Reading Notes: Ayyappan

This was a very cool and complex story. It is basically about a King named Rajashekhara that is unable to have a child to take over his kingdom. Over the course of this story one of his Diwans was very ambitious and wanted to take over his kingdom when he died.

On the other side of this story. There was a threat to the Devas (which are the Gods of India) by way of a women that prayed to Lard Brahma for a boon that she would not meet her death at the hands or either Vishnu or Shiva. This caused problems so Vishnu and Shiva created a baby son named Manikanthan to give to the King so he could kill this threat on his 12th birthday.

So later on when the boy was 12 and he was going to be named heir to the Kingdom the Diwan devised a plan to get rid of the boy. So he told the wife of the King who had just had a boy a few weeks earlier that if she wanted her son to get the kingdom she must do what he says. He told her to act like he had a headache so that he could send Manikanthan to go and get tigress milk for her head.

Once the boy went out to get the milk he ran into the one he needed to kill and eventually killed her. After that the Devas all surrounded him and thanked him and then turned into tigers to escort him back the kingdom so he could tell the King about the boy. Once he was revealed he left to go to heaven to live with the Devas.

Sooo that was a lot of stuff but was a really cool story to read! I think I would want to do the story in either another overview of the story but change a few of the detail to make it different or tell the story from Manikanthan point of view

"Ayyappan":Source

. Book information: Bizzell Library
Author: Shyamala Mahadevan, M. Mohandas, Anant Pai