Origin of the Linga in the Linga Purana
लिङ्गोद्भव
The pillar of fire, and the letters of Om inside it
The Linga Purana's seventeenth chapter answers the question every reader of the Linga Purana eventually asks: where did the linga come from? Brahma tells it in the first person, as a quarrel with Vishnu that ends when a column of fire appears and a sound comes out of it. This page retells that chapter and notes where it differs from the Shiva Purana's version of the same event.
The question and who answers it
The sages ask Suta how the linga came about, what it actually is, and why Rudra is worshipped in that form. Suta passes on Brahma's own account. The first lines of Brahma's reply are partly lost in the printed book we read from, where the page is smudged, so the opening here rests on the verses that follow it, which are clear.
Two gods who each think they are first
Brahma describes the end of a world-age. Everything alive has dried up and burned, and only dark water is left. On it sleeps a being with a thousand heads, eyes, feet and arms, whom the text names as Brahma, Rudra and Vishnu at once. Brahma, deluded by that being's maya, does not recognise him, asks sharply who he is, and shakes him awake. Vishnu rises from his serpent couch, smiling, and greets him warmly as a dear friend. Brahma takes offence, because he hears a teacher's tone, and says he is the creator and the source of everything. Vishnu answers that he is the maker, keeper and dissolver, that Brahma was born from his body, and that Brahma has forgotten only because of Vishnu's own maya. Each one asserts supremacy, and they begin to fight over the dark water.
The column of fire
A great linga then appears before them to settle the quarrel. It is a column of flame with no beginning, middle or end, and it neither grows nor shrinks. Both gods are bewildered. Vishnu proposes a test: he will go down to find its root and Brahma should go up to find its top. Vishnu becomes a huge dark boar and Brahma a swan. The text says Brahma is called Hamsa, the swan, from this event. For a thousand years each searches, and neither finds an end. Brahma, worn out, turns back, and Vishnu comes up tired and frightened too. They bow to Shiva, whom the text says deluded them with his maya.
Om comes out of the column
A loud, drawn-out Om then sounds from the pillar. Vishnu sees its parts spread over the linga: the letter a on the south side, bright as the sun, the letter u on the north, bright as fire, and the letter m in the middle, bright as the moon. Above them he sees the lord himself, clear as crystal, beyond attributes, with nothing inside or outside and yet containing both. The three measures and the half-measure of the humming tone together are called Brahman, and the three Vedas are the three measures. Vishnu then understands Shiva through the Vedas, which the text says appeared to him in the form of a sage.
What the three letters mean here
In this chapter, a stands for Brahma and creation, u for Vishnu and illusion, and m for Rudra and bliss. The text then offers a second reading in which m is the sower, a the seed and u the womb, and the three together with the tone are Shiva. The seed passes from the linga into the womb and becomes a golden egg that floats on the water for a thousand years. When the lord splits it, the upper half becomes heaven and the lower half earth, and four-faced Brahma is born from it. The translators add a note that Puranas do not agree on which letter belongs to which god, and that this order, with a for Brahma and u for Vishnu, is the Linga Purana's own.
The lord takes the form of sound
Pleased by their praise, the lord settles into the linga in the form of sound. The text then reads the Sanskrit alphabet as his body: the vowels make his head, eyes, ears, cheeks and lips, and the consonant groups his hands, legs, belly, sides and shoulders, with the m as his heart. Vishnu sees him with Uma and bows. Out of Om he then sees a five-part mantra, and from it a set of verses from the four Veda traditions. The text gives each a syllable count, a colour and a purpose: a Rig verse in Gayatri metre in green, an Atharvan one in black, a Yajus one in white for peace, and a Sama one in coral red, in Jagati metre, for creation and dissolution. The Atharvan one is given a harmful purpose in the text, which this page only notes. The five forms of Shiva are placed on his body: Ishana as the crown, Tatpurusha as the face, Aghora as the heart, Vamadeva as the hidden parts and Sadyojata as the feet. Having received these mantras, Vishnu repeats them and begins his hymn of praise, which opens the next chapter.
How this differs from the Shiva Purana
The Shiva Purana also tells a story of Brahma and Vishnu quarrelling before a fiery column. The two tellings share the boar and the swan, but this chapter makes the sound Om, with its letters, the heart of the event, and it ends in the alphabet as Shiva's body and the five mantras. Our Shiva Purana chapters add a war of divine weapons first, then Brahma's lie, supported by a ketaki flower, and the cutting of his fifth head, none of which appears in this Linga Purana chapter. The Linga Purana places the lord above both gods, which is the text's own sectarian position and is reported here as such.
Read the source chapters
Source note
Retold in our own words from the English translation of the Linga Purana by a board of scholars led by J.L. Shastri (Motilal Banarsidass), chapter 17, read from page images of the printed book. The retelling is condensed and does not reproduce the translation. The opening lines of the chapter are smudged in the printed page and are not relied on. The Sanskrit was not consulted.