Studies in the Epics and Puranas c8.109

c8.109

In another account it is stated that Brahmā assumed four different forms in succession and from them were produced the demons, the gods, the forefathers and mankind.56 And afterwards assuming another form he produced from his limbs all other living beings, creatures and vegetation. But those beings did not multiply, and he created from his mind sons⁵⁷ known as Ṛṣis and also deities called Rudras. Saptarṣis among these sons hold a unique and permanent position in cosmogony. The Rudras are generally identified with Śiva. Next, Brahmā created the first Manu Svāyambhuva and a woman Śatarūpā. These two had two sons, Priyavrata and Uttānapāda, and a daughter. Dakṣa married her and had twenty-four daughters, of whom thirteen were married to Dharma and bore love and other personified feelings; ten were married to the other mind-born sons, and Agni and the fore-fathers, and one named Satī became Śiva's consort. But this account is all the more complicated by a further story that Dakṣa was reborn in Uttānapāda's lineage as Dakṣa Prācetasa, and then created movable and immovable things, bipeds and quadrupeds, and also begot sixty daughters of whom ten were married to Dharma, thirteen to Marīci's son Kaśyapa, twenty-seven to the moon, and ten to others.