Unlike the popular idea today, Kārttikēya, also known as Subrahmanya or Kumara, was a widely revered god in North India until the 1st millennium of the Common Era. The iconography of Kārttikēya varies significantly; he is typically represented as an ever-youthful man, riding or standing near a peacock, dressed with weapons, and sometimes shown near a rooster. Most icons depict him with one head, but some show him with six heads, reflecting the legend surrounding his birth, where six mothers symbolized by the six stars of the Pleiades cluster cared for the newly born Kārttikēya.
He is popularly known by various names like Shanmuga (“six-faced”), Dandapani (“wielder of the mace”, from -pani meaning hand), Guha (cave, secret), or Guruguha (cave-teacher), and Kārttikēya, which means “of the Krittikas.”
Scholars believe that by the 2nd century BCE, Skanda was a very popular god across North India, particularly in modern-day Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh (extending into the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand) as well as Afghanistan. Coins were issued with images of Skanda during the Kushana era, and kings named themselves after Skanda even up to the reign of the mighty Gupta Empire.
However, the story of his birth from Shiva was not consistent in ancient texts. The Vanaparva of the Mahabharata describes Kārttikēya as the son of Agni and Swaha, while the Shalya Parva and the Anushasana Parva describe him as the son of Shiva. Moreover, his birth is said to have changed and tempered the nature of the six fierce matrikas of the Krittika constellation, making them more motherly and less destructive. Eventually, the worship of this General of the Gods became less popular in the North and is now largely confined to the Tamil region. But even in that upasana, the martial nature of Skanda has largely been replaced by the image of the beautiful, ever-youthful, radiant spiritual guide for all.
In rural Bengal, remnants of an older Kārttikēya festival exist, but more as a means of blessing childless couples with children rather than as an all-encompassing powerful God. As human societies change, so do our perceptions and interactions with the gods, because except for the Upanishadic Brahman, all else in every realm is subject to the dharma of change as governed by Mahakala, the Great Time.
