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the creation of Vishnu through Pradyumna as a form of the deity is described, "and Vishnu (Aniruddha) created me, Brahm[=a], the upholder of the worlds; so am I made of Vishnu; I am caused only by thee."
While Brahm[=a) is represented here as identical with Vishnu he is at the same time a distinctly inferior personality, created by Vishnu for the purpose of creating worlds, a factor of inferior godliness to that of the World-Spirit, Krishna-Vishnu.
It had been stated by Holtzmann[28] that Brahm[=a] sometimes appears in the epic as a god superior to Vishnu, and on the strength of this L. von Schroeder has put the date of the early epic between the seventh and fourth centuries B.C, because at that time Brahm[=a] was the chief god.[29] von Schroeder rather exaggerates Holtzmann's results, and asserts that in the original form of the poem Brahm[=a] appears throughout as the highest and most revered god, while the worship of Vishnu and Civa as great gods is apparently a later intrusion" (loc. cit.). This asseveration will have to be taken cum grano. Had von Schroeder said 'pantheistic gods' he would have been correct in this regard, but we think that both Vishnu and Çiva were great gods, equal, if not superior to Brahm[=a], when the epic proper began. And, moreover, when one speaks of the original form of the poem he cannot mean the pseudo-epic or the ancient legends which have been woven into the epic, themselves of earlier date. No one means by the 'early epic' the tales of Agastya, of the creation of Death, of the making of ambrosia, but the story of the war in its earliest shape; for the epic poem must have begun with its own subject matter. Now it is not true that Brahm[=a] is regarded throughout the early poem as a chief god at all. If one investigate the cases where Vishnu or Çiva appears 'below' Brahm[=a] he will see, in almost every case that Holtzmann has registered, that this condition of affairs is recorded not in the epic proper but in the Brahmanic portions of the pseudo-epic, or in ancient legends alone. Thus in the story of the winning of ambrosia, of Agastya drinking ocean, and of R[=a]ma, Brahm[=a] appears to be above Vishnu, and also in some extracts from the pseudo-epic. For the real epic we know of but two cases that can be put into this category, and neither is sufficient to support the hypothesis built upon it.
