The Boy Who Taught His Father

Brahma was on his way to Kailash to pay his respects to Shiva, and at the gate a small boy was playing. It was Murugan, Shiva's younger son.

The boy stepped in front of him.

"You are Brahma," he said. "You make things."

"I make all things," said Brahma, pleased to be recognised.

"How?"

Brahma smiled at the boy. "With the Vedas," he said. "Everything I make, I make with the Vedas." And because the boy seemed to want to know, he began to recite them, from the beginning, from the syllable that every Veda starts with.

"Om," said Brahma.

"Stop," said the boy. "What does it mean?"

Brahma stopped. He had said Om more times than there were stars. He had made worlds with it. He opened his four mouths to explain it, and found that not one of them knew how.

"It is the first sound," he said. "It is the beginning of the Vedas. It is..."

"That is what it is," said the boy. "I asked what it means."

Brahma could not answer.

"Then you should not be making anything," said Murugan, and he had the creator of the world locked up, then and there, and took over his work himself. For a time, the stories say, the boy made the creatures of the world, and made them well.

The gods were in a panic. Without Brahma, who would keep the order of things? They went to Vishnu, and then all together they went to Shiva.

Shiva came and found his son.

"Let Brahma go," he said.

"No," said the boy. "He does not know what Om means."

Shiva looked at his son for a while.

"Do you?" he said.

"Yes."

"Then tell me."

"Not like that," said the boy. "If you want to learn something, you must ask as a pupil asks a teacher."

So Shiva, the great god, the teacher of all teachers, sat down in front of his own small son, below him, as a pupil sits, with his hands folded, and asked to be taught. And Murugan leaned down and told him, close to his ear, what Om means.

No one else heard it. No one has ever said what it was.

Brahma was let out. He went back to his lotus and his work, a little humbler. And from that day Murugan had a new name: Swaminatha, the lord who is the teacher of the lord.

At Swamimalai, near Kumbakonam on a branch of the Kaveri, the story is built in stone. The temple of Murugan stands on top of a hillock, up sixty steps, one for each of the sixty years of the Tamil calendar. The shrine of Shiva and Parvati stands at the foot of the hill, below him, as the pupil sat below the teacher.

The Murugan of Swamimalai holds a staff in his hand, and in front of him there is not the usual peacock but an elephant, which Indra is said to have given him. Only here and at Tiruttani does he have one.