On the full moon of Margashirsha, the tradition honours a figure unlike any other in its pantheon. He has three heads and six hands, four dogs at his feet and a cow behind him, and he is regarded as the combined form of the three great gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, in a single body. He is Dattatreya, and Datta Jayanti marks his appearance. ## The one who is three Dattatreya is the son of the sage Atri and his wife Anasuya, whose devotion and virtue were so complete that the three gods themselves came to test her. The tradition tells how, through her purity, she turned the test aside, and in blessing her the three granted that a portion of each of them would be born as her son. So Dattatreya is Datta, the given one, in whom Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are not three deities standing together but one being. His form holds the meaning. The three heads are the three gods, creation, preservation and dissolution, seen as a single reality. The cow behind him is the earth and the Vedas. The four dogs are often read as the four Vedas, following at his heel. He is at once a god, a yogi and a guru, and he is regarded as the first teacher of many ascetic and yogic lineages. ## The avadhuta and the twenty-four teachers Dattatreya is the great avadhuta, the liberated one who has shed all convention and wanders free, beyond ritual and rule. The tradition's most beautiful teaching about him comes from the Bhagavata, where he describes how he gained wisdom not from a single guru but from twenty-four teachers, all of them drawn from the world around him. He learned patience from the earth, which bears all things without complaint. Detachment from the wind, which touches everything but clings to nothing. Constant flow from the river. From the bee that gathers nectar from many flowers, he learned to take the essence of every teaching without harming its source. From a moth drawn to flame, the danger of sense pleasure. From a child and from a young woman quietly husking grain, he learned solitude and contentment. The lesson within the lesson is the one Dattatreya is loved for. The whole world is a teacher to the one who is willing to learn. Wisdom is not locked in scripture alone; it is written across nature and ordinary life for anyone with the eyes to read it. ## Why he is revered Dattatreya holds a special place because he unites what others keep separate. The sectarian divisions that grow up between followers of Vishnu and Shiva dissolve in him, for he is plainly both, and Brahma besides. To worship Dattatreya is to worship the single reality behind the many forms, which is the tradition's deepest claim about the divine. He is especially revered in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat, and several great later teachers are regarded as his incarnations or are linked to his lineage. His shrines often have no grand idol, only his sandals, the paduka, as the object of devotion, a fitting humility for the wandering avadhuta. ## How the day is kept On Datta Jayanti, devotees fast, read the texts associated with him, and gather at his shrines for worship that often culminates at moonrise on the full moon. His simple invocation is Shri Gurudev Datta. The day's teaching is portable and plain. See the one in the many. And learn from everything. The earth, the river, the wind and the smallest creature are all, to the willing student, a guru. ## Related reading - [Saguna and Nirguna: Two Paths to the Same Truth](/sanatan-katha/saguna-nirguna-paths) - [Adi Shankaracharya: The Monk Who United Bharatvarsha](/sanatan-katha/adi-shankaracharya-story) - [Krishna: The Many Faces of the Eighth Avatara](/sanatan-katha/krishna-deity-profile)