He felt he wasn’t the right god to take it on, and thus delegated the task to thousands of his born-of-the-mind sons, mānasaputras. But he soon realized that something held them back from touching the matter of the world. The words of Nārada, the most indiscreet and subtle of the ṛṣis, were enough to deter them. Nārada said: “How can you create when you know nothing as yet? First travel around the earth, get the measure of it, then you will be able to create with discernment.” Brahmā’s sons agreed and, as though relieved of a silent torment, set off on their way. No one has seen them since.
“Having created his born-of-the-mind sons, the Lord Brahmā was not satisfied with his work.” Something was missing, an essential flavor. Brahmā began to invoke a name (Gāyatrī? Śatarūpā? Sāvitrī? Sarasvatī?—it was hard to make it out from that vague murmuring), until his breast opened and a female being slithered out onto the ground. Already disapproving of their progenitor’s absorption, his torpid delirium, his sons stood in a circle around him and watched. When they saw the girl, they immediately thought her their sister. Meanwhile Brahmā’s voice had grown clearer. He stared at the girl as if nothing else existed, and said: “What beauty! What beauty!” Brahmā’s sons watched him with contempt. Why was their father being so undignified? The girl, in the meantime, greeted the father and began to circle around him with ceremonial step. It was the first circumambulation, pradakṣiṇa, something practiced ever since in every temple in India. Sátarūpā’s step was slow, but to follow her Brahmā would have to turn his head. He could not bear to lose sight of her even for an instant. At the same time, he felt the malevolent eyes of his sons converging on him like so many pinpricks. So Brahmā sprouted a new head on each side, as Śatarūpā made her circumambulation around him. When she had finished, two brothers came to her sides, their faces grim and severe. Śatarūpā understood that she must obey. They took her wrists and told her to climb up to the sky with them. When they were already in flight, a fifth head sprouted from Brahmā’s skull, looking up toward Satarupa, until the girl was no more than a small, dark speck in the blue. When even that speck had gone, Brahmā felt lonely and quite worn out. He closed his eyes, ten of them now, and once again was aware of the hateful presence of his disapproving sons. “Go… Go…,” he said in a hiss. He heard a muddled shuffling, and hoped he would never have to see them again.
For a long time Brahmā stood motionless, eyes still closed. He felt his body emptied of the awesome tapas that until now had brought forth his creatures. As for the outside world, he knew that only one of his born-of-the-mind sons was still wandering around out there, a troublesome presence in the desert. That was Kāma, Desire, with his blossoming arrows. Suddenly Brahmā opened his eyes so that they poured forth rage. Kāma was before him, careless, and for that reason alone, mocking. Brahmā told him: “Now you’re satisfied, because thanks to your arrows you have made me ridiculous in the eyes of your brothers. And you mocked me, because Śatarūpā slipped away. You take pleasure in destroying me. But now the time has come for me to curse you. One day you will meet someone who will answer your arrows, and reduce you to ashes.”
For a long time Brahmā was alone, motionless. His only care was to hide his fifth head under his thick, black hair, twisting it into a bun on the top of his head. None of his born-of-the-mind sons had reappeared. Nor did Brahmā want them back. One memory obsessed him — and every so often he would still say to himself: “What beauty! What beauty!” When one day he found himself once again face-to-face with Śatarūpā, he thought it must be another of the mental images that tormented him. Without realizing, he had stretched out a hand, while Śatarūpā made the same gesture toward him. Their fingertips touched. In that instant, and it was like a shock, a revelation, Brahmā understood what contact is. So he got to his feet and without a word began to walk beside her. He was looking for a delightful, hidden place, where the intrusive gaze of his sons could never find him. They reached a pond. Brahmā asked Śatarūpā to lie down on a lotus petal. Then he lay beside her. Slowly the petal closed around them. There they stayed, for a hundred years of the gods, loving each other the way common people do. Thus they conceived Manu, who founded the society of men.
Brahmā’s fifth head would not always be hidden under a bun of raven hair. Sometimes people would catch a glimpse of something white, shiny even, behind those thick locks. And there were those who thought they had seen a horse’s head. Soon Śiva was to cut that head off. The reason for his anger is still a matter of controversy. Was it Brahmā’s desire for his daughter — or for the wives and daughters of the gods, or just in general for the first female creature he saw, who must have seemed irresistible to him if he couldn’t take his eyes off her, if he spent his seed without even touching her? Alternatively, some said that that fifth head unleashed a thirst-quenching energy, tejas, that shook the world. Or again it seems that the fifth head may have directed some arrogant remarks at Śiva, who already had five heads himself and perhaps didn’t appreciate the idea of another being’s diminishing his uniqueness and usurping his sacred number five. In order to maim Brahmā, Śiva took the form of the Tremendous, Bhairava. Using the nail of his left thumb, he severed the fifth head. So precise and so sharp was the cut that Brahmā stiffened, amazed, heads gazing in all four directions, as if nothing had happened. Śiva immediately tried to hurl Brahmā’s fifth head far away. Then he realized that it had stuck to the palm of his hand. Meanwhile the contents of the head poured out, leaving just the bony top of the skull, like a bowl, firmly stuck to his hand. Síva saw what was coming: to expiate his crime, the first and most serious of crimes, for in striking Brahmā he had struck at every future brahman, he would have to wander about for years, gathering food in that bowl, the kapāla, which would constantly and inescapably remind him of what he had done. That’s why they called him Kapālin. He-who-holds-the-bowl.
Brahmā was gloomy, oppressed. Those sons born-of-the-mind seemed such vacuous and cowardly beings. They would never understand, what it means, what it might mean, to exist—the gamble of it, the incongruity, the elusiveness, the muddle, the folly. They were born of the mind, they had lightness and mobility, but no more consistency than a will-o’-the-wisp. The danger was that the world would never be any more than, as it were, a strip of light cloth, flimsy and fluttering in the wind, offering no resistance.