_Brahmā_, the Creator, a masculine noun, must be carefully distinguished from the neuter _Brahma_, the abstract First Being. The latter comes first in the scale of existence, while the former appears at some distance further on as the creator of the material world (see above, p. 60 f.). In modern days Brahmā has been completely eclipsed by Vishṇu and Śiva and even by some minor deities, and has now only four temples dedicated to his exclusive worship.[34] But there was a time when he was a great god. In the older parts of the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa he figures as one of the greater deities, perhaps the greatest. But in the later portions of the epic he has shrunk into comparative insignificance as compared to Vishṇu and Śiva, and especially to Vishṇu. This change faithfully reflects historical facts. During the last four or five centuries of the millennium which ended with the Christian era the orthodox Vēdic religion of the Brahmans had steadily lost ground, and the sects worshipping Vishṇu and Śiva had correspondingly grown in power and finally had come to be recognised as themselves orthodox. Brahmā, as his name implies, is the ideal Brahman sage, and typifies Vēdic orthodoxy. He is represented as everlastingly chanting the four Vēdas from his four mouths (for he has four heads), and he bears the water-pot and rosary of eleocarpus berries, the symbols of the Brahman ascetic. But Vēdic orthodoxy had to make way for more fascinating cults, and the Vēdic Brahman typified in the god Brahmā sank into comparative unimportance beside the sectarian ascetics. Still the old god, though shorn of much of his glory, was by no means driven from the field. The new churches looked with reverence upon his Vēdas, and often claimed them as divine authority for their doctrines; and though each of them asserted that its particular god, Śiva or Vishṇu, was the Supreme Being, and ultimately the only being, both of them allowed Brahmā to retain his old office of creator, it being of course understood that he held it as a subordinate of the Supreme, Śiva or Vishṇu as the case might be. Meanwhile, at any rate between the third and the sixth centuries, there existed a small fraternity who regarded Brahmā as the Supreme, and therefore as identical with the abstract Brahma; but although they have left a record of their doctrines in the Mārkaṇḍēya-purāṇa and the Padma-purāṇa, they have had little influence on Indian religion in general. [Footnote 34: Those are at Pushkar in Rajputana, Dudahi in Bundelkhand, Khed Brahma in Idar State, and Kodakkal in Malabar.]