The hymn to the golden womb in the tenth book of the Rigveda asks, verse after verse, which god deserves the offering, and answers with a creator who rises from the waters as a golden germ, holds up sky and earth, and stands alone above the gods. The name given to that creator is Prajapati. Later tradition folds Prajapati into Brahma, and the Mahabharata calls Brahma a Prajapati who makes many males and females.
The Brahmana makes Prajapati self-born from Brahman and gives him a companion, Vac, speech, with whom he makes the world. He comes out of a cosmic egg that floats for a year on the first sea; his sounds become sky and earth, his in-breath the gods and light, his out-breath the demons and darkness.
An egg rather than a womb; Vac as co-creator; devas and asuras as his breaths.
Sources: Hiranyagarbha — Wikipedia; Prajapati — Wikipedia
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.
A golden egg forms in the waters and glows like the sun.
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.