168 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY
Mahabharata, similarly, we are constantly startled by the mention of Brahma. He is there called the grandsire, the creator, and sometimes the ordainer, with face turned on every side. This last attribute is perhaps derived from some old mysticism, which gave the Romans Janus—from which our own January—and found expression amongst the Hindus in the four-headed image, and the weapon with four heads called Brahma's head, as mentioned in the Ramayana. While constantly referred to in the Mahabharata, however, Brahma is nowhere there invested with new functions. He does not appear as a growing concept of the divine. He plays rather the part of one receding from actuality who must constantly be held in memory. In the Puranic stories of Krishna, similarly, no one goes to Brahma with any prayer or austerity, as they do to Shiva. He is no dynamic factor in the life of men. Yet He is the Creator, beyond all argument. He is chief and eldest of Hindu post-vedic deities. His position needs no proving. It is accepted by all. Nor does Brahma in the Puranas require to be convinced that Vishnu is the equal of himself : Krishna, as the presentment of Vishnu, is new to him, but Vishnu himself He takes for granted. At the same time, while indisputably supreme, Brahma is by no means a spiritual reality. That place, as other stories and the whole of the Mahabharata show, is filled by Shiva, with whom are associated all those philosophical ideas nowadays described as Vedantic. And yet, if the story of
