Shripad SriVallabh was born in a Brahmin family in a village named Pithapur (East Godavari District in Andhra Pradesh, India). A Brahmin couple Appala Raju Sharma and Sumathi, were lovers of Lord Datta. They had many children of whom only two survived. OnE was lame and the other was blind. They worshiped Lord Datta and never neglected to offer food to mendicants and monks. They looked upon all such as they very forms of Lord Datta. One day, they were doing the yearly observance in their mansion and many Brahmins were invited as guests to the banquet. Custom maintains that none should eat on that day before these guests share their food.
‘Digmbara, digambara, Sripaad vallabha digambara;
Digambara, digambara, Advdhutachintana digambara’
At that time Lord Dattatreya appeared at their doorstep in the frame of a renunciate Sadhu (holy man), carrying the staff and the water-vessel (Kamandalu) and asked for food. The housewife, with immense faith that the visitor wAs none other than the Lord to whom the whole annual ceremony was being proposed, gave Him food even before the Brahmin guests were fed!Her feet touched the Lord’s spirit and He at once given her a vision of this straight flesh. His glorious form had three heads, clad in a tiger’s skin and his body besmeared with sacred ash (Vibhuti), he appeared like a silver mountain in the moonshine.
The blessed housewife drank the divine aura of the Lord’s from and felt that the highest aim of her birth was accomplished. The Lord said, “Mother, I am delighted with your devotion. Even before you fed the Brahmin guests, you have fed me food with the full faith that this is the Lord in the pretext of a holy mendicant. Now, ask me for anything you wish and it shall be given”. The sight blessed her eyes and at once her eyes were blessed by His sweet words. “Lord”, she articulated, “Lord! You came up to me as a mother, please let your word be turned into reality”.
Lord replied Tathastu (so be it) and went away. Lord Dattatreya, in society to bless his devotees and the righteous ones, wanders around in the guise of a random guest at the luncheon hr. That’s why it is said that a random guest has to be Regaled as the very avatar of Lord Dattaterya. Then Sumathi told her husband of the Divine vision the Lord had bestowed on her and by his granting her wish for a divine son.
Not long after, Sumathi conceived and drove home a male child at the right time. She gave birth to one who is indeed birth-less.
This was no birth in the normal sense, the Lord just manifested Himself as a tyke in this household. As the child has all the Divine features with celestial radiance, he was appropriately named as Sripaad. This was the first embodiment of Lord Dattatreya.
As days and months passed, the child Serenade grew ever more glorious, the age of eight. As per the custom, he was endowed with the sacred thread. Usually, after the sacred thread ceremony a boy has to be developed by a Guru for 8 years before he can learn the Vedas (external repositories of Spiritual Wisdom) completely. But this boy, Sripaad, started imparting Vedic knowledge to this pupil right from the instant of his Upanyana (sacred thread ceremony). It was all a purely Divine miracle.
When Sripaad attained marriageable Years, He asked His opinion, “All women in this world are like my mother. I am married to sannyaasa (renunciation). My charge is to collapse initiation and guidance to sadhus (holy men)”. Speaking thus he sought permission from his parents to become a sannyasi and to pass on the house. The parents were loath to relinquish such a son. Aside from this the other two children were speechless, deaf and blind. IfSripad left his parents, who will look after them in their former age. Sripaad understood their anxiety. He called these blind and lame brotheR's, his substance, melting with compassion at the mess of the tears in his parents, Sripaad touched his brothers and made them whole in a instant! What is inconceivable for the Almighty and the master of the world?
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