Singamukhan’s greatness

Demon Soorapadman gets killed when he fights with Lord Shanmukha, and Kachiappa Sivachariar, in his Kanda Puranam, traces the story starting from the appearance of Goddess Uma as the daughter of Himavan. Soorapadman has two brothers — Tarakasura and Singamukhan. But Singamukhan is not to be thought of as being the equal of his brother in wickedness, and deserves to be called a

great person, said D. Gnanasundaram, in a discourse. But the question is how a demon can be great for, demons oppose the righteous. How then can Singamukhan

who joined hands with his brother and fought Lord

Shanmukha be termed great? The answer is no one in this

world is so pure as to have no bad qualities. No one is so wicked as to have no redeeming qualities. Thiruvalluvar points this out in the Thirukkural. We must weigh the qualities of a person — the good and the bad. It is on the

basis of the predominance of the good or bad qualities that we should decide if a person is good or bad. In  Singamukhan’s case, he had some excellent qualities, and so one must conclude that he deserves the epithet ‘great’.

There are many similarities between the Ramayana and

Kanda Puranam. As in the case of the Ramayana, where we have three demons, Ravana, Kumbakarna and Vibhishana, in the Kanda Puranam too, we have three demons. Kumbakarna, with his excessive eating and long hours of sleep typified a person with tamasic qualities. Ravana’s characteristics showed his rajasic qualities, his pride and arrogance being the foremost among them. Vibhishana

showed sattvic qualities. In the Kanda Puranam, Soorapadman embodies pride. Tarakasura embodies maya and Singamukhan embodies karma.

Singamukhan was killed in the battle with Lord Shanmukha,

but he deserves to be praised, because he had not approved of his brother’s conduct, and had advised him not to oppose the Lord. He said Lord Shanmukha was none other than Lord Siva Himself in a different form, but

Soorapadman refused to see reason. His realisation that Lord Shanmukha was God Himself showed Singamukhan’s greatness.