Skanda

Six babies lay on lotuses in a still pond at the foot of the Himalayas, each one too hot to approach. Six women came down out of the sky as the stars they were, the Krittikas, and saw them. Their breasts ached. They knelt and gave milk.

This is how the war god of the Hindus arrives, in most of the stories. He arrives in pieces. He arrives because the gods need him to.

The trouble began with the asura Tarakasura, who had earned through long austerities a boon from Brahma so specific it amounted to immortality: only a son of Shiva could kill him. At the time, Shiva was a widower lost in meditation, indifferent to the world. Tarakasura took the three worlds and put the gods to work as menials. The gods, panicking, sent Kama with his sugarcane bow to make Shiva fall in love with Parvati. Shiva opened his third eye and burned Kama to ash, then, after some persuading, married her anyway. After that the universe had a different problem, which was that Shiva and Parvati would not stop. Years passed in their lovemaking. The gods, terrified of what such a child would be, sent Agni to interrupt. Shiva’s seed spilled. Agni took it and immediately could not bear it. He dropped it into the Ganga. The river could not bear it either and cast it onto a bed of sara reeds. There it cooled into six babies on six lotuses, blazing in the morning light.

When Parvati arrived and embraced them, the six fused into one. He had six faces and twelve arms, and he was already a warrior. He was six days old.

That, at least, is how the South tells it, where he is best known as Murugan and the lake is called Saravana Poigai. The North has its variants. Some say Agni and his consort Svaha conceived him outright; some say Shiva and Parvati had no part in his birth at all. The Mahabharata gives one version, the Ramayana another, the Skanda Purana a third. He is older than any of them. His name does not appear in the Vedas, and the figures who study these things suspect he was originally a hill god of forested places, fond of hunting and blood offerings, whose cult was absorbed and reorganized as the great traditions consolidated. By the Gupta period emperors stamped him on their coins and named their princes after him. The eldest son of Shiva was a useful god to claim.

Standard images show him red or golden, perpetually young, dressed as a prince, with either a single head or six. In his hands he carries the vel, a leaf-shaped iron spear given to him by his mother as a vessel of her own shakti, and a shifting array of other weapons depending on the source: bow, javelin, sword, mace, discus. His mount is a peacock named Paravani who keeps a serpent under one foot. A rooster sits on his banner. He is sometimes shown with his consorts on either side, Devasena to one and Valli to the other, and sometimes alone, raised on his peacock above the heads of the worshippers like a young general at the front of a parade.

The first thing he did when he was old enough was settle the matter of Tarakasura. He took command of the Devas and went to war. Indra had, in earlier days, become afraid of him and tried to have him killed in infancy, then sent his armies, then his thunderbolt; the bolt struck Skanda in the back, and from the wound walked out a second luminous youth named Vishakha. Indra, seeing how this was going, made peace. He gave Skanda the rank of commander and his daughter Devasena for a wife. Then he came along to watch what would happen to Taraka. Taraka rained arrows. Skanda answered with his own. The arrows pierced every part of the demon’s body, and the demon fell, and the three worlds reverted to the gods.

The Tamil tradition has its own version of the great battle, against three asura brothers led by Surapadman. Skanda fought for six days at Tiruchendur on the southern coast. The brothers fell, the asura armies fell, and on the sixth day Surapadman turned himself into an immense mango tree to hide. Skanda hurled the vel and split the tree in two. One half became a peacock and the other a rooster. He took the peacock as his mount and the rooster for his banner, and that was the end of Surapadman. Devotees still mark this battle every year as Skanda Shashti, fasting for six days and reenacting the Surasamhara on the last.

Between these wars he also pierced Mount Krauncha. A demon hid inside it, or had become it, depending on the version, and Skanda threw his spear and the mountain came apart. Rivers shifted course. After that the spear was understood to be the kind of weapon that splits whatever stands between the wielder and his target.

His domestic life is more complicated than his military one. He has Devasena, whom Indra arranged, and also Valli, a tribal girl raised by hunters in a millet field whom he wooed in disguise with help from his elephant-headed brother Ganesha. The first marriage is the official one and the second is the one the songs are about. In the South he stands between them, the formal wife on one side and the wild wife on the other, holding the spear that came from his mother, riding the peacock that used to be his enemy. He is the god of the hill country, of beauty and youth and spiritual ferocity, and his temples are still everywhere there.

His powers are exactly what his birth and his weapons would suggest: he leads armies, defeats demons, splits mountains, sees in six directions at once, and is strong enough to plant a spear that no god save Vishnu can pull from the earth. He commands the celestial forces. The fire at the start of him never quite cools. His weakness is harder to locate. He was the answer to a problem that depended on a particular boon, and so his entire purpose was contingent. When the demons he was made for had been killed, his cult shrank back from the imperial scale to which it had risen, withdrew to the south of India, and survived there in concentrated form, far from the kings who had once needed a war god more than anything else.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Skanda?

Skanda is the Hindu god of war and commander of the celestial armies, worshipped across South Asia under many names including Kartikeya, Subrahmanya, Shanmukha, and Murugan. He is the son of Shiva and Parvati and the brother of Ganesha, and his cult is strongest in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and the Tamil diaspora communities of Sri Lanka, Singapore, and Malaysia.

How was Skanda born?

According to the South Indian tradition, Shiva’s seed was carried by Agni, dropped into the Ganga, and cast onto a bed of sara reeds, where it cooled into six babies on six lotuses. The six Krittikas came down out of the sky and nursed them. When Parvati arrived and embraced the infants, the six fused into one child with six faces and twelve arms, already a warrior at six days old.

What is Skanda’s weapon?

Skanda’s primary weapon is the vel, a leaf-shaped iron spear given to him by his mother Parvati as a vessel of her own shakti. He also carries a shifting array of other weapons depending on the source, including a bow, javelin, sword, mace, and discus. Once Skanda plants the spear in the earth, no god save Vishnu can pull it free.

What demons did Skanda kill?

Skanda’s primary kill is the asura Tarakasura, who had earned a boon from Brahma that only a son of Shiva could kill him. In the Tamil tradition, Skanda also defeated the asura brothers led by Surapadman in a six-day battle at Tiruchendur, splitting Surapadman in two when the demon tried to hide inside a mango tree. Devotees still commemorate the victory each year as Skanda Shashti, fasting for six days and reenacting the Surasamhara on the last.

What is Skanda’s mount?

Skanda rides a peacock named Paravani, who keeps a serpent pinned under one foot. According to the Tamil tradition, the peacock was once half of the asura Surapadman; when Skanda split the demon’s mango-tree form with his vel, one half became the peacock he rides and the other became the rooster on his banner.

Related Entries

Shiva, Parvati, Ganesha, Agni, Ganga, Indra, Kama, Brahma, Vishnu, Asura, Tripurasura, Mahisha, Pleiades