Sectarian-spat

Source: TW

The archaic skandapurANa has a 3 three-way sectarian spat in the varAha episode.

The shaiva assertion is seen in the form of the claim that varAha was able to kill hiraNyAkSha only with rudra’s chakra. After killing hiraNyAkSha, varAha mates with his consorts in his porcine form. Thus he fathers a lupine son vRka who goes one a rampage & destroys skanda’s Himalayan forest at gaurIkUTa. kumAra captures vR^ika & subjects him to rough punishments – a rare preservation of the Germanic Fenris wolf motif in the H world.

Seeing this nArada informs varAha that skanda is subject his son vR^ika to yama-like trAsa. varAha attacks skanda & is pierced by the latter’s shakti in his heart. At that point he gives up his varAha form and returns to the usual viShNu-rUpa.

Here the shaiva’s steal the kaumAra thunder – something seen throughout the archaic skandapurANa – viShNu asks rudra to initiate him into the pAshupatavrata and the latter does so. This battle of varAha & skanda is also seen in the south Indian skandapurANa, and is iconographically attested in the North in gupta-puShyabhUti age. Hence, it is likely to have been there in the Ur-skandapurANa.

The old cooperation between the vaiShNava-s & kaumAra-s seems to have been caught up in the “vIra”-shaiva – “vIra”-vaiShNava sectarian struggles & they too entered the sectarian action before being snuffed out by the shaiva rise.