In Hinduism, Even the Creator was Created

The word Sanantan Dharma used by politicians tries to proclaim that Hinduism is unchanging and the only disruption came because of Muslims and British, and their political opponents.

- Devdutt Pattanaik

But that is not true. Take the case of the Hindu Trinity. Today, we speak about Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. But this concept of the four-headed creator known as Brahma who performs Vedic ritual emerges much later in Hindu history, about 2,000 years ago. This Brahma is not found in the Vedic corpus at all.

In the Vedic corpus, which is over 3,000 years old, the word Brahman refers to the power of the cosmos that can be invoked through the chants and the mantras. It is the hidden meaning and the power to change things through sound. This Brahman later in the Upanishads comes to mean the cosmic spirit in the universe and has nothing to do with the four-headed Brahma.

The idea of the creator god first emerges in the Rig Veda in the form of the Purusha who is said to be a primal organism with multiple heads, multiple arms, who is dismembered and sacrificed into various parts from whom different parts of nature come into being like the sun and the moon and the wind and the waters and finally the plants and the animals.