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Parashara spoke. Listen, Maitreya. At the dawn of the kalpa, when Brahma first turned his mind toward the making of the worlds, a creation of pure darkness rose up before him, formed without any care or design. Within it appeared the five kinds of ignorance: tama, moha, mahamoha, tamisra, and andhatamisra. From dwelling upon this darkness came five kinds of unmoving, senseless things that take root in the earth: trees, shrubs, creepers, vines, and grasses. Because these were established first of all, this is called the primary creation, the mukhya sarga.
This creation did not seem fit for the pursuit of any real purpose, so Brahma meditated again, and there came forth the tiryak-srotas creation, the beings that move sidewise: the animals and the birds. These are mostly without knowledge, lacking discernment, and given to thinking themselves wise. This too seemed insufficient, and so arose the third creation, the sattvic urdhva-srotas, whose current flows upward, the gods who dwell in the higher worlds; in this Brahma took great delight. Yet still no perfect vehicle for purposeful striving appeared, and from the unmanifest there emerged the creation called arvak-srotas, whose current flows downward and which lives here below upon the earth. In it all three qualities are present, sattva, rajas, and tamas together, and for that reason it is heavy with sorrow and intensely active as well: this is the human being. Above these stands the eighth creation, the anugraha sarga, which is at once sattvic and tamasic, and the ninth, the kaumara sarga, which is at once primary and derived. In this way the creation of mahat-tattva, of the subtle tanmatras, and of the senses, these three primary (prakrita) creations, together with the creations of the unmoving things, the sidewise-moving creatures, the gods, and humankind, these derived (vaikrita) creations, made nine kinds of creation fashioned in order, and this became the root cause of the whole world.
Beings Born from Brahma’s Body
Listen, Maitreya. When this mind-born creation proved insufficient, Brahma, wishing to bring forth gods, asuras, ancestors, and human beings, made use of his own body. First the quality of tamas rose within that body, and from his thighs the asuras were born. He set that body of darkness aside, and the discarded body became night. Then, entering a second body and filled with gladness, from his mouth he brought forth the gods, in whom sattva prevails, and that abandoned body became day. This is why the asuras are strong by night and the gods by day. Next, in the mood of a forefather, he created the ancestors from his side, and that body became twilight; then from a body of rajas the human beings arose, and that body became the soft light of dawn. This is why human beings are strong in the morning and the ancestors at evening.
After this, from yet another body of rajas, hunger arose, and from hunger woke desire. The beings shaped in that darkness, tormented by hunger, were misshapen and bearded, and they ran straight at Brahma himself. Those who cried out, do not do this, protect these creatures, came to be called rakshasas; and those who cried, we will devour them, came to be called yakshas. Seeing this calamity, the hair fell from Brahma’s head and then climbed back up; rising upward, those strands became the serpents called sarpa, and falling downward, the serpents called ahi. Then, filled with anger, he created beings of a yellow hue, fierce in nature and eaters of flesh, and while he sang, the gandharvas came forth from his body, giving voice even as they were born.
After this he created the birds, and from his chest sheep, from his mouth goats, from his belly cattle, and from his feet horses, elephants, donkeys, camels, deer, and the other beasts, while from the hairs of his body he brought forth the healing plants that bear fruit and root. Having made the animals and the plants at the very beginning of the kalpa, he set them to their work in sacrifice and ritual at the opening of the Treta age. Then from his eastern mouth he uttered the Gayatri and the Rig, from his southern mouth the Yajus, from his western mouth the Sama, and from his northern mouth the Atharva Veda. Whatever deeds a being had done in the kalpa now past, that same form and nature return to it each time creation comes around again, the way the seasons circle back and bring their old signs with them.
The Four Varnas and Their Worlds
Brahma, whose will is truth, brought forth from his mouth the brahmana in whom sattva prevails, from his chest the kshatriya in whom rajas prevails, from his thighs the vaishya of mingled rajas and tamas, and from his feet the shudra in whom tamas prevails. This whole ordering of the four varnas was made to serve as the finest instrument of sacrifice, for when the gods are satisfied by yajna, the fire-rite, they send down the rains, and the people are sustained. In the beginning the people were full of faith, pure, and content; in their untroubled hearts Shri Hari dwelt, and they could behold that supreme station which bears the name of Vishnu. But in time, as an age of the world wore on, the seed of unrighteousness, of craving and its kin, sprouted within them; their happiness dwindled and their suffering grew. Then they raised forts and cities, built houses to shelter themselves from cold and blazing sun, and devised farming and the crafts to earn their bread. Rice, barley, wheat, sesame, chickpea, and the rest, seventeen cultivated grains along with certain wild plants, were put to the use of sacrifice at this time.
Brahma fixed the duties of the varnas and the stages of life, and he appointed a world for each. For the brahmanas devoted to their sacred work he named the world of the ancestors, the pitrloka; for the kshatriyas who never turn back in battle, the world of Indra; for the vaishyas faithful to their calling, the world of the wind; and for the shudras given to service, the world of the gandharvas. To the forest hermits went the world of the seven rishis, to the householders the world of the ancestors, and to those who renounce, the world of Brahma. For those who ceaselessly meditate on Brahman in solitude, the highest station is that seat of liberation, moksha, which only the wise can see. The moon, the sun, and the other planets travel to their worlds and come back again; but those who meditate on this mantra, नमो भगवते वासुदेवाय, never return.
The Prajapatis and Svayambhuva Manu
When the people did not multiply in the ordinary course of birth, Brahma created nine mind-born sons in his own likeness: Bhrigu, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu, Angira, Marichi, Daksha, Atri, and Vasishtha; in the Puranas these nine are counted as nine Brahmas. Then he brought forth nine daughters, Khyati, Bhuti, Sambhuti, Kshama, Priti, Sannati, Urja, Anasuya, and Prasuti, and gave them as wives to these great sages. Those whom Brahma had fashioned first of all, Sanandana and his brothers, were free of all attachment and would not engage themselves in the work of creation at all.
Seeing their indifference, such anger rose in Brahma that all three worlds blazed with flame. From his knotted brows and burning forehead appeared Rudra, half his body a man’s and half a woman’s, radiant as the noonday sun. Brahma told him to divide his body, and then vanished from sight. So Rudra parted his male and female halves, splitting the male half into eleven forms and the female half into many forms, gentle and terrible, calm and unquiet.
After this, for the sustaining of the people, Brahma brought forth from his own self the first Manu, Svayambhuva, and gave him as wife a woman named Shatarupa, made pure by austerity. From Svayambhuva Manu and Shatarupa came two sons, Priyavrata and Uttanapada, and two daughters, Prasuti and Akuti. Prasuti was given in marriage to Daksha, and Akuti to Ruchi Prajapati. From Ruchi and Akuti came twin children named Yajna and Dakshina, and from Yajna and Dakshina came twelve sons, who in the reign of Svayambhuva Manu were called the gods known as the Yamas. From Daksha and Prasuti twenty-four daughters were born; of these, thirteen, Shraddha, Lakshmi, Dhriti, Tushti, Medha, and the rest, were married to Dharma, and the remaining eleven, Khyati, Sati, Sambhuti, and the others, were given to the sages Bhrigu, Shiva, Marichi, Angira, and their kind.
In this way the Prajapatis, Daksha, Marichi, Atri, Bhrigu, and the rest, became the cause of the world’s ceaseless creation, and Manu together with his valiant sons, those brave kings devoted to the righteous path, became the cause of this world’s continual endurance. The all-pervading Lord Madhusudana, whose motion nothing anywhere can halt, through these forms of Manu and the others carries on without end the birth, the sustenance, and the dissolution of the world.
The dissolution of all beings, too, is said to be of four kinds, Maitreya. When Brahma sleeps at the close of the kalpa, that is the occasional dissolution, the naimittika. When the cosmic egg is absorbed back into primal nature, that is the elemental dissolution, the prakritika. The merging of the yogi into the supreme Self through knowledge is the absolute dissolution, the atyantika, and the wearing away of living things that goes on by night and by day is the constant dissolution, the nitya. In this manner, seated within all bodies, it is Lord Vishnu alone who carries on the birth, the sustenance, and the dissolution of the world. These three Vaishnavi powers, of creation, of preservation, and of destruction, are woven of the three gunas; whoever crosses beyond these three qualities attains the supreme station and falls no more into the wheel of birth and death.
Source: the Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)