Apart from His divine nature, the Tamil deity Murukan is also a metaphor for valour, piety, youthful vigour, beauty and above all a powerful unifying symbol of the Tamil community spread all over the world. The traces of the origin of this powerful cult or faith are discernible in the Indus Valley civilization, a great culture of the Dravidian ethnic group, which flourished 6000 years back. This was invaded and perished by the nomads who are believed to be the Aryans, a race which pushed the Dravidians from North to far more Southern part of the Indian Peninsula.
The earliest extant Tamil literature, popularly known as Carikam literature, describes Lord Murukan as the God of the hilly tribes known as the people of Kurinci land and this is expressed in Tolkappiyam as . This simple worship of the Tamil hilly tribes gradually started spreading in the length and breath of Tamilnadu and thus a regional worship has become a Tamil national cult by about the second or third century A.D. During this period the six abodes of Lord Murukan have been defined and enumerated and temples have been built for Him in conformity with the codes specified in the Agamas. The Kurinci Murukan was the beloved bride groom of the beautiful damsel of the hilly tribe namely Valli and He was described as the son of the mother Goddess Korravai or Kali which is obvious from the Tamil attributions in ancient Tamil Classics. He has no father or a brother as long as he was restricted in the Tamil soil only to the Kurinci land. His arch enemy was Cur, a destructive power which has grown up in due course in the mythology to a gigantic proportion to become Curapatman. This arch enemy is portrayed in Murukan literature in a larger scale as a cosmic antagonist and an embodiment of cosmic evi.
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