Kārttikeya

Summary

Kārttikeya is the son of Śiva and the commander of the gods' army in Hindu myth; he has six faces and is also called Skanda and Kumāra, "the Youth". Monier-Williams says he is called Kārttikeya because the six Kṛttikās, the stars of the Pleiades, nursed him, and when they offered him their six breasts he became six-headed; he notes that some derive the name from the month Kārttika, as the best for warfare.

The Rāmāyaṇa tells of his birth without a womb. Śiva's union with his wife Umā went on so long that the gods feared the power of the child, and asked Śiva to hold back his seed; he did, except for what had already stirred, which fell on the earth and covered it with its mountains and forests, and the gods asked Agni, fire, to enter it with the wind so that it would not burn up the earth. Umā in anger cursed the gods to have no children by their own wives. Then Brahmā told the gods that Gaṅgā, the elder daughter of the king of mountains, would receive the child of fire; Agni asked Gaṅgā to bear Śiva's seed, and it flowed into her until all her channels were full. Gaṅgā laid the embryo on the Himalaya, where it shone like molten gold, and the reeds around it turned to gold, which is how gold came to be. Then the Kṛttikās came and nursed him, saying: he is the son of us all; the gods said: he shall be called Kārttikeya because the Kṛttikās nursed him, and they named him Skanda because he slid from the womb; he grew six faces to suck from all six at once, became a youth in a single day, defeated the demons' armies, and the gods anointed him commander of their army.

The Mahābhārata gives another version. Indra rescued a girl called Devasenā, "the army of the gods", from an Asura who meant to carry her off; she asked for a husband who could conquer gods and Asuras, and Indra could find none. At the sacrifice of the seven seers Agni entered the sacrificial fire and fell in love with their wives, so Svāhā took the form of one wife after another, received his seed, flew as a bird to the White Mountain and threw it six times into a golden lake; she could not take the form of Arundhatī, the seventh seer's wife, because of her purity. A child was born with six faces and twelve eyes, ears, arms and feet, and the seers called him Skanda because they regarded him as "cast off". The seers divorced their six wives, and the gods told Indra to kill the child before he overpowered them; Indra struck him in the side with the thunderbolt, and from the wound sprang another youth, Viśākha; Indra took fright and sought Skanda's protection. Then Indra made him commander and gave him Devasenā as wife, so that his title means both "lord of the army of the gods" and "husband of Devasenā". The six divorced wives came to him asking to be his mothers, and the Kṛttikā was set in the sky as a star ruled by Agni. Then Skanda killed the Asura Mahiṣa, who had defeated the gods and from whom Indra had fled.

In Kālidāsa's Birth of the War-God the gods complain to Brahmā of the Asura Tāraka, and he says only a son of Śiva can kill him; the gods send Kāma, whom Śiva burns, and Pārvatī marries Śiva after long austerity. Then Agni carries Śiva's seed and leaves it in the Ganges, where the six Pleiades, coming to bathe at dawn, find it and lay it in a nest of reeds, and it becomes a child, Kumāra. Fire, river and Pleiades quarrel over the child until Śiva and Pārvatī arrive and Śiva says he is their son. Then the gods ask for him as their leader, consecrate him general, and he kills Tāraka.

The idea his story turns on is that the gods' commander was born of no single womb. His father's seed passes through fire, then river or lake, then reeds or mountain, and then the stars nurse him; so he is the son of all who carried him, which is why they quarrel over him, and he grows six faces for six nurses. He was born for one task: to lead the army the great gods could not lead to victory; Indra flees from Mahiṣa, all the gods complain of Tāraka, and the child comes and wins.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the project's essays do not read it. Kārttikeya is a name of descent, ending in -eya, "son of", so it means "son of the Kṛttikās". Kṛttikā is the name of the Pleiades, and Monier-Williams says this constellation of six stars was sometimes represented as a flame or as a razor or knife, and that the verb kṛt means to cut, cut off, divide. Set the suffix -ikā aside and k-r-t remains, which is Arabic al-qurṭ letter for letter. In Lane the qurṭ is the ornament hung from the lobe of the ear, and then: "al-qurṭ: the Pleiades, so called by way of comparison". So the Arabs called these very stars by this very name, a cluster hanging like an earring. Q becomes k and ṭ becomes t, as Arabic qirṭās became Latin charta. The same root has qarraṭa, "he cut, or clipped, money", and beside it stands qaraḍa, "he cut it", with the miqrāḍ, that with which one cuts, the sense of the Sanskrit verb and of the picture of the stars as a knife. Skanda the texts explain themselves: the Mahābhārata says he was so called because the seers regarded him as "cast off", and the Rāmāyaṇa because he slid from the womb, and the verb skand means to leap, spurt, be spilled. We read it as Arabic saqaṭa: in Lane saqaṭa is "it fell, dropped", saqaṭa al-walad min baṭn ummihi is said of a child that comes forth from its mother's belly before it is complete, and siqṭ al-nār is "what falls, of fire, from the fire-stick" when one strikes fire. That is what happens in the story: a seed that fell into fire and then from the river's womb onto the mountain, and became a child with no mother to carry him.

Linguistic Root

The Kṛttikās and al-qurṭ

Monier-Williams says the Kṛttikās are the Pleiades, originally the first lunar mansion and later the third, with Agni as their regent; that the constellation is sometimes represented as a flame or as a kind of razor or knife; and that in myth the six Kṛttikās are the nurses of Kārttikeya. He gives the verb kṛt as to cut, cut in pieces, cut off, divide. So the picture of the stars as a knife meets the verb that resembles their name. In Lane, under q-r-ṭ, the qurṭ is the ornament hung from the lobe of the ear, plural aqrāṭ, qiraṭa, qirāṭ, as in the proverb "take it, even for the two earrings of Māriya"; then "al-qurṭ: the Pleiades, so called by way of comparison", from the Tāj al-ʿArūs. So the Pleiades have one set of letters in Arabic and Sanskrit: q-r-ṭ and k-r-t. The same root has qarraṭa, "he cut, or clipped, money". Beside it, in Lane qaraḍahu is "he cut it" with the miqrāḍ, the primary signification; then qaraḍahu bi-nābihi, he cut it with his tooth, and qaraḍa ribāṭahu, he died, as though he cut his bond.

The correspondence: q is k, q, k and j forming one merger group in the Juthoor table; r is r, the Sanskrit vocalic ṛ of kṛt standing for it; and ṭ is t, which the table gives "across all paths", with an example from this very root, qirṭās and Latin charta; -ikā is a Sanskrit suffix, set aside before the letters are matched. So all three letters answer regularly to al-qurṭ, its sense is the Pleiades themselves, and the story makes the Kṛttikās Kārttikeya's nurses and mothers: the reading of the name Kṛttikā is settled. Qaraḍa stays second, for the cutting, weakened because the table does not give ḍ as t.

Skanda and saqaṭa

Monier-Williams gives skanda as anything that jumps, spurting, effusion, spilling, and then as a name of Kārttikeya, "Attacker". The two great texts explain the name by falling and spilling: the Mahābhārata because he was "cast off", the Rāmāyaṇa because he slid from the womb. In Lane saqaṭa is "it fell, dropped, from a higher to a lower place", saqaṭa al-walad min baṭn ummihi is said when the child comes forth from its mother's belly before it is complete, having its form developed, and hence siqṭ al-nār, "what falls of fire between the two fire-sticks when one produces fire". So the Arabic root holds two pictures of the story: the child falling from the womb, and the fire from which something falls. S is s, k is q, and d is ṭ. The weak point is that the n of skand has nothing to answer it in saqaṭa.

The Nipponica encyclopedia reports that the name Skanda is said to come from Iskandar, the eastern name of Alexander the Great, and gives it as something "said". In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad the sage Sanatkumāra is already called Skanda: "him they call Skanda".

Key Mythic Narratives

The race with Gaṇeśa

In the Śiva Purāṇa Kumāra and his brother Gaṇeśa quarrel over who shall marry first, and their parents make a race around the earth the judge between them; Kumāra sets off on the road, while Gaṇeśa walks round his parents, as told on the Pārvatī page.

Idaten in Japan

In Japan Skanda became Idaten, guardian of Buddhist temples, one of the eight generals under the king of the south. The Japanese dictionary says he is known for his speed, because a demon is said to have stolen the Buddha's relics when he died and Skanda chased him and brought them back, so that the Japanese call a fast run "Idaten running".

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Indian myths reads Gaṅgā's descent from heaven through Śiva's hair as the rivers fed by the glaciers on the Himalayan peaks, and reads Agni as combustion. That is its reading of the river and the fire through which Śiva's seed passes in the story of Kārttikeya.

The story itself holds a picture of reckoning: the Kṛttikā was the first lunar mansion, with Agni as its regent, as Monier-Williams says; the Mahābhārata says the Kṛttikā was set as a star ruled by Agni after the wives became Skanda's mothers; and some derive his name from the month Kārttika. So the youth who leads the gods' army is tied to a star by which time is counted and to a month in which war begins.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In Mesopotamia the bird Anzu steals the Tablet of Destinies from Enlil, and the gods refuse one after another to fight him, until Ea calls the great mother and she sends her son Ninurta, who kills the bird and brings back the tablet. In India Indra flees from Mahiṣa and the gods complain of Tāraka, and the child born for this task comes, leads the army and kills the enemy. Both are the story of a young god who does what the elders could not.

Among the Greeks Athena is born from the head of Zeus alone, in her armour, after he swallowed her mother Metis. Kārttikeya in the Rāmāyaṇa is born from Śiva's seed alone, without Umā's womb, after the seed passes through fire and river. Both are warrior children of the chief god born without a mother's womb.

The marriage sought so that Tāraka's slayer may be born, the wedding of Śiva and Pārvatī, is a form of the sacred marriage.