Surapadman and his brothers, Singamukhan and Tarakasuran, were asuras who kept long tapas to Shiv ji. They asked Him for a life without end, and that He would not give. So they asked that nothing should destroy them but Shiv ji Himself, born again in a new form, and this He granted. Sure that Shiv ji would never turn against them, they grew proud. They drove the Devas out of the heavens and made every one of them a servant.
Brahma, Vishnu ji and all the Devas went to Shiv ji, who sat silent in dhyana, and begged Him for help. He married Parvati Maa, and from His six faces came six sparks of fire, so fierce that no Deva could come near them. Vayu and Agni carried them to the Ganga, and the Ganga carried them into the Saravana, the pool of reeds, where they became six children lying on six lotuses. The six Karthigai women nursed them, and when Parvati Maa lifted all six in her arms they became one child, with six faces and twelve arms: Kandan, Saravanabhava, Karthikeya.
The Kanda Puranam says why these six days are kept. Before the war, so that they might have the strength to stand against the asuras, the Devas invited Murugan into a kumbha and kept a vrat before Him for six days from the bright Pratamai of Aippasi, and He gave them His grace. That is why families keep the six days that follow the Deepavali amavasya, and why the vrat is said to be against the asura in one's own mind.
Murugan took the leadership of the Devas' army and took up the Vel. He sent Veerabahu ahead as His envoy, to ask Surapadman to set the Devas free; the asura would not. So the war began. Tarakasuran fell first, with the Krauncha mountain he had made his fortress; then Surapadman's son Bhanugopan, and then Singamukhan, the lion-faced. Surapadman fought on alone with all his maya, and for six days the war went on, while the Devas and the people who loved Murugan kept their vrat and thought of nothing but Him.
On the sixth day, the Sashti, at Tiruchendur by the sea, Surapadman's maya was broken. He went into the middle of the ocean and stood up there as a vast mango tree. Flames hung from it like garlands, its leaves were smoke, and its branches spread like rain clouds. It rose until it touched the sky; it shook itself and the worlds shook with it, the seas ran together and the stars fell, and the Devas ran to Meru and Kailash for shelter.
Then Murugan let fly the Vel, blazing like a thousand suns. It cut the great tree through at its trunk, tore through Surapadman as he rose again in his own form with his sword drawn, split his body in two and cast the halves into the sea. Then it bathed in the Ganga of the heavens under a rain of flowers and came back to rest in Murugan's hand.
Still the old boon held. The two halves rose again, one as a peacock and one as a rooster, and came at Murugan looking for battle. But when they stood before Him His gaze of grace fell on them, and the enmity went out of them, the way dark iron turns to red gold. Murugan made the rooster the banner on His chariot, and took the peacock as the mount He rides. Indra, who had carried Him as a peacock until then, was set free. So the Soorasamharam is not only a victory: the asura was not destroyed but taken in.
For the victory, Indra gave Murugan his daughter Deivanai in marriage. The wedding was held at Thiruparankundram, the first of His six abodes, and on the day after the Soorasamharam the Thirukalyanam is celebrated in Murugan temples, at Tiruchendur late into the night.
So Tamil houses keep these six days: the vrat at the level each can keep, the Kanda Sashti Kavasam morning and evening, the temple, and on the sixth evening the Soorasamharam. "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 Murugan for health, for a home at peace, and for every kind of wealth.
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