Every month has two Sashtis, the sixth day after the new moon and the sixth after the full moon, and both belong to Murugan; the Sashti of the bright fortnight is the dearer of the two. The greatest of all is the bright Sashti of Aippasi, the last of the six days of Kanda Sashti, when the Soorasamharam is kept: the day his Vel ended the war with Surapadman. This is that katha, as the Kanda Puranam tells it.
The asura Surapadman had a boon from Shiv ji: nothing could destroy him but Shiv ji himself, born again in a new form. Proud of it, he and his brothers drove the Devas out of the heavens and made them servants. So Shiv ji's own fire came into the world as Kandan, the six-faced child of the Saravana, nursed by the six Karthigai women and made one by Parvati Maa. He grew to lead the army of the Devas, and took up the Vel.
The war was long. Tarakasuran fell, and then Singamukhan, and still Surapadman fought on with all his maya. At the last Murugan let fly the Vel, with its two heads, blazing like a thousand crore suns and pouring out flame; and the vast darkness the asura had become fled before it.
His maya broken, Surapadman watched the Vel come, and smiled. "What can this do to me," he thought, "when my boon has no end?" He went into the middle of the ocean, meaning to destroy the seas and the worlds and every life in them, and there he stood up as a mango tree. Flames hung from it like garlands, its leaves were smoke, its clusters shone like gold, its fruit hung like red gems, and its branches spread like rain clouds.
The tree rose until it touched the sky, a hundred thousand yojanas tall, and its cool shade covered the oceans, the sky and the earth. It shook itself, and the worlds shook with it: the earth cracked, the seas ran together into one, the stars fell, and the Sun and the Moon lost their way. The Devas ran to Meru and to Kailash for shelter.
Then the Vel went on, filling everything with fire, and cut the great tree through at its trunk. The mango fell with a cry. And yet Surapadman did not die: his old boon held him. What is stronger than tapas? He rose at once in his own form, drew his sword, and roared for battle.
The Vel tore through his chest, split his body in two, and cast the halves down into the sea, while the Vedas rang out on every side. Then it rose into the sky, laid its fire aside, bathed in the Ganga of the heavens under a rain of flowers from the Devas, and came back to rest in Murugan's hand.
Still the boon held. The two halves of Surapadman's body rose again, one as a rooster and one as a peacock, and came at Murugan in anger, looking for battle. But when they stood before him his gaze of grace fell on them, and the enmity went out of them. Their minds grew clear, the way dark iron turns to red gold at the touch of the great.
Murugan said to the rooster, "Be the banner on my chariot, and cry out from it." It rose, and became the red-crested rooster on his flag. He left the mount he had ridden until then — Indra, who had carried him in the form of a peacock — and climbed onto the peacock that had been Surapadman, and rode it across the earth and the sky. Even one who had done such harm came before Kumaran, and was saved by his grace.
So Tamil houses keep his Sashti in every month: a day without food, or with little, his picture garlanded, the Kanda Sashti Kavasam said all day, or for as long as one can, and the puja at dusk; those who go out to work keep "Om Muruga" in the mind. "Keep the Sashti, and it comes to the akappai," the saying goes — the child a couple longs for comes to the womb. And those who keep it ask him for every kind of wealth, and he gives it.
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