Translations:Sanat Kumara and Lady Master Venus/79/en

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An inscription on a fifth-century stone pillar in Northern India describes Skanda as the guardian of the Divine Mothers.[1] Karttikeya is sometimes portrayed with six heads. One tale says Karttikeya was nurtured by the six Pleiades and he developed six faces so he could be suckled by each of them. Another tale says he was miraculously born as the six sons of six spinsters. Shiva’s wife, Parvati, hugged all six infants so affectionately that they became one person with six heads.[2] Commentator R. S. Nathan says, “The six heads stand for the use of the power of discrimination in the six different directions, to keep under control the six qualities that pull down man from his spiritual progress.”[3]

  1. Banerjea, Hindu Iconography, pp. 363–64.
  2. Margaret Stutley and James Stutley, Harper’s Dictionary of Hinduism (HarperCollins Publishers, 1984), p. 144; Encyclopedia Britannica, 1963, s.v. “Kartikeya.”
  3. R. S. Nathan, Symbolism in Hinduism (Central Chinmaya Mission Trust, 1983), p. 20.