Stories 11
Dattatreya: the three natures in one son
The sage Atri and his wife Anasuya earn great merit through their conduct and austerity.
Harihara: Vishnu and Shiva in one body
Vishnu and Shiva are shown as one figure divided down the middle.
Shiva as great time
Shiva is named Mahakala, great time, the one beyond time who ends all things.
Shiva under Kali's feet
Bengal's Kali stands on a corpse-like Shiva: without Shakti he is shava, a body; a Howrah folk dance plays the scene.
The Elephanta bust: Trimurti or Sadashiva?
A seven-metre three-faced bust fills the south wall of Elephanta's Cave 1.
The five faces and the five acts
Shiva's eternal form is pictured with five faces turned to the quarters and upward.
The queen's tower at Sivasagar
The Ahom queen Ambika, wife of Siva Singha, has the Borpukhuri tank dug between 1731 and 1738.
The silent teacher under the banyan
Shiva sits under a banyan tree facing south, one foot on the dwarf of ignorance.
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.
The three gods together on the Kailasa temple, Ellora
Genuine three-god scenes carved on Ellora's Kailasa: Lingodbhava with Brahma and Vishnu searching the pillar, Tripurantaka with Brahma as charioteer and Vishnu as arrow, and Harihara with Nandi and Garuda.
The triple shrine of Phnom Bok
A Khmer hilltop temple of Yasovarman I with three towers for Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma — a rare true Trimurti set — within a Cambodian tradition whose main composite cult was Harihara.