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Lord Muruga

 

God, Who does not have a beginning or an end, takes an incarnation (avatar) to destroy the evildoers and to save His devotees. The following is about the avatar of Lord Muruga.
From the third eye of each face, a fire spark came out. Lord Shiva asked Vayudevan (God of wind) and Agnidevan (God of fire) to take the six fire sparks to the Ganges River. Later Ganga (the Name of the Ganges River deity) took them to Sarvana pond. The six fire sparks became six beautiful babies on six red lotus flowers. When Goddess Parvati hugged them together, they joined to become one form with six faces, twelve hands and was named Skandan (another name for Lord Muruga). Six ladies called Karthigai maids took care of Him.
Lord Muruga stayed in Thiruchendur with His army. He fought for ten days and destroyed Soorapadman and his brothers. Soorapadman had such a big ego that he did not want to surrender to the Lord. He took the form of a big mango tree. Lord Muruga’s spear split the tree and one part became a peacock and the other became a cock. Lord Muruga took the peacock as His vehicle and the cock as His flag.
The references to Murugan in Sanskrit literature can thus be traced back to the first millennium BCE. There are references to Subrahmanya in Kautilya's Arthashastra, in the works of Patanjali, in Kalidasa's epic poem the Kumarasambhavam and in the Sanskrit drama Mricchakatika. The Kushanas, who governed from what is today Peshawar, and the Yaudheyas, a republican clan in the Punjab, stuck coins bearing the image of Skanda. The deity was venerated also by the Iskhvakus, an Andhra dynasty, and the Guptas.