134-796: Divisions Sama vedic Yajur vedic Atharva vedic Vaishnava puranas Shaiva puranas Shakta puranas The Varaha Purana ( Sanskrit : वराह पुराण , Varāha Purāṇa ) is a Sanskrit text from the Puranas genre of literature in Hinduism . It belongs to the Vaishnavism literature corpus praising Narayana ( Vishnu ), but includes chapters dedicated to praising and centered on Shiva and Shakti (goddesses it calls Brahmi, Vaishnavi and Raudri). The text exists in many versions, with major sections lost to history. The text has been estimated to have been first completed between
268-472: A diadem (crown). Two of his hands should be in refuge granting and gift giving mudra , while he should be shown with kundika (water pot), akshamala (rosary), a small shruka and a large shruka (two ladles used in yajna ceremonies). The text details the different proportions of the murti , describes the ornaments, and suggests that the idol wear chira (bark strip) as a lower garment, and either be alone or be accompanied with goddess Sarasvati . Brahma
402-510: A dead language in the most common usage of the term. Pollock's notion of the "death of Sanskrit" remains in this unclear realm between academia and public opinion when he says that "most observers would agree that, in some crucial way, Sanskrit is dead." Brahma Brahma ( Sanskrit : ब्रह्मा , IAST : Brahmā ) is a Hindu god , referred to as "the Creator" within the Trimurti ,
536-433: A focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit. Though written in a number of different scripts, the dominant language of Hindu texts has been Sanskrit. It or a hybrid form of Sanskrit became the preferred language of Mahayana Buddhism scholarship; for example, one of the early and influential Buddhist philosophers, Nagarjuna (~200 CE), used Classical Sanskrit as the language for his texts. According to Renou, Sanskrit had
670-591: A language competed with numerous, less exact vernacular Indian languages called Prakritic languages ( prākṛta - ). The term prakrta literally means "original, natural, normal, artless", states Franklin Southworth . The relationship between Prakrit and Sanskrit is found in Indian texts dated to the 1st millennium CE. Patañjali acknowledged that Prakrit is the first language, one instinctively adopted by every child with all its imperfections and later leads to
804-658: A limited role in the Theravada tradition (formerly known as the Hinayana) but the Prakrit works that have survived are of doubtful authenticity. Some of the canonical fragments of the early Buddhist traditions, discovered in the 20th century, suggest the early Buddhist traditions used an imperfect and reasonably good Sanskrit, sometimes with a Pali syntax, states Renou. The Mahāsāṃghika and Mahavastu, in their late Hinayana forms, used hybrid Sanskrit for their literature. Sanskrit
938-403: A lotus rooted in the navel of Vishnu, along with Shiva, who emerged inside a fire rooted in the forehead of the god Vishnu. This Purana states that both Brahma and Shiva are drowsy, err, are temporarily incompetent as they put together the universe. They then become aware of their confusion and drowsiness, meditates as two ascetics, then realizes Vishnu in their bodies, see the beginning and end of
1072-454: A natural part of the earliest Vedic language, and that these developed in the centuries after the composition had been completed, and as a gradual unconscious process during the oral transmission by generations of reciters. The primary source for this argument is internal evidence of the text which betrays an instability of the phenomenon of retroflexion, with the same phrases having sandhi-induced retroflexion in some parts but not other. This
1206-479: A negative evidence to Pollock's hypothesis, but it is not positive evidence. A closer look at Sanskrit in the Indian history after the 12th century suggests that Sanskrit survived despite the odds. According to Hanneder, On a more public level the statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is misleading, for Sanskrit is quite obviously not as dead as other dead languages and the fact that it is spoken, written and read will probably convince most people that it cannot be
1340-546: A pan-Indo-Aryan accessibility to information and knowledge in the ancient and medieval times, in contrast to the Prakrit languages which were understood just regionally. It created a cultural bond across the subcontinent. As local languages and dialects evolved and diversified, Sanskrit served as the common language. It connected scholars from distant parts of South Asia such as Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, states Deshpande, as well as those from different fields of studies, though there must have been differences in its pronunciation given
1474-748: A primary deity in India, owing to the absence of any significant sect dedicated to his reverence. Few temples dedicated to him exist in India, the most famous being the Brahma Temple, Pushkar in Rajasthan. Some Brahma temples are found outside India, such as at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok , which in turn has found immense popularity within the Thai Buddhist community. The origins of
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#17327652141231608-578: A refined and standardized grammatical form that emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in the most comprehensive of ancient grammars, the Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight chapters') of Pāṇini . The greatest dramatist in Sanskrit, Kālidāsa , wrote in classical Sanskrit, and the foundations of modern arithmetic were first described in classical Sanskrit. The two major Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and
1742-538: A restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded". The Classical form of the language simplified the sandhi rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond
1876-672: A secular way. The Varaha Purana includes mythology, particularly of the Varaha incarnation ( avatar ) of Vishnu rescuing the earth ( Prithvi ) at the time of a great flood. The text also includes mythology of goddesses and Shiva, and a discussion of Karma and Dharma called Dharmasamhita . A large portion of the text is dedicated to medieval geographic Mahatmya (tourist guides) to temples and sites in Mathura and Nepal , but it lacks adoring Krishna in Mathura-related section of
2010-632: A shrine belonging to the fifth century, in the small and remote village of Carambolim , Sattari Taluka in the northeast region of the state is found. A famous icon of Brahma exists at Mangalwedha , 52 km from the Solapur district of Maharashtra and in Sopara near Mumbai . Temples exist in Khokhan , Annamputhur and Hosur . A shrine of Brahma can be found in Cambodia's Angkor Wat . One of
2144-439: A similar phonetic structure to Tamil. Hock et al. quoting George Hart state that there was influence of Old Tamil on Sanskrit. Hart compared Old Tamil and Classical Sanskrit to arrive at a conclusion that there was a common language from which these features both derived – "that both Tamil and Sanskrit derived their shared conventions, metres, and techniques from a common source, for it is clear that neither borrowed directly from
2278-610: Is 311.04 trillion solar years, and humanity is in the 28th Kali Yuga of the 51st year of the current Brahma's life. Very few temples in India are primarily dedicated to Brahma and his worship. The most prominent Hindu temple for Brahma is the Brahma Temple, Pushkar . Others include: Brahma is also worshipped in temple complexes dedicated to the Trimurti . Some of these are: Thanumalayan Temple , Sri Purushothaman Temple , Ponmeri Shiva Temple , Thripaya Trimurti Temple , Mithrananthapuram Trimurti Temple , Kodumudi Magudeswarar Temple , Brahmapureeswarar Temple In Tamil Nadu, there
2412-467: Is Andakasa Temple dedicated to Brahma. In the past, although not as popular as Vishnu and Shiva, the name Brahma appeared on several occasions. In the legend that developed in East Java about Ken Arok, for example, Brahma is believed to be the biological father of Ken Arok . It is said that Brahma was fascinated by the beauty of Ken Arok's mother, Ken Endok and made her a lover. From this relationship
2546-423: Is a day of Brahmā, and one day of Brahmā consists of a thousand cycles of four yugas , or ages: Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga and Kali Yuga. These four yugas, rotating a thousand times, comprise one day of Brahmā, and the same number comprise one night. Brahmā lives one hundred of such "years" and then dies. These "hundred years" total 311 trillion 40 billion (311,040,000,000,000) earth years. Brahma's lifespan
2680-516: Is akin to that of Latin and Ancient Greek in Europe. Sanskrit has significantly influenced most modern languages of the Indian subcontinent , particularly the languages of the northern, western, central and eastern Indian subcontinent. Sanskrit declined starting about and after the 13th century. This coincides with the beginning of Islamic invasions of South Asia to create, and thereafter expand
2814-560: Is also a shrine for Brahma in Kandiyoor Mahadeva Temple in a rare posture along with his consort Goddess Sarasvati . There is a temple dedicated to Brahma in the temple town of Srikalahasti near Tirupati , Andhra Pradesh . There is a Chaturmukha Brahma temple in Chebrolu , Andhra Pradesh, and a seven feet height of Chatrumukha (Four Faces) Brahma temple at Bangalore , Karnataka . In the coastal state of Goa ,
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#17327652141232948-475: Is also known as the Dharma Samhita . In the final section (chapters 213 to end), Suta narrates the conversation between Brahma and Sanatkumara. Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] ) is a classical language belonging to
3082-399: Is always changing ( empirical ), and that all observed reality of the latter is in an endlessly repeating cycle of existence, that cosmos and life we experience is continually created, evolved, dissolved and then re-created. The primary creator is extensively discussed in Vedic cosmogonies with Brahman or Purusha or Prakrti among the terms used for the primary creator, In contrast
3216-521: Is associated largely with the Vedic culture of yajna and knowledge. In some Vedic yajna , Brahma is summoned in the ritual to reside and supervise the ritual in the form of Prajapati . Brahma's wife is the goddess Sarasvati. She is the embodiment of his power, the instrument of creation and the energy that drives his actions. Brahma, despite being believed to be the creator, is considered mortal according to scriptures. The Age of Brahma, according to Hindu cosmology , spans vast epochs of time. A kalpa
3350-452: Is found in the writing of Bharata Muni , the author of the ancient Natya Shastra text. The early Jain scholar Namisādhu acknowledged the difference, but disagreed that the Prakrit language was a corruption of Sanskrit. Namisādhu stated that the Prakrit language was the pūrvam ('came before, origin') and that it came naturally to children, while Sanskrit was a refinement of Prakrit through "purification by grammar". Sanskrit belongs to
3484-609: Is in the fifth Prapathaka (lesson) of the Maitrayaniya Upanishad , probably composed around the late 1st millennium BCE. Brahma is first discussed in verse 5,1, also called the Kutsayana Hymn , and then expounded in verse 5,2. In the pantheistic Kutsayana Hymn , the Upanishad asserts that one's Soul is Brahman, and this Ultimate Reality, Cosmic Universal or God is within each living being. It equates
3618-537: Is mentioned and summarized in the manuscripts of the Matsya Purana , Skanda Purana and the Agni Purana , but the description of this text in those documents suggests that surviving manuscripts of Varaha Purana are entirely different from what it once was. The text exists in many versions, with significant variations. The Padma Purana categorizes Varaha Purana as a Sattva Purana. Scholars consider
3752-528: Is often depicted with a white beard, implying his sage-like experience. He sits on lotus, dressed in white (or red and pink), with his vehicle ( vahana ) – hamsa , a swan – nearby. Chapter 51 of the Manasara , an ancient design manual in Sanskrit for making murtis and temples, states that a Brahma statue should be gold in color. The text recommends that the statue have four faces and four arms, have jata-mukuta-mandita (matted hair of an ascetic), and wear
3886-400: Is quite old and some scholars suggest that the god Brahma may have emerged as a god and visible icon of the impersonal universal principle of brahman . The existence of a distinct god named Brahma is evidenced in late Vedic texts. Grammatically, the nominal stem Brahma- has two distinct forms: the neuter noun bráhman , whose nominative singular form is brahma ( ब्रह्म ); and
4020-532: Is rare in the later version of the language. The Homerian Greek, like Ṛg-vedic Sanskrit, deploys simile extensively, but they are structurally very different. The early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language was far less homogenous compared to the Classical Sanskrit as defined by grammarians by about the mid-1st millennium BCE. According to Richard Gombrich—an Indologist and a scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli and Buddhist Studies—the archaic Vedic Sanskrit found in
4154-642: Is regarded as one of the Twenty Devas ( 二十諸天 Èrshí Zhūtiān ) or the Twenty-Four Devas ( 二十四諸天 Èrshísì zhūtiān ), a group of protective dharmapalas . Hindus in Indonesia still have a high regard for Brahma ( Indonesian and Javanese : Batara Brahma and Sanghyang Brahma ). In Prambanan there is a special temple made for Brahma, side by side with Vishnu and Shiva, and in Bali there
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4288-483: Is seated on a lotus and his vahana (mount) is a hamsa (swan). According to the scriptures, Brahma and Sarasvati created their children from their minds and thus, they are referred to as Manasaputras . In contemporary Hinduism, Brahma does not enjoy popular worship and has substantially less importance than the other two members of the Trimurti. Brahma is revered in the ancient texts, yet rarely worshipped as
4422-479: Is taken along with evidence of controversy, for example, in passages of the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka (700 BCE), which features a discussion on whether retroflexion is valid in particular cases. The Ṛg-veda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas 2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas 1 and 10 are relatively the youngest. Yet,
4556-589: Is the Atman (Soul, Self) within and without – yea, within and without! While the Maitrayaniya Upanishad maps Brahma with one of the elements of the guṇas theory of Hinduism, the text does not depict him as one of the trifunctional elements of the Hindu Trimurti idea found in later Puranic literature. During the post-Vedic period, Brahma was a prominent god and his sect existed during
4690-589: Is the predominant language of one of the largest collection of historic manuscripts. The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the Ayodhya Inscription of Dhana and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh) . Though developed and nurtured by scholars of orthodox schools of Hinduism, Sanskrit has been the language for some of the key literary works and theology of heterodox schools of Indian philosophies such as Buddhism and Jainism. The structure and capabilities of
4824-399: Is this Shiva. That part of him which belongs to rajas , that O students of sacred knowledge, is this Brahma . That part of him which belongs to sattva , that O students of sacred knowledge, is this Vishnu. Verily, that One became threefold, became eightfold, elevenfold, twelvefold, into infinite fold. This Being (neuter) entered all beings, he became the overlord of all beings. That
4958-540: The Bhagavata Purana , the Panchatantra and many other texts are all in the Sanskrit language. The Classical Sanskrit with its exacting grammar was thus the language of the Indian scholars and the educated classes, while others communicated with approximate or ungrammatical variants of it as well as other natural Indian languages. Sanskrit, as the learned language of Ancient India, thus existed alongside
5092-419: The Maitrayaniya Upanishad asserts that the universe emerged from darkness ( tamas ), first as passion characterized by innate quality ( rajas ), which then refined and differentiated into purity and goodness ( sattva ). Of these three qualities, rajas are then mapped to Brahma , as follows: Now then, that part of him which belongs to tamas , that, O students of sacred knowledge ( Brahmacharins ),
5226-493: The Shiva Purana , where Brahma and Vishnu argued about who was the greatest among them. While they debated, they saw a huge column of fire piercing through the sky which was Shiva as Lingodbhava . They decided to locate the beginning and end of this column of fire which is Shiva. Vishnu assumed the form of a boar as Varaha and journeyed towards the earth and Brahma assumed the form of a swan as Hamsa and journeyed towards
5360-417: The atman (Soul, Self) within to be Brahma and various alternate manifestations of Brahman, as follows, "Thou art Brahma, thou art Vishnu, thou art Shiva, thou art Agni , Varuna , Vayu , Indra , thou art All." In verse (5,2), Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva are mapped into the theory of Guṇas , that is qualities, psyche and innate tendencies the text describes can be found in all living beings. This chapter of
5494-481: The Cholas said that Brahma and Shiva as their direct biological ancestors and Vishnu as their creator and the creator of this entire universe . Cilappatikaram also has several mentions of Brahma as the creator god. Brahma is traditionally depicted with four faces and four arms. Each face of his points to a cardinal direction. His hands hold no weapons, rather symbols of knowledge and creation. In one hand, he holds
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5628-580: The Dalai Lama , the Sanskrit language is a parent language that is at the foundation of many modern languages of India and the one that promoted Indian thought to other distant countries. In Tibetan Buddhism, states the Dalai Lama, Sanskrit language has been a revered one and called legjar lhai-ka or "elegant language of the gods". It has been the means of transmitting the "profound wisdom of Buddhist philosophy" to Tibet. The Sanskrit language created
5762-1099: The Government House of Thailand houses a statue of Phra Phrom (Thai representation of Brahma). An early 18th-century CE painting at Wat Yai Suwannaram in Phetchaburi city of Thailand depicts Brahma. The name of the country Burma is derived from Brahma. In medieval texts, it is referred to as Brahma-desa . Brahma in Buddhism is known in Chinese as Simianshen ( 四面神 , "Four-Faced God"), Simianfo ( 四面佛 , "Four-Faced Buddha") or Fantian ( 梵天 ), Tshangs pa ( ཚངས་པ ) in Tibetan, Phạm Thiên ( 梵天 ) in Vietnamese, Bonten ( 梵天 ) in Japanese, and Beomcheon ( 범천,梵天 ) in Korean. In Chinese Buddhism , he
5896-672: The Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages . It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age . Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism , the language of classical Hindu philosophy , and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism . It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in
6030-613: The Indo-European family of languages . It is one of the three earliest ancient documented languages that arose from a common root language now referred to as Proto-Indo-European : Other Indo-European languages distantly related to Sanskrit include archaic and Classical Latin ( c. 600 BCE–100 CE, Italic languages ), Gothic (archaic Germanic language , c. 350 CE ), Old Norse ( c. 200 CE and after), Old Avestan ( c. late 2nd millennium BCE ) and Younger Avestan ( c. 900 BCE). The closest ancient relatives of Vedic Sanskrit in
6164-739: The Narada Purana , this text has two parts: purvabhaga and uttarabhaga . While the contents of the purvabhaga summarized in the Narada text generally correspond to the extant manuscripts of the Varaha Purana , the uttarabhaga summarized in the Narada text is not found in surviving Varaha manuscripts, and presumed lost to history. According to Rajendra Hazra, the extant text has four distinct sections, differing in interlocutors and general characteristics. These sections were likely composed in different time periods, by different authors. In
6298-753: The Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. Gombrich posits that the language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha 's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages. The formalization of the Saṃskṛta language is credited to Pāṇini , along with Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work. Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'), which became
6432-532: The Rigveda , a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from the mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across northern Pakistan and into northwestern India. Vedic Sanskrit interacted with the preexisting ancient languages of the subcontinent, absorbing names of newly encountered plants and animals; in addition, the ancient Dravidian languages influenced Sanskrit's phonology and syntax. Sanskrit can also more narrowly refer to Classical Sanskrit ,
6566-531: The Rāmāyaṇa , however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit. In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language. The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to
6700-673: The Sattva-Rajas-Tamas classification as "entirely fanciful" and there is nothing in this text that actually justifies this classification. The printed editions of this work, depending on the version, has 217 or 218 adhyāya s (chapters). The critical edition (edited by Anand Swarup Gupta, and published by the All-India Kashiraj Trust, Varanasi) has 215 chapters. The Hindu tradition and other Puranas claim that this text had 24,000 verses; however, surviving manuscripts have less than half that number. According to
6834-518: The Tridevi created Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and these texts then state that Brahma is a secondary creator of the world working respectively on their behalf. Brahma creates all the forms in the universe, but not the primordial universe itself. Thus in most Puranic texts, Brahma's creative activity depends on the presence and power of a higher god or higher goddess. Further, the medieval era texts of these major theistic traditions of Hinduism assert that
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#17327652141236968-488: The Vedas as books of Hinduism and used it to perform Yajnas . Several Tamil Hindu kings and queens have performed Vedic sacrifices and worshipped various gods and goddesses of Hinduism . Several Sangam texts mention that Brahma as a creator god born from the navel of Vishnu along with Shiva as a destroyer god born from his forehead while he was the preserver god. As he is a direct biological ancestor of all royal families,
7102-487: The masculine noun brahmán , whose nominative singular form is brahmā ( ब्रह्मा ). The former, the neuter form, has a generalized and abstract meaning while the latter, the masculine form, is used as the proper name of the deity Brahma. However, Brahman was sometimes used as a synonym for Brahma's name during the time the Mahabharata was written. One of the earliest mentions of Brahma with Vishnu and Shiva
7236-427: The saguna (representation with face and attributes) Brahma is Vishnu, Shiva, or Tridevi, respectively. In the post-Vedic Puranic literature, Brahma creates but neither preserves nor destroys anything. He is envisioned in some Hindu texts to have emerged from the metaphysical Brahman along with Vishnu (preserver), Shiva (destroyer), all other deities, matter and other beings. In theistic schools of Hinduism where
7370-406: The sandhi rules, both internal and external. Quite many words found in the early Vedic Sanskrit language are never found in late Vedic Sanskrit or Classical Sanskrit literature, while some words have different and new meanings in Classical Sanskrit when contextually compared to the early Vedic Sanskrit literature. Arthur Macdonell was among the early colonial era scholars who summarized some of
7504-582: The trinity of supreme divinity that includes Vishnu and Shiva . He is associated with creation, knowledge, and the Vedas . Brahma is prominently mentioned in creation legends . In some Puranas , he created himself in a golden embryo known as the Hiranyagarbha . Brahma is the Vedic god Prajapati . During the post-Vedic period, Brahma was a prominent deity and his sect existed; however, by
7638-500: The verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- is a compound word consisting of sáṃ ('together, good, well, perfected') and kṛta - ('made, formed, work'). It connotes a work that has been "well prepared, pure and perfect, polished, sacred". According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal—rather than semantic—qualities. Sound and oral transmission were highly valued qualities in ancient India, and its sages refined
7772-476: The 10th and 12th centuries, and continuously revised thereafter. The surviving manuscripts of this text are notable, like Linga Purana , because they do not cover the required Panchalakshana (five characteristics) expected in a Purana. Scholars have questioned whether it really qualifies as a Purana, and whether the extant manuscripts are merely a religious manual largely focussed on Vaishnava practices, with sections that also praise Shiva, Shakti and other gods in
7906-414: The 13th century, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared, perhaps in the "fires that periodically engulfed the capital of Kashmir" or the "Mongol invasion of 1320" states Pollock. The Sanskrit literature which was once widely disseminated out of the northwest regions of the subcontinent, stopped after the 12th century. As Hindu kingdoms fell in the eastern and
8040-511: The 2nd century CE to 6th century CE. Early texts like the Brahmanda Purana describe that there was nothing but an eternal ocean. From this, a golden egg called Hiranyagarbha , emerged. The egg broke open and Brahma, who had created himself within it, came into existence (gaining the name Svayambhu ). Then, he created the universe, the earth, and other things. He also created people to populate and live on his creation. However, by
8174-602: The 7th century CE, Brahma lost his importance. Historians believe that some of the major reasons for Brahma's downfall were the rise of Shaivism and Vaishnavism , their replacement of him with Tridevi in the Smarta tradition , and the frequent attacks by Buddhists , Jains , Hindus who worship Indra and all the other Hindu gods . Various Puranic legends mention various reasons for his decline in worship now. There are primarily two prominent versions of why Brahma lost his ground in worship popularly. The first version refers to
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#17327652141238308-400: The 7th century CE, he had lost his significance. He was also overshadowed by other major deities like Vishnu , Shiva , Tridevi and demoted to the role of a secondary creator, who was created by the major deities. Brahma is commonly depicted as a red complexioned man with four heads and hands. His four heads represent the four Vedas and are pointed to the four cardinal directions. He
8442-532: The 7th century where he established a major center of learning and language translation under the patronage of Emperor Taizong. By the early 1st millennium CE, Sanskrit had spread Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Southeast Asia, parts of the East Asia and the Central Asia. It was accepted as a language of high culture and the preferred language by some of the local ruling elites in these regions. According to
8576-425: The Classical Sanskrit language launched ancient Indian speculations about "the nature and function of language", what is the relationship between words and their meanings in the context of a community of speakers, whether this relationship is objective or subjective, discovered or is created, how individuals learn and relate to the world around them through language, and about the limits of language? They speculated on
8710-532: The Dravidian languages borrowed from Sanskrit vocabulary, but they have also affected Sanskrit on deeper levels of structure, "for instance in the domain of phonology where Indo-Aryan retroflexes have been attributed to Dravidian influence". Similarly, Ferenc Ruzca states that all the major shifts in Indo-Aryan phonetics over two millennia can be attributed to the constant influence of a Dravidian language with
8844-521: The Dravidian words and forms, without modifying the word order; but the same thing is not possible in rendering a Persian or English sentence into a non-Indo-Aryan language. Shulman mentions that "Dravidian nonfinite verbal forms (called vinaiyeccam in Tamil) shaped the usage of the Sanskrit nonfinite verbs (originally derived from inflected forms of action nouns in Vedic). This particularly salient case of
8978-476: The Indo-Aryan language underwent rapid linguistic change and morphed into the Vedic Sanskrit language. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit . The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the Rigveda , a Hindu scripture from the mid- to late-second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive, if any ever existed, but scholars are generally confident that
9112-519: The Indo-European languages are the Nuristani languages found in the remote Hindu Kush region of northeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Himalayas, as well as the extinct Avestan and Old Persian – both are Iranian languages . Sanskrit belongs to the satem group of the Indo-European languages. Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of
9246-532: The Muslim rule in the form of Sultanates, and later the Mughal Empire . Sheldon Pollock characterises the decline of Sanskrit as a long-term "cultural, social, and political change". He dismisses the idea that Sanskrit declined due to "struggle with barbarous invaders", and emphasises factors such as the increasing attractiveness of vernacular language for literary expression. With the fall of Kashmir around
9380-496: The Muslim rulers. Hindu rulers such as Shivaji of the Maratha Empire , reversed the process, by re-adopting Sanskrit and re-asserting their socio-linguistic identity. After Islamic rule disintegrated in South Asia and the colonial rule era began, Sanskrit re-emerged but in the form of a "ghostly existence" in regions such as Bengal. This decline was the result of "political institutions and civic ethos" that did not support
9514-649: The Puranic and Tantric literature. However, these texts state that his wife Sarasvati has Sattva (quality of balance, harmony, goodness, purity, holistic, constructive, creative, positive, peaceful, virtuous), thus complementing Brahma's Rajas (quality of passion, activity, neither good nor bad and sometimes either, action qua action, individualizing, driven, dynamic) with her Sattva qualities . The Sangam literature mentions all Hindu gods and goddesses and Vedic practices in Tamilakam . Tamilians considered
9648-499: The Saṃskṛta language, both in its vocabulary and grammar, to the classical languages of Europe. In The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World , Mallory and Adams illustrate the resemblance with the following examples of cognate forms (with the addition of Old English for further comparison): The correspondences suggest some common root, and historical links between some of
9782-638: The South India, such as the great Vijayanagara Empire , so did Sanskrit. There were exceptions and short periods of imperial support for Sanskrit, mostly concentrated during the reign of the tolerant Mughal emperor Akbar . Muslim rulers patronized the Middle Eastern language and scripts found in Persia and Arabia, and the Indians linguistically adapted to this Persianization to gain employment with
9916-479: The Tridevi are called the "mothers of the universe", and they are credited with creating Brahma, all the complete other gods including Vishnu, Shiva, the three worlds, the entire universe. They are the ones, states Skanda Purana, who combined the three Gunas - Sattva, Rajas, Tamas - into matter ( Prakrti ) to create the empirically observed world. The Vedic discussion of Brahma as a Rajas -quality god expands in
10050-447: The Vedic Sanskrit in these books of the Ṛg-veda "hardly presents any dialectical diversity", states Louis Renou – an Indologist known for his scholarship of the Sanskrit literature and the Ṛg-veda in particular. According to Renou, this implies that the Vedic Sanskrit language had a "set linguistic pattern" by the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Beyond the Ṛg-veda, the ancient literature in Vedic Sanskrit that has survived into
10184-451: The Vedic Sanskrit's bahulam framework, to respect liberty and creativity so that individual writers separated by geography or time would have the choice to express facts and their views in their own way, where tradition followed competitive forms of the Sanskrit language. The phonetic differences between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit, as discerned from the current state of the surviving literature, are negligible when compared to
10318-488: The Vedic and post-Vedic texts name different gods and goddesses as secondary creators (often Brahma in post-Vedic texts), and in some cases a different god or goddess is the secondary creator at the start of each cosmic cycle ( kalpa , that is an aeon). Brahma is a "secondary creator" as described in the Mahabharata and Puranas , and among the most studied and described. Vishnu-focused Puranas describe that Brahma
10452-407: The alphabet, the structure of words, and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold" as an integral language they called Saṃskṛta . From the late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic, philosophical and religious literature" in India. Sound
10586-440: The capacity to understand the old Prakrit languages such as Ardhamagadhi . A section of European scholars state that Sanskrit was never a spoken language. However, evidences shows that Sanskrit was a spoken language, essential for oral tradition that preserved the vast number of Sanskrit manuscripts from ancient India. The textual evidence in the works of Yaksa, Panini, and Patanajali affirms that Classical Sanskrit in their era
10720-527: The close relationship between the Indo-Iranian tongues and the Baltic and Slavic languages , vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages , and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna. The pre-history of Indo-Aryan languages which preceded Vedic Sanskrit is unclear and various hypotheses place it over a fairly wide limit. According to Thomas Burrow, based on
10854-614: The context of a speech or language, is found in verses 5.28.17–19 of the Ramayana . Outside the learned sphere of written Classical Sanskrit, vernacular colloquial dialects ( Prakrits ) continued to evolve. Sanskrit co-existed with numerous other Prakrit languages of ancient India. The Prakrit languages of India also have ancient roots and some Sanskrit scholars have called these Apabhramsa , literally 'spoiled'. The Vedic literature includes words whose phonetic equivalent are not found in other Indo-European languages but which are found in
10988-653: The crystallization of Classical Sanskrit. As in this period the Indo-Aryan tribes had not yet made contact with the inhabitants of the South of the subcontinent, this suggests a significant presence of Dravidian speakers in North India (the central Gangetic plain and the classical Madhyadeśa) who were instrumental in this substratal influence on Sanskrit. Extant manuscripts in Sanskrit number over 30 million, one hundred times those in Greek and Latin combined, constituting
11122-449: The deity Brahma is described as part of its cosmology, he is a mortal god like all deities and dissolves into the abstract immortal Brahman when the universe ends, and then a new cosmic cycle (kalpa) restarts and all of them are recreated. In the Bhagavata Purana , Brahma is portrayed several times as the one who rises from the " Ocean of Causes ". Brahma, states this Purana, emerges at the moment when time and universe are born, inside
11256-467: The detailed and sophisticated treatise then transmitted it through his students. Modern scholarship generally accepts that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as Lipi ('script') and lipikara ('scribe') in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī . The Classical Sanskrit language formalized by Pāṇini, states Renou, is "not an impoverished language", rather it is "a controlled and
11390-471: The differences between the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Louis Renou published in 1956, in French, a more extensive discussion of the similarities, the differences and the evolution of the Vedic Sanskrit within the Vedic period and then to the Classical Sanskrit along with his views on the history. This work has been translated by Jagbans Balbir. The earliest known use of the word Saṃskṛta (Sanskrit), in
11524-460: The distant major ancient languages of the world. The Indo-Aryan migrations theory explains the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages by proposing that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in South Asia from a region of common origin, somewhere north-west of the Indus region , during the early 2nd millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes
11658-490: The early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture , and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in
11792-491: The first language of the respective speakers. The Sanskrit language brought Indo-Aryan speaking people together, particularly its elite scholars. Some of these scholars of Indian history regionally produced vernacularized Sanskrit to reach wider audiences, as evidenced by texts discovered in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Once the audience became familiar with the easier to understand vernacularized version of Sanskrit, those interested could graduate from colloquial Sanskrit to
11926-408: The first section (chapters 1 to 112), Suta is the narrator and Varaha and Prithvi are the interlocutors. In the second section (chapters 113 to 192), Suta narrates what was told by Prithvi to Sanatkumara about the dialogue between Varaha and herself. In the third section (chapters 193 to 212), Suta describes the conversation between the king Janamejaya and the sage Vaishampayana . This section
12060-412: The foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a Vedānga . The Aṣṭādhyāyī was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full, and the culmination of a long grammatical tradition that Fortson says, is "one of the intellectual wonders of the ancient world". Pāṇini cites ten scholars on the phonological and grammatical aspects of the Sanskrit language before him, as well as
12194-537: The gods Varuna, Mitra, Indra, and Nasatya found in the earliest layers of the Vedic literature. O Bṛhaspati, when in giving names they first set forth the beginning of Language, Their most excellent and spotless secret was laid bare through love, When the wise ones formed Language with their mind, purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan, Then friends knew friendships – an auspicious mark placed on their language. — Rigveda 10.71.1–4 Translated by Roger Woodard The Vedic Sanskrit found in
12328-455: The good and the evil, the material and the spiritual, a beginning and an end. The Puranas describe Brahma as the god creating time. They correlate human time to Brahma's time, such as a mahākalpa being a large cosmic period, correlating to one day and one night in Brahma's existence. The stories about Brahma in various Puranas are diverse and inconsistent. In Skanda Purana , for example,
12462-431: The historic Sanskrit literary culture and the failure of new Sanskrit literature to assimilate into the changing cultural and political environment. Sheldon Pollock states that in some crucial way, "Sanskrit is dead ". After the 12th century, the Sanskrit literary works were reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity was restricted to hymns and verses. This contrasted with
12596-486: The intense change that must have occurred in the pre-Vedic period between the Proto-Indo-Aryan language and Vedic Sanskrit. The noticeable differences between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit include the much-expanded grammar and grammatical categories as well as the differences in the accent, the semantics and the syntax. There are also some differences between how some of the nouns and verbs end, as well as
12730-471: The ketaki flower as an ornament on his head then and fused that head into him then. The second version refers to the Vishnu Purana , where Vishnu created Brahma and Shiva from his navel and forehead respectively, thus making Brahma along with Shiva both as inferior to Vishnu, who created them both as the supreme god above them in all aspects of power in this universe and after that, when the creation of
12864-432: The largest cultural heritage that any civilization has produced prior to the invention of the printing press. — Foreword of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics (2009), Gérard Huet, Amba Kulkarni and Peter Scharf Sanskrit has been the predominant language of Hindu texts encompassing a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama , scientific , technical and others. It
12998-412: The linguistic expression and sets the standard for the Sanskrit language. Pāṇini made use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology and lexicon. This metalanguage is organised according to a series of meta-rules, some of which are explicitly stated while others can be deduced. Despite differences in the analysis from that of modern linguistics, Pāṇini's work has been found valuable and
13132-456: The literary works. The Indian tradition, states Winternitz , has favored the learning and the usage of multiple languages from the ancient times. Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the Ramayana , the Mahabharata ,
13266-511: The modern age include the Samaveda , Yajurveda , Atharvaveda , along with the embedded and layered Vedic texts such as the Brahmanas , Aranyakas , and the early Upanishads . These Vedic documents reflect the dialects of Sanskrit found in the various parts of the northwestern, northern, and eastern Indian subcontinent. According to Michael Witzel, Vedic Sanskrit was a spoken language of
13400-429: The more advanced Classical Sanskrit. Rituals and the rites-of-passage ceremonies have been and continue to be the other occasions where a wide spectrum of people hear Sanskrit, and occasionally join in to speak some Sanskrit words such as namah . Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini , around the fourth century BCE. Its position in the cultures of Greater India
13534-401: The most advanced analysis of linguistics until the twentieth century. Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit. His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia. It is unclear whether Pāṇini himself wrote his treatise or he orally created
13668-602: The most archaic poems of the Iranian and Greek language families, the Gathas of old Avestan and Iliad of Homer . As the Rigveda was orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity, as a single text without variant readings, its preserved archaic syntax and morphology are of vital importance in the reconstruction of the common ancestor language Proto-Indo-European . Sanskrit does not have an attested native script: from around
13802-597: The numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language. Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule . Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants . In Sanskrit,
13936-403: The oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they are ceremonial literature, where the exact phonetic expression and its preservation were a part of the historic tradition. However some scholars have suggested that the original Ṛg-veda differed in some fundamental ways in phonology compared to the sole surviving version available to us. In particular that retroflex consonants did not exist as
14070-431: The other." Reinöhl further states that there is a symmetric relationship between Dravidian languages like Kannada or Tamil, with Indo-Aryan languages like Bengali or Hindi, whereas the same relationship is not found for non-Indo-Aryan languages, for example, Persian or English: A sentence in a Dravidian language like Tamil or Kannada becomes ordinarily good Bengali or Hindi by substituting Bengali or Hindi equivalents for
14204-414: The possible influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is only one of many items of syntactic assimilation, not least among them the large repertoire of morphological modality and aspect that, once one knows to look for it, can be found everywhere in classical and postclassical Sanskrit". The main influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is found to have been concentrated in the timespan between the late Vedic period and
14338-439: The previous 1,500 years when "great experiments in moral and aesthetic imagination" marked the Indian scholarship using Classical Sanskrit, states Pollock. Scholars maintain that the Sanskrit language did not die, but rather only declined. Jurgen Hanneder disagrees with Pollock, finding his arguments elegant but "often arbitrary". According to Hanneder, a decline or regional absence of creative and innovative literature constitutes
14472-480: The problems of interpretation and misunderstanding. The purifying structure of the Sanskrit language removes these imperfections. The early Sanskrit grammarian Daṇḍin states, for example, that much in the Prakrit languages is etymologically rooted in Sanskrit, but involves "loss of sounds" and corruptions that result from a "disregard of the grammar". Daṇḍin acknowledged that there are words and confusing structures in Prakrit that thrive independent of Sanskrit. This view
14606-609: The regional Prakrit languages, which makes it likely that the interaction, the sharing of words and ideas began early in the Indian history. As the Indian thought diversified and challenged earlier beliefs of Hinduism, particularly in the form of Buddhism and Jainism , the Prakrit languages such as Pali in Theravada Buddhism and Ardhamagadhi in Jainism competed with Sanskrit in the ancient times. However, states Paul Dundas , these ancient Prakrit languages had "roughly
14740-497: The relationship between various Indo-European languages, the origin of all these languages may possibly be in what is now Central or Eastern Europe, while the Indo-Iranian group possibly arose in Central Russia. The Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches separated quite early. It is the Indo-Aryan branch that moved into eastern Iran and then south into South Asia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Once in ancient India,
14874-562: The role of language, the ontological status of painting word-images through sound, and the need for rules so that it can serve as a means for a community of speakers, separated by geography or time, to share and understand profound ideas from each other. These speculations became particularly important to the Mīmāṃsā and the Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy, and later to Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, states Frits Staal —a scholar of Linguistics with
15008-402: The sacred texts of Vedas , in the other hand, he holds a mala , symbolizing the time to create the universe, in the another hand, he holds a shruka, — a ladle symbolizing the means to feed sacrificial fire, and in the even another hand, a kamandalu – a utensil with water symbolizing the means from where all creation emits. His four mouths are credited with creating the four Vedas. He
15142-496: The same relationship to Sanskrit as medieval Italian does to Latin". The Indian tradition states that the Buddha and the Mahavira preferred the Prakrit language so that everyone could understand it. However, scholars such as Dundas have questioned this hypothesis. They state that there is no evidence for this and whatever evidence is available suggests that by the start of the common era, hardly anybody other than learned monks had
15276-556: The semi-nomadic Aryans . The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the " Mitanni Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and Mitanni people, carved into a rock, in a region that now includes parts of Syria and Turkey. Parts of this treaty, such as the names of the Mitanni princes and technical terms related to horse training, for reasons not understood, are in early forms of Vedic Sanskrit. The treaty also invokes
15410-445: The sky. Vishnu found about his defeat, revealing that he had been unable to locate the end, which was at the end of the universe and he got tired before he reached that so he was defeated in it there. However, Brahma had recruited the ketaki flower which fell from Shiva's head by his powers to end the debate here now, which was at the beginning of the universe with his beginning at there now and he got tired before he reached that so he
15544-615: The social structures such as the role of the poet and the priests, the patronage economy, the phrasal equations, and some of the poetic metres. While there are similarities, state Jamison and Brereton, there are also differences between Vedic Sanskrit, the Old Avestan, and the Mycenaean Greek literature. For example, unlike the Sanskrit similes in the Ṛg-veda, the Old Avestan Gathas lack simile entirely, and it
15678-502: The term brahmā are uncertain, partly because several related words are found in the Vedic literature, such as Brahman for the 'Ultimate Reality' and Brāhmaṇa for 'priest'. A distinction between the spiritual concept of brahman and the god Brahmā is that the former is a genderless abstract metaphysical concept in Hinduism, while the latter is one of the many masculine gods in Hindu tradition. The spiritual concept of brahman
15812-503: The three largest temples in the 9th-century CE Prambanan temples complex in Yogyakarta, central Java (Indonesia) is dedicated to Brahma, the other two to Shiva (largest of three) and Vishnu respectively. The temple dedicated to Brahma is on the southern side of Shiva temple and Vishnu temple. A statue of Brahma is present at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok , Thailand and continues to be revered in modern times. The golden dome of
15946-653: The turn of the 1st-millennium CE, it has been written in various Brahmic scripts , and in the modern era most commonly in Devanagari . Sanskrit's status, function, and place in India's cultural heritage are recognized by its inclusion in the Constitution of India 's Eighth Schedule languages . However, despite attempts at revival, there are no first-language speakers of Sanskrit in India. In each of India's recent decennial censuses, several thousand citizens have reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue, but
16080-425: The type found in other Puranas. The century in which Varaha Purana was composed is unknown. Wilson suggested 12th-century, during the period of Ramanuja influence. Most scholars concur that this is a relatively late Purana, and a few suggest that the first version of this text was complete by the 10th century. The text is named after the Varaha (boar) avatar of Vishnu, wherein he rescues goddess earth. The text
16214-417: The universe was always happening and he was the supreme god of this universe. The post-Vedic texts of Hinduism offer multiple theories of cosmogony , many involving Brahma. These include Sarga (primary creation of the universe) and Visarga (secondary creation), ideas related to the Indian thought that there are two levels of reality, one primary that is unchanging ( metaphysical ) and other secondary that
16348-402: The universe was completed, Brahma lost all of his importance after his role as creator of the universe ended and was removed from worship by everyone in the world, while Shiva was always worshipped as the destroyer of the universe after his role of the destruction of the universe was always happening and Vishnu was always worshipped as he was the preserver of the universe and his preserving role in
16482-491: The universe, and then their creative powers are revived. Brahma and Shiva, states the Bhagavata Purana, thereafter combine Prakriti (nature, matter) and Purusha (spirit, soul) to create a dazzling variety of living creatures, and a tempest of causal nexus. The Bhagavata Purana thus attributes the creation of Maya to Brahma and Shiva, wherein they creates for the sake of creation, imbuing everything with both
16616-408: The variants in the usage of Sanskrit in different regions of India. The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Āpiśali, Kaśyapa , Gārgya, Gālava, Cakravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja , Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka and Sphoṭāyana. In the Aṣṭādhyāyī , language is observed in a manner that has no parallel among Greek or Latin grammarians. Pāṇini's grammar, according to Renou and Filliozat, is a classic that defines
16750-564: The vernacular Prakrits. Many Sanskrit dramas indicate that the language coexisted with the vernacular Prakrits. The cities of Varanasi , Paithan , Pune and Kanchipuram were centers of classical Sanskrit learning and public debates until the arrival of the colonial era. According to Lamotte , Sanskrit became the dominant literary and inscriptional language because of its precision in communication. It was, states Lamotte, an ideal instrument for presenting ideas, and as knowledge in Sanskrit multiplied, so did its spread and influence. Sanskrit
16884-502: The Ṛg-veda is distinctly more archaic than other Vedic texts, and in many respects, the Rigvedic language is notably more similar to those found in the archaic texts of Old Avestan Zoroastrian Gathas and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . According to Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton – Indologists known for their translation of the Ṛg-veda – the Vedic Sanskrit literature "clearly inherited" from Indo-Iranian and Indo-European times
17018-408: Was a spoken language ( bhasha ) used by the cultured and educated. Some sutras expound upon the variant forms of spoken Sanskrit versus written Sanskrit. Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang mentioned in his memoir that official philosophical debates in India were held in Sanskrit, not in the vernacular language of that region. According to Sanskrit linguist professor Madhav Deshpande, Sanskrit
17152-427: Was a spoken language in a colloquial form by the mid-1st millennium BCE which coexisted with a more formal, grammatically correct form of literary Sanskrit. This, states Deshpande, is true for modern languages where colloquial incorrect approximations and dialects of a language are spoken and understood, along with more "refined, sophisticated and grammatically accurate" forms of the same language being found in
17286-472: Was adopted voluntarily as a vehicle of high culture, arts, and profound ideas. Pollock disagrees with Lamotte, but concurs that Sanskrit's influence grew into what he terms a "Sanskrit Cosmopolis" over a region that included all of South Asia and much of southeast Asia. The Sanskrit language cosmopolis thrived beyond India between 300 and 1300 CE. Today, it is believed that Kashmiri is the closest language to Sanskrit. Reinöhl mentions that not only have
17420-738: Was also the language of some of the oldest surviving, authoritative and much followed philosophical works of Jainism such as the Tattvartha Sutra by Umaswati . The Sanskrit language has been one of the major means for the transmission of knowledge and ideas in Asian history. Indian texts in Sanskrit were already in China by 402 CE, carried by the influential Buddhist pilgrim Faxian who translated them into Chinese by 418 CE. Xuanzang , another Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, learnt Sanskrit in India and carried 657 Sanskrit texts to China in
17554-605: Was born Ken Arok. The name Brahma is also used as the name of a mountain in the Tengger Mountains range, namely Mount Bromo . Mount Bromo is believed to be derived from the word Brahma and there was once a sect that believed that Brahmaloka – the universe where Brahma resided – was connected to Mount Bromo. In the Javanese version of wayang (shadow puppet play), Brahma has a very different role from his initial role. When Hindu society began to disappear from Java and
17688-545: Was born from a lotus emerging from the navel of the god Vishnu and Shiva was born from a fire emerging from the forehead of the god Vishnu . In contrast, the Shiva -focused Puranas describe Brahma and Vishnu to be born from Shiva's right and left sides of his waist; and in other Puranas , Shiva and Vishnu were born from Brahma's right and left sides of his waist or Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma creating each other cyclically in different aeons ( kalpas ). Yet others describe that
17822-476: Was defeated in it there and this came to him and he took him as a false witness to support his lie that he had located the beginning. Shiva then took his true form and cut off one of Brahma's five heads for his dishonesty, proclaiming that he would no longer receive an active following to his worship and would get a low status of popularity. Pleased with Vishnu's honesty, he offered him a high status of popularity and an active following dedicated to his worship and took
17956-442: Was visualized as "pervading all creation", another representation of the world itself; the "mysterious magnum" of Hindu thought. The search for perfection in thought and the goal of liberation were among the dimensions of sacred sound, and the common thread that wove all ideas and inspirations together became the quest for what the ancient Indians believed to be a perfect language, the "phonocentric episteme" of Sanskrit. Sanskrit as
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