Āyyāppān

By Jit Majumdar

o dear father
o dear lord
a male deity who is very prominent and popular in southern India, who is considered by devotees to be the offspring of Śiva and Vişņu’s female form of Mohinī, and believed to be combining in himself the powers of both the deities, and who was originally a historical personality, who was adopted as son by the King Rājasekhara of the Pandalam kingdom (the present day township in the Pathanamthitta District of the state of Kerala), when the king found him as a newborn infant in the wilderness on a hunting expedition.

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