The renunciate, the child, the teacher, the husband, how to recognise each.
AT A GLANCE
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Dhandayuthapani, the renunciate with a staff, with almost no ornament. Palani.
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Balasubramanya, Murugan as a child.
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Swaminatha, the teacher, standing with a staff. Swamimalai.
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Shanmukha or Arumugam, six faces and twelve arms, usually on the peacock.
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With Valli and Deivanai, standing between his two consorts, the earth on one side and the heavens on the other.
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Senthilandavar, the Lord of Tiruchendur, the victor on the shore, shown in the sanctum as a young ascetic.
Walk into different Murugan temples and you will not always see the same figure. The forms differ on purpose, and each tells you which part of his story that temple holds.
At Palani he is almost unadorned, a renunciate with a staff, because the temple remembers the moment he gave everything up. At Swamimalai he is the teacher. In many temples he stands between Valli and Deivanai, and the pairing is itself a meaning: the hunter's daughter of the hills and the daughter of the king of the gods, the earthly and the heavenly, both held.
The six-faced, twelve-armed Shanmukha on the peacock is the grandest form, and is often the processional image even where the sanctum shows something simpler.
It helps to know which form you are standing before. The temple has chosen it, and the prayers and songs sung there usually belong to it.
Most temples have two images of the deity. The moolavar stays in the sanctum and is the one worshipped at each kalam; the utsavar, usually in bronze, is the one carried in procession on festival days. They can show different forms, which is why the Murugan who rides through the streets at a festival may not look like the one you saw in the sanctum that morning.
WHAT THIS RESTS ON
Devotional reading
The forms named here are the ones temples themselves use. How they are grouped and explained is our own guide for a first-time visitor.
An interpretation that teachers and devotees have given a symbol over time. Widely held and meaningful, but a reading rather than something a single text states.