Brahman Is Not Brahma

The single most persistent confusion in English writing on Hinduism is between Brahman, the impersonal absolute, and Brahma, the four-headed creator god. The words share a root and a first syllable, and there they part.

• Brahman is neuter, is not a person, is not worshipped, has almost no iconography, and is the subject of the Upanishads and of Vedanta.
• Brahma is masculine, is a deity of the Puranic pantheon, is depicted and named in myth, and is by a wide margin the least worshipped of the great gods, with almost no temples of his own.

A third relative, brahmin, the priestly class, and brahmana, the ritual texts, come from the same field of meaning, the sacred power of the formula and those who handle it. Keeping the four apart is the first thing to get right, because the doctrine of Brahman says the opposite of what it seems to if the word is read as the god.