Ayyappan

Also Known As: also Ayyappa; Manikandan, “the one with a bell at his neck”; Hariharaputra, “son of Hari and Hara”; Dharma Sastha, the name his Sabarimala temple carries
Region/Culture: South Asia
Mythos: Hindu Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Ayyappan is a perpetually celibate warrior-ascetic, born of Shiva and of Vishnu in his female form as Mohini, who killed the buffalo-demoness Mahishi and now sits in yogic stillness on his forest hill.
Role in Mythos: He is the foundling prince of Pandalam who proved his divinity in the forest and chose Sabarimala as the place where he would stay and be worshipped.
Relation to Humans: Each pilgrimage season millions of men take a vow of abstinence in his name, wear his chain, and are treated as Ayyappan himself until they have climbed his hill and seen him. He takes the defeated into his service, so a Muslim brigand and a forest chief stand among his companions, and his devotees greet each other with the cry that he is their refuge.

In the forest above the Pamba river the path climbs barefoot. It is cold before dawn, the stones are slick, and the dark between the trees is full of one sound, a call and an answer rolling up and down the line of black-clad men: “Swamiye!” “Saranam Ayyappa!” Lord! Ayyappan is my refuge. Every man on the path wears a chain around his neck, carries a cloth bundle on his head, and for the past several weeks has been treated by his neighbours not as himself but as the god he is walking towards.

At the top of the climb, behind eighteen steps sheathed in metal, sits a small golden figure. He is a young man in a yogic posture, legs held in place by a band of cloth, his right hand raised to reassure, his left hand laid on his thigh. He is not doing very much. That is the point. Ayyappan is the god who chose to stop.

His birth is one of the stranger stories in Hindu tradition, and it begins with a disguise. When the gods and demons churned the ocean for the elixir of immortality, Vishnu took the form of Mohini, an enchantress, to lure the demons away from the prize. Shiva saw Mohini, forgot who she really was, and was overcome with desire. The child of that encounter, a son of two male gods, was Ayyappan. In the version that Ayyappan’s devotees tell from the text called the Bhutanathopakhyanam, the birth had a purpose. Mahishi, sister of the buffalo-demon Mahishasura whom Durga had slain, had won through her austerities a boon that only a son of Shiva and Vishnu could kill her. The gods arranged for one. The Bhagavata Purana tells the story of Shiva and Mohini, but it never names their child, and the identification of Ayyappan as that child is a Kerala development layered onto an older Puranic episode.

The infant was left in the forest with a bell tied around his neck. King Rajasekhara of Pandalam found him while hunting, took him home childless and named him Manikandan, the one with the bell at his throat. The boy grew up as heir to the kingdom. Then the queen bore a son of her own.

The tellings agree on what happened next even when they disagree on the details. The queen, with a scheming minister at her shoulder, fell ill, or pretended to, and announced that only the milk of a tigress could cure her. No one expected the foundling to come back from that errand. Manikandan went anyway. In the forest he met Mahishi, the she-buffalo, and fought her and killed her. In one version recorded by the anthropologists Filippo and Caroline Osella in Kerala, the dying buffalo turned into a goddess who explained she had been cursed into that shape and asked him to marry her. He refused, because he had taken a vow of celibacy. Then he came home.

He did not come home on foot. In the version told in Kerala, Indra took the form of a tiger, the goddesses followed behind, and the prince rode into Pandalam on a tiger’s back with more milk than the queen could possibly want. The palace understood at last who had been living in it. Manikandan revealed himself, and then he loosed an arrow. Where it fell, on the hill of Sabari, his temple was to stand. He went up the mountain and stayed there.

The goddess he refused did not go away. She waits a few yards from his shrine as Malikappurattamma, and Ayyappan has made her a promise: he will marry her in the year that no first-time pilgrim comes to Sabarimala. Every first-timer is a kanni swami, a virgin pilgrim, and every year they keep coming. The wedding is postponed indefinitely. On the night of the great festival, the Osellas were told, Ayyappan’s procession sets out towards her shrine and all the torches go out, because she has begun to menstruate, and he turns back.

He collects allies the way other gods collect weapons. Vavar was a Muslim brigand who fought Ayyappan, lost, and became his loyal lieutenant; another telling makes him a saint from Arabia. Karuppaswami, chief of one of the forest peoples, did the same. Both now have their places on the pilgrimage, and Hindu pilgrims stop to pray at a mosque dedicated to Vavar at Erumeli before they start the climb. Few deities in India draw that kind of shared reverence.

What his devotees do for him is the clearest picture of what he is. The vow runs for forty-one days in principle, often less in practice. A man who puts on the Ayyappan chain gives up meat, alcohol, sex, anger and foul language, stops shaving, wears black or blue or orange, and is addressed by everyone as swami, holy man. He is, for that season, an incarnation of the god. Before he leaves home his bundle is packed: a coconut drilled and filled with ghee, handfuls of rice, betel and areca, two pouches tied into one, lifted onto his head as the guru calls the god’s name. On the mountain he breaks a coconut at the foot of the eighteen steps, climbs them, and the ghee from his coconut is poured over the image. He gets a brief sight of the god at the end of a long queue. It is enough.

The pilgrimage peaks at Makaravilakku in mid-January. The god’s sacred ornaments arrive in procession, and at dusk a flame shows on the hill of Ponnambalamedu across the valley, taken by the crowd as a sign of his presence. Every night the temple closes with Harivarasanam, a hymn sung to him as a lullaby.

The shrine’s own history is shorter than its legend. There is no ancient or early medieval reference to the temple. A 1793 document records the Pandalam royal family mortgaging its revenue to Travancore, and in 1818 a British officer, Lieutenant B. S. Ward, counted ten to fifteen thousand pilgrims at the festival. The old stone image was destroyed by arson in 1950 and replaced with the present five-metal figure, about a foot and a half high. Ayyappan’s following spread across South India only in the twentieth century. Ayyappan may have a historical link with Aiyanar, the Tamil village guardian, and in some regions the two are treated as one, and the name Sastha that his temple carries is shared with that older southern guardian figure. The scholar Ruth Vanita suggests Ayyappan grew from a Dravidian god of tribal origin fused with the Puranic tale of Shiva and Mohini, and Eliza Kent describes the tradition as a collage. Those layers are separate stories, and the Sabarimala god is the latest of them.

The god’s strength is the vow, and so is his limit. He is unbeatable in the forest, he can ride a tiger home, he can turn a robber into a friend. What he cannot do is marry, and the whole architecture of his worship, the men-only path, the waiting goddess, the extinguished torches, is built around that refusal. For decades women of childbearing age were barred from his shrine on the grounds that he is a celibate god; a Kerala High Court ruling in 1991 fixed the bar at ages ten to fifty. In September 2018 India’s Supreme Court struck it down by four votes to one. Months of protest followed, and when two women in their forties walked in through a staff gate in January 2019, the priests closed the temple for purification. The god on the hill had not moved. Everyone around him had.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are Ayyappan’s parents?

Ayyappan is the son of Shiva and Vishnu, with Vishnu in his female form as the enchantress Mohini. Shiva was overcome with desire on seeing Mohini during the churning of the ocean, and Ayyappan was born from their union. The Bhagavata Purana tells the Shiva and Mohini story but does not name a child, so the identification with Ayyappan is a Kerala tradition.

Why did Ayyappan kill Mahishi?

Mahishi, the sister of the buffalo-demon Mahishasura, had won a boon that only a son of Shiva and Vishnu could kill her. Ayyappan met and killed her in the forest while on a quest to fetch tigress milk for the queen of Pandalam. In one telling the dead buffalo became a goddess who asked to marry him.

Why is Ayyappan celibate?

Ayyappan took a vow of celibacy, which is why he refused to marry the goddess Malikappurattamma. He promised to marry her in the year no first-time pilgrim comes to Sabarimala, a condition that is never met. His celibacy shapes his worship, from the pilgrims’ vow of abstinence to the long-standing bar on women of childbearing age at his shrine.

What happens on the Sabarimala pilgrimage?

Pilgrims to Ayyappan’s temple at Sabarimala in Kerala keep a vow, ideally of forty-one days, giving up meat, alcohol, sex and anger, wearing black, blue or orange, and calling each other swami. They climb barefoot carrying a two-pouch bundle with a ghee-filled coconut, ascend the eighteen steps and pour the ghee over the image. The season peaks at the Makaravilakku festival in mid-January.

Who is Vavar in the Ayyappan story?

Vavar is a Muslim figure who fought Ayyappan, was defeated and became his loyal lieutenant; another telling makes him a saint from Arabia. A mosque dedicated to Vavar stands at Erumeli on the pilgrimage route, and Hindu pilgrims pray there before climbing to Sabarimala.