Taraka's three sons win from Brahma three flying cities of iron, silver and gold, built by Maya.
The boon: the cities can fall only to a single arrow, at the moment they line up under a rare star.
The brothers grow proud and torment the worlds.
The gods build Shiva a chariot of the cosmos: the earth its body, sun and moon its wheels, Meru the bow, Vasuki the string, Vishnu the arrow, Agni its tip, Vayu its feathers, Brahma its driver.
Shiva waits a thousand years for the cities to align.
He looses the one arrow and the three cities burn.
The Tamil tradition says he burned them with a smile, hardly needing the bow.
Shiva Purana (Rudra Samhita, Yuddha Khanda) and Matsya Purana
Pan-IndiaShaiva
After Taraka fell, his three sons did what their father had done and earned a boon from Brahma by austerity. They asked for three cities that could fly, and the architect Maya built them: one of iron for the underworld, one of silver for the earth, one of gold for the sky. Brahma would not make them deathless but he made them almost so: the cities could be destroyed only by one arrow, shot at the one moment in a thousand years when the three passed in line under the Pushya star. With that assurance the brothers turned on the worlds. The gods built a chariot for Shiva out of everything there was, with Brahma to drive, Meru bent into a bow, the serpent king for a string and Vishnu himself as the shaft with fire at its point. Shiva mounted and waited. When the three cities slid into line he drew once, and the three cities and all in them went up in a single fire. The Tamil temples of the Tripurantaka, at Tiruvatikai and Tiruvirkolam, say he did it with a smile.
West India · Ellora (Maharashtra), Pattadakal and Hampi (Karnataka)Shaiva
The archer on the cosmic chariot is one of the great subjects of Deccan sculpture: the Kailasa temple at Ellora, the Pattadakal shrines, the Hoysala temples at Javagal and Hosa Holalu and the Virupaksha at Hampi all carve Shiva drawing the bow with Brahma at the reins.
What is different here:
Iconographic record of the same scene across four centuries of Deccan temples.