Devalok
In stone and bronze · 2 tellings · The Himalaya, West India

Dattatreya: the three natures in one son

Who is in it

The story, beat by beat

  1. The sage Atri and his wife Anasuya earn great merit through their conduct and austerity.
  2. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, pleased, grant them a son who carries all three natures.
  3. The son, Dattatreya, is shown with three heads and six arms holding the rosary and water-pot, the discus and conch, the trident and drum.
  4. A cow and four dogs accompany him.
  5. His worship spreads across Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra, Gujarat and the Himalayan regions.

combined form boon devotion

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Encyclopedia

Bhagavata and Markandeya Puranas

West India · Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra, Gujarat All traditions

The Bhagavata Purana counts Dattatreya among the avatars and describes him as a combined form of the three gods, born to Atri and Anasuya when the three, pleased with the couple's merit, gave them a son with all their natures. The Markandeya Purana is the other primary text. The image that grew from this is the only widely worshipped one in which Brahma is a full third of the god.

Dattatreya — Wikipedia

Encyclopedia

Regional worship

The Himalaya Smarta

Beyond the Deccan, Dattatreya is worshipped in the Himalayan regions, and one strand of tradition places his birth in Kashmir rather than at Mahur in Maharashtra. The iconography stays the same wherever he is honoured.

What is different here:

Birthplace shifts to Kashmir; the western Deccan tradition says Mahur.

Dattatreya — Wikipedia

Sources: Dattatreya — Wikipedia

More stories with the same people

How a tradition frames it

Three gods in one guru

Maharashtra folds Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva into the single three-headed guru Dattatreya, whose cult grows from the Guru Charitra and is claimed by Nath and Mahanubhava lines.
Legend

Anasuya tests the three gods

Narada provokes the three consorts into sending their husbands to test Anasuya's virtue; she turns them into infants and nurses them; the consorts beg for their husbands and she asks for sons — one three-headed Dattatreya, or three sons.
Origin

The mind-born sons, Narada and Daksha

Brahma wishes for children and brings them out of his own mind.
How a tradition frames it

One being, three functions: the Trimurti idea

The Maitri Upanishad names Brahma, Rudra and Vishnu together as portions of one being, matched to the three gunas.
In stone and bronze

The Elephanta bust: Trimurti or Sadashiva?

A seven-metre three-faced bust fills the south wall of Elephanta's Cave 1.
In stone and bronze

The so-called Trimurti cave at Mahabalipuram

Three Pallava shrines on one platform: Shiva in the centre, Vishnu on the right, and a disputed left shrine read as Brahma by Vogel but as Subrahmanya or Brahmasasta by later scholars; a Durga panel stands beside.
Origin

The golden womb and Prajapati

Before the gods there are only the primordial waters.
Origin

Brahma is born in the golden egg

A golden egg forms in the waters and glows like the sun.