The Three-Headed Priest

The sages told the Pandavas of Trishira, the three-headed son of the divine craftsman Tvashta, and of the terrible chain of events his death set in motion - the sin of Indra, the birth of Vritra, and the great drought - a tale of how suspicion and a hasty killing breed an enemy far worse than the one destroyed.

The divine craftsman Tvashta, the maker of forms among the gods, had a son named Trishira, also called Vishvarupa, the All-Formed: a being born with three heads. With one head he recited the sacred Vedas; with the second he drank wine; and with the third he gazed upon all the quarters of the world, as if devouring them with his eyes. Trishira was a brahmana of fierce austerity and great holiness, who practiced penance with terrible severity, and his power grew until the gods, and Indra their king, began to watch him with unease, fearing what so mighty an ascetic might become.