Ayyappa and the Sabarimala Pilgrimage

Lord Ayyappa, worshipped at Sabarimala as Hariharaputra, son of Hari and Hara, is also known as Sastha, a name used repeatedly throughout the Sastha Patalam within the Skanda Purana. He is described there, and again in the Bhutanatha Upakhyana preserved within the Brahmanda Purana, in the two texts most often cited for his origin and the defeat of the demoness Mahishi.

Mahishi had not always been a demoness, and her story explains why her final defeat reads less as an execution than as a release. Tradition holds she was once Leela, wife of the sage Dattatreya. A divine dispute left her cursed to be reborn as a she-buffalo demon. As Mahishi, grieving the death of her brother Mahishasura at the hands of Goddess Durga, she turned her fury on the devas. She won from Brahma a boon of near-total invincibility, with one condition attached: only a child born of the union of Vishnu and Shiva could defeat her, a union the gods had every reason to believe would never occur.

To answer that need, Vishnu took the enchanting form of Mohini, and from that meeting between Shiva and Mohini a radiant child was born, wearing a golden bell, mani, around his neck, from which he took the name Manikandan. Shiva then left the infant on the banks of the sacred Pampa river, where King Rajasekhara of Pandalam, who had long prayed for an heir, discovered him and raised him lovingly as his own son.

Manikandan grew into an extraordinary young prince under King Rajasekhara's care, treated exactly as the heir the king had so long prayed for. He mastered every art and weapon effortlessly, and his quiet composure concealed a nature his adoptive family had not guessed at.

When a jealous minister, fearing Manikandan would displace the king's natural-born son, sent him into the forest on the pretext of fetching tigress milk, he hoped the boy would perish there. Instead the boy encountered Mahishi in the forest and fought her in a fierce battle. He caught her by the horns and hurled her down to earth near the Azhuthayar river, and as she lay dying he danced upon her body, a dance tradition remembers as both victory and release, since her final breath lifted the old curse and restored Leela to her true form at last.

Having proven his nature beyond doubt, he rode a tamed lioness back to the palace, fulfilling the very task meant to kill him. The ride revealed to the entire court exactly what kind of child the king had been raising all along.

Having fulfilled his purpose, Manikandan told the grieving king that his human duties were complete and that he wished to return to his ascetic, divine nature. He asked the king to build a temple wherever an arrow he shot would land. It came to rest atop the hill of Sabarimala, deep in the Western Ghats forest. There he took his seat as Ayyappa, the Dharma Sasta, "lord and teacher of righteousness," eternally youthful and celibate, a guardian standing beyond caste and creed.

Tradition holds that Ayyappa did not defeat Mahishi and return to the palace entirely alone. At Erumeli, he met Vavar, remembered in different tellings as an Arab sea raider, a Muslim mystic, or a warrior who fought him before becoming his closest companion. The two are said to have fought at each other's side in the campaign against Mahishi. When Ayyappa finally departed for Sabarimala, he asked Vavar to remain at Erumeli and told his devotees that anyone wishing to see him at Sabarimala should first pay respects to Vavar. Pilgrims still keep this instruction today, stopping at the Vavar mosque in Erumeli before the climb to Sabarimala, a living reminder that the guardian they climb the hill to see was, in his own story, a guardian who crossed every line of faith to find his truest friend.

Today, millions of devotees, called Swamis regardless of their standing in ordinary life, prepare for the pilgrimage through this forty-one day discipline, treating the vow itself as inseparable from the pilgrimage it precedes and from the levelling of rank the climb has always represented. The pilgrimage climaxes with the ascent of the eighteen sacred steps, Pathinettam Padi, carrying the irumudi kettu, a two-part bundle of offerings, culminating in darshan of Ayyappa beneath the glow of the Makara Jyothi during the Makara Sankranti season. Tradition reads the eighteen steps as standing for several things at once: among them the eighteen Puranas, the eighteen weapons said to have armed Ayyappa against his enemies, and the eighteen hills surrounding Sabarimala itself. Each step climbed is thus understood as a small completion of the same victory Manikandan once won in the forest.