Andhaka

Variant Puranic accounts record two principal origins. In the Shiva Purāṇa variant summarized in sources, Parvati's contact with Shiva's powerful third eye produces sweat that falls to earth and creates a 'horrible looking and blind boy' who becomes Andhaka; he is linked in genealogical cycles to asura kin and figures such as Hiraṇyākṣa. In an alternate Purāṇic account, Andhaka acquires power by performing severe tapas—abstaining from water and food and even severing his own limbs—which brings Brahmā to grant boons (restoration of vision and powerful protections subject to conditional limits). These variants coexist across Matsya, Kūrma, Liṅga, Padma, Shiva Purāṇa and Skandapurāṇa witnesses cited in the sources.

Accounts vary: the Shiva Purāṇa birth account describes him initially as a blind, horrible-looking boy. Other Puranic descriptions give hyperbolic monstrous features: one tradition reports 'one thousand heads, and one thousand arms, and also having two thousand eyes,' while another version records 'two thousand arms, and two thousand legs.' These differing images appear in the Puranic summaries preserved in the cited sources.

Andhaka gains supernatural might through tapas and a boon from Brahmā (including restored sight and conditions on death). He conquers and subdues many opponents—Devas, Nāgas, Gandharvas, Rākṣasas, Yakṣas and humans—and in one account becomes lord over multiple worlds. He leads prolonged wars (one battle is said to have lasted seven hundred years), directly assaults Shiva and attempts to seize Parvati, and commands forces whose generals can overwhelm gods. A noted supernatural trait in the Shiva Purāṇa tradition is regenerative proliferation: whenever his blood fell to the ground a copy of him would spawn; Vishnu counters this by creating Mātṛkās to drink the blood. Narrative limits on his invulnerability include Brahmā's warning that Shiva may kill him and, in another variant, a boon clause that he could be killed if he lusted after a woman like a mother. In some variants, after defeat Andhaka chants Shiva's name in repentance and is informed of his parentage and appointed a Gaṇa chief, indicating narrative possibilities of transformation and reintegration.