Manu's law-book opens with a cosmogony: the self-existent one makes the waters and drops a seed into them; it becomes a golden egg as bright as the sun, and inside it he himself is born as Brahma, the ancestor of every world. The Upanishadic elaboration lets the egg drift for a year and then break into two shells, the upper the sky and the lower the earth.
Several Puranas keep the egg but drop the outside maker: Brahma, called Svayambhu, the self-born, creates himself within the cosmic egg and then proceeds to create everything else. The Vishnu Purana's own egg passage is the text most often cited for this.
No prior creator; Brahma is self-born. The Vishnu Purana wording is UNVERIFIED in this pass.
Brahma — Wikipedia; The Vishnu Purana, Book I ch. 2 — H. H. Wilson (1840) unverified
Sources: Hiranyagarbha — Wikipedia; Brahma — Wikipedia; The Vishnu Purana, Book I ch. 2 — H. H. Wilson (1840)
The Maitri Upanishad names Brahma, Rudra and Vishnu together as portions of one being, matched to the three gunas.
The sage Atri and his wife Anasuya earn great merit through their conduct and austerity.
A seven-metre three-faced bust fills the south wall of Elephanta's Cave 1.
Three Pallava shrines on one platform: Shiva in the centre, Vishnu on the right, and a disputed left shrine read as Brahma by Vogel but as Subrahmanya or Brahmasasta by later scholars; a Durga panel stands beside.
Before the gods there are only the primordial waters.
During the dissolution Vishnu lies on the serpent Ananta in the cosmic waters.
Shiva alone exists before the world.
Brahma's four heads face the four directions and stand for the four Vedas.