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Vel () is a divine spear associated with Murugan, the Hindu god of war.
Key facts
- Weapon.name
- Vel
- Weapon.image
- GOD CAVE 3 0271.jpg
- Weapon.image_size
- 200
- Weapon.caption
- Kartikeya statue with Vel at Batu Caves, Malaysia
- Weapon.origin
- India
- Weapon.type
- Spear
- Weapon.is_bladed
- Yes
- Weapon.used_by
- Kartikeya
- Weapon.designer
- Given to Kartikeya by Parvati (mother)
via Wikipedia infobox
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
5 sectionsContents
- Significance
- Gallery
- See also
- References
- External links
Vel () is a divine spear associated with Murugan, the Hindu god of war.
==Significance == According to Shaiva tradition, the goddess Parvati presented the Vel to her son Kartikeya (also known as Murugan), as an embodiment of her shakti, in order to vanquish the asura Surapadman. According to the Skanda Purana, in the war between Kartikeya and Surapadman, Kartikeya used the vel to defeat all the forces of Surapadman. When a complete defeat for Surapadman was imminent, the asura transformed himself into a huge mango tree to evade detection by Murugan. Not fooled by asura's trick, Murugan hurled his vel and split the mango tree into two halves, one becoming a rooster (), and the other a peacock (). Henceforth, the peacock became his vahana or mount, and the rooster became the emblem on his battle flag.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Vel” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.