Deivanai, the daughter of Indra, and the first of the six abodes.
TAMIL KANDA PURANAM
When the war was over, the gods had their heavens back. Indra, king of the gods, gave his daughter Deivanai in marriage to the one who had restored them.
In the Kanda Puranam the wedding is a celebration on the scale of the victory, attended by the gods whose world had been returned to them. Tamil tradition places it at Tirupparankundram, near Madurai, the first of the six abodes, and that is why the hill's great festival is a marriage rather than a battle.
Deivanai's name is often read as 'the elephant of the gods', she was raised, in the telling, by Airavata, Indra's white elephant. She stands for the heavenly world, for order, ritual and the life that is given its shape from above.
That meaning becomes clearer beside the second marriage, to Valli, a hunter's daughter from the hills of the earth. Murugan is shown in many temples between them: Deivanai on one side and Valli on the other, the world of the gods and the world of people, both held.
At Tirupparankundram the festival of Panguni Uthiram celebrates the wedding across ten days in March or April, and the processions carry the celebration down into Madurai itself.
A REFLECTION IN OUR OWN WORDS
A victory ends in a wedding, not a throne.
WHERE THIS STORY COMES FROM
Tamil Kanda Puranam
The marriage to Deivanai is narrated in the Tamil Kanda Puranam. Its placing at Tirupparankundram is that temple's tradition, celebrated at Panguni Uthiram.
The great Tamil narrative of Murugan, composed by Kachiyappa Sivachariar of Kanchipuram. It is a Tamil work in its own right, distinct from the many Sanskrit Skanda Purana traditions, and most of the Murugan story as Tamil devotees know it takes its shape here. The app's library carries sections of it.
Connected in this app
More from Tamil Kanda Puranam
An original retelling in our own words. Devotional traditions keep different versions of many episodes.