Kāla Bhairava and the Fifth Head of Brahmā

The five-headed creator

In the beginning Brahmā had five heads, one facing each direction and one looking upward. One day, as the sages asked who was the supreme reality, Brahmā declared that it was himself — he was the creator, the source of the Vedas; who else could it be?

In one telling, even the Vedas themselves spoke up and said that the supreme was Śiva. But Brahmā's fifth head only laughed and spoke mockingly of Śiva — calling him a wanderer smeared with ash, who owned nothing.

Bhairava appears

At that moment a blazing light appeared, and within it a terrible form: dark as a storm cloud, with fierce eyes and fangs, garlanded with serpents, holding a trident. This was Bhairava — the Terrifying — born from Śiva's anger at arrogance.

Śiva said to him: you shall rule over time itself, and be called Kāla Bhairava. Bhairava strode to Brahmā, and with the nail of his left hand he nipped off the fifth head, the one that had spoken with such pride. From that day Brahmā has had four heads.

The skull that would not fall

But Brahmā was a Brahmin and the creator, and cutting off his head was brahmahatyā — the gravest of sins. Even Bhairava was bound by the law. The skull of Brahmā stuck fast to his palm and would not come loose. And the sin itself took the form of a terrible woman who followed him wherever he went.

So Bhairava became a wandering beggar — Bhikṣāṭana — naked, ash-covered, carrying Brahmā's skull as his begging bowl. He went from one holy place to the next, from one world to the next, to the heavens and to the realm of Viṣṇu. Nowhere could the skull be freed from his hand.

Kāśī

At last he came to Vārāṇasī — Kāśī, the city of light, which rests on Śiva's own trident and is outside the reach of ordinary law. As Bhairava stepped into the city, the woman who was his sin could not follow him. She sank into the earth. And the skull fell from his hand.

The place where it fell is honoured as Kapālamocana, “the release of the skull”. Bathing there is said to free even the gravest sin.

The guardian of the city

Śiva then made Bhairava the kotwāl — the guardian and police chief — of Kāśī. It is said that anyone who lives in the city or dies there must answer first to Kāla Bhairava, and that pilgrims should visit his temple before they leave, to take his permission.

At the Kāla Bhairava temple in Vārāṇasī, devotees still tie a black thread around their wrists for protection. And the story is remembered as a lesson both ways: that no one — not even the creator — is above humility, and no one — not even Śiva's own form — is above the law of consequences. Only in Kāśī, only by grace, is the skull set down.