Valli and Devasena

One wife was the daughter of the king of the gods, the other of a hill hunter

Two marriages

Devasena — Deivanai. In the Tamil Kanda Puranam tradition she is Indra's daughter; the Mahabharata instead calls Devasena a daughter of Prajapati and a relative of Indra. The celestial marriage follows the war. In Tamil metaphysics she is kriya-shakti, the power of action.

Valli — the foster-daughter of a Kuravar hill chief (in the story born of a sage and a doe, raised among hunters). She guards a field of millet. She is iccha-shakti, the power of desire.

In the field

Murugan goes to Valli in disguise — first as a young hunter, then as an old man.

Valli will not have him. Then Ganesha comes as a wild elephant and frightens her into Murugan's arms.

Brother helped brother. (A link to this site's Ganesh-Vrittanta.)

The northern ascetic, the southern householder

Here the two traditions part.

In the south Murugan is a married householder god — Deivanai and Valli at his sides, home and prosperity.

In many northern and eastern traditions Kartikeya is remembered as a celibate warrior — "the bachelor god". Separately, Tamil Palani tradition tells how Murugan, angered after losing the fruit-race to Ganesha, withdrew to Palani as the ascetic Dandayudhapani.

In some northern traditions his solo worship is even held inauspicious for householders, and in some temples women traditionally do not go.

Note: Murugan's two wives are Devasena / Deivanai and Valli. The Mahabharata calls Devasena a daughter of Prajapati and a relative of Indra; the Tamil Kanda-Puranam stream makes Deivanai Indra's daughter. Married after the war (Valli's foster-family is of the Kuravar hill community). Scholars (Zvelebil and others) read the Valli story as the older, indigenous Tamil love-myth onto which the Devasena marriage was added when the Tamil god was fitted into the Sanskrit frame. Valli is of a hill / hunter community — this is recorded as the texts have it; such "the god married a tribal woman" stories have been read both as inclusion and as condescension, and this epic does not adjudicate and repeats no list of peoples. The disguised courtship and the elephant are a Tamil folk layer, not in the Sanskrit sources. This north/south split mirrors Ganesh-Vrittanta chapter 4. The northern custom of women not entering, or worship being "inauspicious for householders", belongs to some traditions only, not a universal rule.

Source: from several texts and traditions, Valli and Devasena