MURUKAN

THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD

by Dr R.Nagaswamy

Murukan is the most venerated God of the Tamils from the time of their known history. He is the god of the Kurunci people - hill and surrounding regions. The word Murukan stands for beauty, youth, victorious and so on. There are two words, Ceyon and Murukan used to denote him from the very early period. The earliest Tamil grammar Tolkappiyam assigned to the closing years of BCE or the beginning of CE is "Ceyon" while the Purananuru and other Sangam works mention him as Murukan. No known Tamil work earlier than these exist to give us information about Muruka. Among the Sangam works two group of works namely Paripadal and Thirumurugarruppadai That give great details about Murukan are considered later by some scholars. They themselves are not sure how late they are, because their view is based on subjective assessment and not based on any scientific evaluations. So much so there are as many dating as there are these writers. All the rest of the Sangam works are considered early and these would include Pattupattu, Purananuru, Ahananuru, Narrinai, Kalittokai, Ainkurunuru, Kuruntokai, and Patirrupattu are considered as early texts. Though the two group of poems mentioned earlier the Paripadal, and Murugarruppadai are considered later yet the information available in them may be close to the others mentioned and may be taken to reflect the tradition found in them. Article on Murukan