Kala is time and time is death; Mahakala is the great time that swallows even the gods, and the tradition gives that name to Shiva in his darkest aspect, with Mahakali beside him as the same power in female form. The Shaktisamgama Tantra describes him. Ujjain has been his city since at least Kalidasa's day: there the linga faces south, the direction of death, and every morning before dawn it is bathed in ash brought from the burning-ground, so that the first sight of the god is of the end of things. Buddhists carried the figure north and east, where he guards the teaching in Tibet and has become the smiling Daikokuten of Japan.
Sources: Mahakala — Wikipedia; Mahakaleshwar Jyotirlinga — Wikipedia
King Chandrasena of Ujjain is a devotee of Shiva and a friend of Shiva's attendant Manibhadra.
The Maitri Upanishad names Brahma, Rudra and Vishnu together as portions of one being, matched to the three gunas.
The sage Atri and his wife Anasuya earn great merit through their conduct and austerity.
Vishnu and Shiva are shown as one figure divided down the middle.
A seven-metre three-faced bust fills the south wall of Elephanta's Cave 1.
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.
Shiva alone exists before the world.
Brahma's body splits into a male and a female half.