The warlord of the gods

The fascinating story of Skanda... once son of Agni, later son of Shiva

In ancient times, there was a god of war, whose name was Skanda. Scholars are of the opinion that perhaps the name Skanda has something to do with Sikandar which is the Persian name of Alexander. In the fourth century BC, when Alexander's ferocious army came to north-west India, the terror that they struck had such a dramatic impact on the people of the land that Sikandar became the symbol of violence and war. From this, perhaps, came the idea of Skanda or the great warlord who came from the north.

By 300 AD (600 years later), at the time of the Guptas, Skanda had become a very popular god, patronised by royalty. His images are found in many temples. He was identified as the virile commander-in-chief of the armies of Indra who led the Devas to victory. He was identified with Kartikeya, the son of the great ascetic-god Shiva.
There are numerous stories of the birth of Skanda and a reading of them depicts how he gradually moved from tribal lore to Vedic lore to finally Shiva lore.



In the earlier stories found in the Mahabharata, he is nowhere associated with Shiva. Agni, the fire-god, wanted to make love to the wives of the seven celestial sages known as Sapta-Rishis. To ensure Agni did not do anything stupid, his wife, the goddess Svaha, took the form of these women and made love to her husband. She succeeded in taking the form of six of the seven Rishi-patnis. From this repeated intercourse was born a god who had the strength of six gods.

In later mythologies, the gods wanted Shiva to bear a son but the seed of Shiva was so fiery that it needed several deities to incubate it: fire, wind, a river, a forest of reeds and stars. From the forest of reeds or Sara-vana, comes the name Saravana. From the stars that make up the Krittika constellation, comes the name Kartikeya.

Kartikeya is also known as Kumara or the boy-god. He is associated with many masculine symbols such as the rooster on his flag, the peacock he rides on and the spear he holds in his hand. His colour is red, commonly associated with planet Mars. In astrology, he is associated with Mangal Graha, the planet Mars. Mangal is associated with aggression, a trait befitting a masculine god associated with war.

Even in Greco-Roman mythology, Mars is the God of War. His temple doors were opened only in times of war; they were firmly shut in times of peace.

The association of Skanda-Kartikeya with war was so great that women were not allowed to enter the shrine because he led boys away from their mothers and wives into battle and because his actions often led to widowhood. In Kurukshetra, Haryana, there is a small shrine where Kartikeya is depicted without flesh.

He is all bones. He refused to have anything to do with women, angering the Goddess, who declared that he would lose all parts of the body that come from the mother. Traditionally, the soft and fluid parts of the body come from the mother. Thus Kartikeya lost all his flesh and blood and remained with bones and nerves. But this almost misogynist trait of Kartikeya is limited to north Indian mythology. South India has a different story to tell.

In the hills of Palni, Tamil Nadu, Skanda is a boy-god who stood at the top of the mountain holding a spear keeping a watch over the countryside. He was Murugan, the boy-god who came from the north, from Kailasa in fact, where his mysterious hermit father resides. His mother was the fearsome and blood-thirsty goddess Korrvai who danced on the battlefield with her son, enjoying the entrails of the fallen warriors. He was the god of local tribes who used to wear red clothes and dance around him after intoxicating themselves with honey mead.

As Brahmanism spread from the north to the south, the warrior god of the north and the guardian god of the south mingled and merged. He became Subramanya, the good god of the priests who brings wisdom and auspiciousness. He became less violent, almost cherubic, like Krishna and very domesticated, with two wives, Sena, the daughter of the Vedic sky-god, Indra, and Valli, the daughter of local tribes.u00a0