Legend · 5 tellings · North India, Pan-India, South India
Brahma's fifth head and the skull that would not fall
Bhairava, born from Shiva's brow, cuts off Brahma's fifth head; the skull sticks to his hand and the sin of brahmin-killing follows him; he wanders as a beggar, kills Vishnu's gatekeeper, is fed blood from Vishnu's forehead, and is freed when the skull falls at Kashi.
In the Shiva Purana the trigger is Brahma's dishonest claim of superiority over Vishnu at the pillar of light. Shiva produces Bhairava from the space between his brows, and Bhairava beheads the fifth head that spoke the lie. The skull will not leave his hand and the guilt of brahmin-killing clings to him; he roams the three worlds with it. At Vaikuntha Vishnu and Lakshmi receive him with honour, and it is only at Kashi that the skull falls and the sin departs, at the place since called Kapalamochana. A verse quoted on a Shiva Purana blog describes the skull dropping and the tirtha coming into being.
What is different here:
Base telling. Trigger = the pillar lie; Vishnu honours the beggar rather than being attacked.
In the Skanda-based and popular telling the fault is desire. Brahma makes a woman, Shatarupa, from himself and cannot stop looking at her; as she moves away he grows a head on each side to keep her in view, and when she rises above him a fifth head grows upward. Shiva cuts off that fifth head because wanting one's own daughter is incest, and rules that Brahma will have no proper worship. Pattanaik's version adds that the head can come off Shiva's hand only when he reaches Kashi and washes in the Ganga; the Matsya Purana names the woman Satarupa, Sarasvati, Sandhya or Brahmi.
What is different here:
Trigger = incestuous desire; the curse of no worship is spoken here too; the Kashi ending is retained.
For Kashi the story is a charter for the Bhairava shrine and the Kapalamochana bathing place. The Kashi-khanda of the Skanda Purana devotes a chapter to the manifestation of Bhairava and says that merely remembering Kapalamochana frees a person from sin; Kala Bhairava's temple stands on its bank in the Omkareshwar quarter north of Maidagin. The chapter itself could not be read in translation and is cited through a pilgrimage site that quotes it.
What is different here:
Place-centred: the wandering and the blood-alms fall away; the point is the tirtha and the city's guardian.
Other Puranas keep the beheading but change its cause. In the Kurma Purana Brahma proclaims himself supreme creator before a council of sages, Shiva appears as the pillar of light, the sages accept him, and Bhairava cuts one head when Brahma alone will not yield; the Shiva and Matsya Puranas likewise cite Brahma's arrogance. In the Varaha Purana the offence is Brahma calling Shiva a skull-bearer, a Kapali. A Bengali recension of the Shiva Purana has Brahma insult Shiva with the mouth of the fifth head itself.
What is different here:
Same act, different provocation: arrogance, an insult, or the name 'Kapali'.
In the Tamil south the beggar with the skull is sung by the Tevaram saints Campantar and Appar and carved throughout Chola temples as Bhikshatana, the naked mendicant followed by love-struck sages' wives, and as Kankalamurti carrying the slain gatekeeper on his trident. The beheading is the back-story; the image of the wandering beggar is what the tradition dwells on.
What is different here:
Emphasis on the wandering beggar rather than the beheading or the Kashi release.