śrī datta stavarājaḥ

A hymn set inside the Rudrayāmala as a conversation between Mahādeva and Śuka, the son of Vyāsa, who asks to be told the greatness of Dattātreya because Vyāsa had declared long before that there is nothing higher than Datta. Śiva answers that what he is about to give is the most secret of secrets, and that the mere remembering of it releases from every bond. What follows names Datta as the eternal brahman, without change and without stain, the first god, formless, manifest and free of the qualities — a description held deliberately at the level of the absolute rather than of the figure with three faces. The frame matters to how the text was used: a stavarāja spoken by Śiva to a renunciate is offered as instruction in the nature of the guru, not as a request for anything.