Skanda-Murukan

[Guest guest]

indictraditions, sirjrao@a... wrote:

<<<

I have a need to know the antiquity of the name Murooga for Kartikeya.

I presume that the name Murooga is commonly used in the South. If

there is a reference (source document) that shows the earliest time

frame for the use of the name Murooga is what I am looking for.

 

Other names for Kartikeya are Kumar, Subramanyam, Murooga, etc.

Are there more? Can someone help me on this topic? Thanks.

 

Sarjerao Deshmukh

>>>

 

Murukan is a supreme God in India in ancient times; Skanda is

mentioned in the Mahabaharata epic. Normally called Muruku

in Tamil sangam texts, he is the god in charge of children and

childbirth, he is Kumaraswamy and as MurukaNangu in sangam texts,

he can inflict pain and is the god of war. His birth is sung by

Kalidasa in the Kumarasambhavam. His birth has astronomical

significance.

http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-shl/WA.EXE?A2=ind9803&L=indology&P=R1643

2

 

Indic art has ancient representations of Murukan-Subrahmanya,

I have seen a beautiful Kartikeya riding peacock in the

National museum of Indonesia, and in Pala-Sena art from bengal.

For early monumental representaions from Maharashtran cave temples,

see published photos in C. Sivaramamurti, Nataraja in art, thought

and literature, National museum, Delhi, 1974.

 

For the antiquity of Murukan-Skanda-Kartikeya, consult

a separate chapter on Muruku in A. Parpola, Deciphering the Indus

script, 1994, CambridgeUP.

 

Iravatham Mahadevan, 'Murukan' in the Indus script,

p. 21-40. J. Inst. of Asian studies (Madras),

vol. XVI, no. 2, March 1999.

(I. Mahadevan acknowledges the help he got by reading

a study of Murukan in sangam tamil books by P.L.Samy, I.A.S.;

The Tamil book is:

Samy, P. L., 1925- Canka n¯ulkalil Muruka_n,

Ce_n_nai : C¯ekar Patippakam, 1990.)

 

Incidentally, the earliest Indian texts describing the bhakti mass

movement that swept across the subcontinent in the following

centuries were devoted to Murukan (and Maal = the black one,

Vishnu-Narayana). A. K. Ramanujan discusses TirumurukARRuppaTai,

dedicated to Murukan, the first bhakti text in Tamil in:

Poems of love and war, from the eight anthologies and the ten long

poems of classical Tamil / selected and translated by A.K. Ramanujan.

Columbia University Press, c1984.

 

Also:

Dessigane, R.

La légende de Skanda, selon le Kandapur¯anam tamoul et l'iconographie

/ par R. Dessigane et P.Z. Pattabiramin.

Pondichéry, Institut français d'indologie, 1967.

 

Agrawala, Prithvi Kumar.

Skanda-K¯arttikeya; a study in the origin and development.

Varanasi, Banaras Hindu University, 1967.

 

Clothey, Fred W.

The many faces of Muruka_n : the history and meaning of a South Indian

god / Fred W. Clothey with the poem Prayers to Lord Muruka_n / by A.

K. Ramanujan.The Hague ; New York : Mouton, c1978.

 

Navaratnam, Ratna.

Karttikeya, the divine child: the Hindu testament of wisdom.

Bombay, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1973.

 

Zvelebil, Kamil.

Tamil traditions on Subrahmanya-Murugan

Madras, India : Institute of Asian Studies, 1991.

 

In important seals from indus valley, there are lotuses

with a total of six petals, and a drop(bindu)/agni/kumAra

attached to the lotuses. I have suggested these represent

6 rishipatnis raising the baby Skanda. In CilappatikAram epic,

this legend is narrated as:

caravaNap pUm paLLiyaRait tAymAr aRuvar

tiru mulaip pAl uNTAn2 tiruk kaivEl an2RE

 

INDOLOGY/message/554

 

 

Thiru. Lakshmi Srinivas mentioned:

>Perhaps one thing should be clarified: it's Murugan in Tamil, not

>Muruga. Muruga is a false Sanskritization resorted to, I suspect, by

>people who know neither good Sanskrit nor Tamil nor contemporary

>usage. It's false because a name such as murugaH does not exist in

>Sanskrit. If one of the "a" ending names is prefered perhaps because

>it sounds pan Indian, then I suggest it would be more appropriate to

>use Skanda, Kartikeya, Shanmukha etc all of which are attested in

>Sanskrit.

 

In Tamil orthography, intervocalical -k- represents a h-type sound.

I've heard Muruhu, Muruhan, ... etc., among most of the Tamils. see,

http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-shl/WA.EXE?A2=ind9803&L=indology&P=R6044

 

Murugan is a phenomenon of the Northern parts like Chennai and further

North, I think. Like KoDagu (its tamil cognate is kuTaku)

and skt. agaru (< tamil akil), etc., the equivalent of Murukan is

Muruga in Karnataka. English print media has been standardizing the

spelling as Murugan nowadays.

 

For Murukan on the web, see Patrick Harrigan's URLs:

There are about 70 articles in this site on

Skanda-Subrahmanya-Murukan.

 

For the praNavamantra Om belonging to Murukan,

Asko Parpola, 1981. On the primary meaning and etymology of the

sacred syllable ôm. Pp. 195-213 in: Asko Parpola (ed.), Proceedings

of the Nordic South Asia Conference held in Helsinki, June 10-12,

1980. (Studia Orientalia, 50). Helsinki: The Finnish Oriental

Society.

 

Summary of the main theses:

Original meaning: Om in the Vedic ritual = 'yes', om = tathâ = 'yes'

also in ordinary conversation, and in the Chandogya Upanishad ôm is

expressly said to be a word expressing agreement.

Etymology: < Dravidian âm < âkum 'yes' < 'it is (fitting, suitable)',

â labialized by the following m as Jaffna Tamil ôm < âm.

 

 

Regards,

N. Ganesan

[Guest guest]

> For Murukan on the web, see Patrick Harrigan's URLs:

 

http://www.murugan.org

 

> There are about 70 articles in this site on

> Skanda-Subrahmanya-Murukan.