, on the part of the Brahmans, to unite all classes of worshippers in India against the Buddhists.  In this sense the Brahmans edited anew the Mahabharata, inserting in that epic passages extolling Vischnu in the form of Krishna.  The Greek accounts of India which followed the invasion of Alexander speak of the worship of Hercules as prevalent in the East, and by Hercules they apparently mean the god Krishna.[78] The struggle between the Brahmans and Buddhists lasted during nine centuries (from A.D. 500 to A.D. 1400), ending with the total expulsion of Buddhism, and the triumphant establishment of the Triad, as the worship of India.[79]

Before this Triad or Trimurtti (of Brahma, Vischnu, and Siva) there seems to have been another, consisting of Agni, Indra, and Surya.[80] This may have given the hint of the second Triad, which distributed among the three gods the attributes of Creation, Destruction, and Renovation.  Of these Brahma, the Creator, ceased soon to be popular, and the worship of Siva and Vischnu as Krishna remain as the popular religion of India.