Bhrigu tests the three gods

In the widely told popular version each visit ends in a sentence. Bhrigu curses Brahma to be unworshipped by humans; he curses Shiva to be worshipped only in the symbolic form of the linga; and Vishnu, kicked on the right side of the chest, apologises and is told to descend to earth to restore order. Orthodox Vishnu temples are said to mark the sage's footprint on the right of the image's chest. Some sites give the Padma Purana as the source of Brahma's curse, saying Bhrigu was ignored because Brahma and Saraswati were absorbed in music; that attribution is not verified. Tamil and Telugu audiences mostly know the story through the films Sri Venkateswara Mahatyam and Thirumalai Deivam.

In the Tirumala telling Narada sets the sages on their question and Bhrigu carries an extra eye on the sole of his foot. Only Vishnu fails to notice the sage, who kicks the chest where Lakshmi lives. Vishnu, pressing the foot to soothe it, crushes that eye and with it the sage's pride. Lakshmi, offended that her seat was struck and her husband did not object, leaves for Kolhapur. Vishnu comes down to the Venkata hill and spends twelve years in an anthill under a tamarind tree beside a tank, is born as Srinivasa and fostered by Vakula Devi, and marries Padmavati, daughter of Akasha Raja and an incarnation of Lakshmi, on a great loan from Kubera that devotees' offerings repay to this day. Ramanuja later fixed Vaishnava worship at the hill to settle a Shaiva–Vaishnava dispute about the deity.

The Kolhapur telling keeps only the ending: after the kick Vishnu bends to press the sage's legs, and Lakshmi, disgusted at his servility, leaves Vaikuntha and settles in Kolhapur, where she remains as Mahalakshmi or Ambabai. Pilgrims join Tirumala, Kolhapur and Padmavati's shrine into one circuit on the belief that Balaji cannot smile on a devotee whose wife has not. A magazine article sympathetic to the temple notes that this narrative is recent and appears in no religious text, and that the shrine is at heart a Shakta one; the Karavira Mahatmya instead has Bhrigu's lotus-born daughter destroy the demon Kolhasura at Vishnu's word.