The Quarrel of the Creator and the Preserver
At the dawn of a new cosmic cycle, Brahmā the four-faced Creator and Viṣṇu the reclining Preserver met upon the cosmic waters. Each was certain of his own supremacy. Brahmā declared, 'I am the origin — from my mouth flow the Vedas; from my mind, the ancestors of every world.' Viṣṇu smiled from his serpent-couch and replied, 'And yet you were born from the lotus that rose from my navel. Without my sustaining Sattva no world you author could endure.' Words hardened into pride, and pride into quarrel, until the waters themselves grew still, waiting to see how the argument would end.
✦ Visual cue — Four-faced Brahmā seated on a golden lotus and blue-skinned Viṣṇu reclining on the serpent Śeṣa, arguing across a moonlit cosmic ocean, with a faint column of light rising between them.
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