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He is a shadowy, fatherly, beneficent advisor to the gods, his children; but all his activity is due to Vishnu. This, of course, is from the point of view of the Vishnuite.
But there is no Brahm[=a]ite to modify the impression. There existed no strong Brahm[=a] sect as there were Vishnu and Çiva sects. Brahm[=a) is in his place merely because to the preceding age he was the highest god; for the epic regards Creator, Praj[=a]pati, Pit[=a]maha, Brahm[=a) as synonymous.[22] The abstract brahma, which in the Upanishads is the same with the Supreme Spirit, was called personally Brahm[=a], and this Brahm[=a) is now the Brahmanic Father-god. The sects could never get rid of a god whose being was rooted alike in the preceding philosophy and in the popular conception of a Father-god. Each age of thought takes the most advanced views of the preceding age as its axioms. The Veda taught gods; the Br[ra]hmanas taught a Father-god above the gods; the Upanishads taught a Supreme Godhead of which this Father-god was the active manifestation. The sects taught that their heroes were incarnations of this Supreme, but they carried with them the older pantheon as well, and, with the pantheon, its earlier and later heads, Indra and Brahm[=a). Consequently each sect admits that Brahm[=a) is greater than the older Vedic gods, but, while naturally it identifies its special incarnation first with its most powerful opponent, and thus, so to speak, absorbs its rival, it identifies this incarnation with Brahm[=a] only as being chief of lesser divinities, not as being a rival. One may represent the attitude of a Krishna-worshipper in the epic somewhat in this way: "Krishna is a modern incarnation of Vishnu, the form which is taken in this age by the Supreme Lord. You who worship Çiva should know that your Çiva is really my Krishna, and the chief point is to recognize my Krishna as the Supreme Lord. The man Krishna is the Supreme Lord in human form. Of course, as such, being the One God in whom are all things and beings, he is also all the gods known by names which designate his special functions. Thus he is the head of the gods, the Father-god, as our ancestors called him, Brahm[=a], and he is all the gods known by still older names, who are the children of the secondary creator, Brahm[=a), viz., Agni, Indra, S[=u]rya, etc. All gods are active manifestations of the Supreme God called Vishnu, who is born on earth today as Krishna." And the Civaite says: "Çiva is the manifestation of the All-god," and
