Mr. Sreenivasan had raised a nice question for the previous post on the marriage of Valli with Muruga. Thanks to Satheesh again, we are going to see the original Chola version of the legend in sculpture.

This is a slightly unclear sculpture, and hence we need to infer quite a bit. Its again a beautiful panel, but much withered. It is split into three scenes top to bottom. There is also a smaller panel running right next to it – with a still undeciphered story of Muruga, which we will see at the end.

The full panel can be viewed below, since we have already seen the legend in much detail, we go to the sculpture straight away.

We see Muruga as the old man ( he is carrying an umbrella now) talking to Valli ( who is seated on a much lower Paran)

The next scene – we see a much smaller elephant -more like an elephant calf than a scary raging bull – with muruga who has taken his original form and valli kind of offering a salute!!

The last scene is more unclear – Valli is shown with hands raised upwards – praying?? and the elepant (now it resembles an elephant) with Murugan seated on top going away.

The last two we see the hunters of Valli’s tribe.


The adjacent panel – again top to bottom we see a devotee of muruga praying by a tree, then below we see Muruga ( identified by his cylindrical crown and other regal ornaments) standing next to a seated goddess under an umbrella ( Devasena ??). the last shows him with his two consorts – valli and devasena ( a beautiful depiction) with his peacock sculpted under.