Brahmaniब्राह्मी

Brahmāṇī, or Brāhmī (ब्राह्मी), leads the Saptamātṛkā, the seven mothers of Hindu tradition. Each Mātṛkā bears the form and emblems of a great god while remaining, in the theology of the Goddess, an aspect of a single feminine power; Brahmāṇī is the śakti of Brahmā, the creator. Like him she has four faces, a golden or reddish complexion, and rides the haṃsa, the swan or wild goose that in Indian symbolism stands for discrimination between the real and the unreal.

In the texts

The Mātṛkās appear across the Purāṇas, most memorably in the Devī Māhātmya, where the śaktis of the gods issue forth to join the Goddess in her war against the demons Śumbha and Niśumbha. Brahmāṇī emerges first, riding the swan, sprinkling water from her kamaṇḍalu, the ascetic's pot, whose drops sap the vigour of the demon armies. Other Purāṇic accounts attach the mothers to Śiva's battle with the demon Andhaka, created to drink the blood of a foe who multiplied from every fallen drop.

Iconography

She carries the akṣamālā, the rosary, and the kamaṇḍalu, the emblems of Brahmā's priestly and ascetic character rather than weapons of war; sculptors sometimes add the ladle of the Vedic sacrifice. In the standard Mātṛkā panel, carved across temple walls from the Gupta period onward and placed under the guardianship of Vīrabhadra and Gaṇeśa, she occupies the first position. Notably, while Brahmā himself receives almost no independent worship in later Hinduism, his feminine counterpart endured in temple sculpture and in the Śākta liturgies that invoke the seven mothers together.