The festival tradition attributes to the Shiva Purana a story in which Vishnu leaves Vaikuntha for Varanasi to worship Shiva and promises a thousand lotuses. Counting them out, he finds one short and, rather than break the vow, takes out his own eye — lotus-like, as his epithets say — and lays it on the linga. Shiva gives the eye back and rewards the devotion with the Sudarshana discus. Vaikuntha Chaturdashi at Kashi Vishwanath and Bindu Madhav, and at Rishikesh and Gaya, keeps the day; a Godavari folk story about the brahmin Dhaneshwar is attached to the same date.
Base telling; chapter unidentified.
A related charter in the Skanda Purana's Kashi-khanda, told by Skanda to Agastya, has Vishnu dig a pool at Kashi with his discus, fill it with his own sweat and settle into a penance of fifty thousand years. Shiva, wondering at it, shakes his head and his jewelled earring falls into the water, which he names Manikarnika; Vishnu asks that the place be the foremost of all spots that grant liberation, and Shiva grants it. Cited through a pilgrimage site that quotes the text.
A different episode with the same shape — Vishnu as Shiva's devotee at Kashi — and a different boon, the ghat itself.
A widely repeated popular version raises the count to 1008 lotuses gathered from Manasarovar and offered with 1008 names; Shiva hides one to test the devotee, and Vishnu, remembering that he is called the lotus-eyed, offers an eye in its place. Shiva embraces him, restores the eye and gives the discus to fight evil. The telling cites no text.
Number raised to 1008; Shiva hides the lotus deliberately as a test.
Story of Shiva blessing Vishnu with the Sudarshana Chakra — Hindu Blog
Sources: Vaikuntha Chaturdashi — Wikipedia; Manikarnika Ghat, Kashi — Tirthayatra; Story of Shiva blessing Vishnu with the Sudarshana Chakra — Hindu Blog
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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.
During the dissolution Vishnu lies on the serpent Ananta in the cosmic waters.
Shiva alone exists before the world.
Brahma grows a fifth head, and with it pride or a false word.