Journey
Six Abodes of Murugan
The Ārupadai Vīdu, the six war-camps of Murugan, fixed as a set by Nakkīrar's Sangam-age Tirumurugārruppadai. Hill, shore, river-bank and fruit-grove each hold one: Thiruparankundram, Tiruchendūr, Pālani, Swāmimalai, Thiruttani and Pazhamudirchōlai. Walking all six is the great Tamil Kaumāra pilgrimage, and Arunagirinātha's Tiruppugazh left a song at every station. The six are distributed so that no two share a landscape, which is the set's organising idea.
Stops (6)
- Thiruparankundram · Subrahmanya, married to Deivānai
The first camp, a granite hill three kilometres south-west of Madurai where Murugan is said to have married Deivānai after defeating Sūrapadma. The shrine is a Pāndya rock-cut cave of the eighth century, carved straight into the rock rather than built against it. The same hill also carries a dargah, Jain beds and a Kāsi Viswanāthar temple.
- Tiruchendur · Senthilāndavar / Jayanthinātha
The only camp on the sea, where the temple stands on the shore of the Gulf of Mannar and the surf breaks against its eastern wall. Tradition places Murugan's encampment here before the battle with Sūrapadma fought at sea. The Dutch carried off the presiding bronze in 1648; it was recovered, and the shrine's tank is cut into the beach sand.
- Pālani · Dandāyudhapāni — the staff-bearer
Murugan as renunciate, stripped of ornament after the quarrel over the fruit of knowledge, standing with a staff on a hill in Dindigul district. The image is held to be navapāshāna, nine poisons compounded into a single medicinal stone by the Siddha Bhōgar, and the panchāmirtam from its abhisheka is carried home as remedy as much as prasāda.
- Swamimalai · Swāmināthan — the son who taught his father
On the Kāveri near Kumbakonam, where Murugan is said to have expounded the meaning of the praṇava to Shiva and so earned the name Swāmināthan, teacher of his own father. Sixty steps climb to the shrine, one for each year of the Tamil cycle. The town is the subcontinent's foremost centre of lost-wax bronze icon casting.
- Thiruthani / Thiruttani · Subrahmanya with Valli and Deivānai
The northernmost camp, on a hill in Tiruvallur district where Murugan is said to have come to rest after the war and to have married Valli, the hunter's daughter, so that the shrine holds both consorts. Three hundred and sixty-five steps climb it, one for each day of the year, and the Tamil new year is greeted from the summit.
- Pazhamudircholai · Murugan with Valli, in the fruit grove
The forest camp, in the Alagar hills north of Madurai, where the grove rather than the building is the shrine and a spring called Noopura Gangai feeds it. Here the poet Avvaiyār is said to have been caught out by a boy in a tree asking whether she wanted her fruit roasted or unroasted — the child being Murugan, and the lesson being about the limits of learning.