The Birth and Consecration of Skanda (Kartikeya) at Kurukshetra
तं प्राह भगवान् यत्तु तेजः पीतं पुरा त्वया त्रैयम्बलं त्रिलोकेश जातः शरवणे शिशुः
taṃ prāha bhagavān yattu tejaḥ pītaṃ purā tvayā traiyambalaṃ trilokeśa jātaḥ śaravaṇe śiśuḥ
福徳ある主は彼に告げた。「おお三界の主よ、かつて汝が飲み取ったあの熾烈なるテージャス—三母(あるいは三重)の力(tri-ambala)—は、今やシャラヴァナ(葦の茂み)に生まれた幼子となった。」
{ "primaryRasa": "adbhuta", "secondaryRasa": "vira", "rasaIntensity": 0, "emotionalArcPosition": "", "moodDescriptors": [] }
In Purāṇic idiom, tejas is a transferable divine potency. ‘Drinking’ it signifies containing or bearing an unbearable energy; the narrative then externalizes that potency as an embodied being—here, the child born in Śaravana (a standard Skanda-birth topos).
It is an epithet indicating a threefold maternal/associational aspect of the manifested power (commonly linked with Skanda’s complex birth traditions involving multiple mothers or nurturing agencies). The verse uses it to qualify the tejas that becomes the child.
Śaravana (‘reed-thicket’) functions as a mythic place-marker: the landscape itself becomes a mnemonic for the deity’s origin-story. Such localization is characteristic of the Vāmana Purāṇa’s broader interest in sacralized geography.