Skandapurana 5.263

Brahmā said: / Kārtikeya, dearer than life to Pārvatī, / played nearby, engaged in various childish antics. (1)

Of red luster, of great splendor, six-faced, of wondrous prowess, / sometimes he sang loudly, and sometimes he danced at will. (2)

Seeing his mother and father, he bowed in humility at times; / and at times on the sandbank of the Gaṅgā, his form was smeared with sand. (3)

Searching with the gaṇas for various forest trees, / thus sporting, five days passed for him. (4)

Then the gods, led by Mahendra, put to flight by the terror of Tāraka, / all praised Śaṃkara, desiring the destruction of Tāraka. (5)

At the Jāhnavī, the gods with their troops appointed Kumāra as general of the army; / divine instruments resounded, and a shower of flowers fell. (6)

Fire gave his own spear; Himavat gave a mount; / surrounded by tens of millions of gaṇas sprung from all the gods, (7)

having bowed to the assemblies of sages, he went forth to battle the enemy; / and in the city of Tāmravatī, the mighty one blew his conch. (8)

Then, from the army of Tāraka, tens of millions of daityas and dānavas / came forth from his city, agitated by the fear of the conch's blast. (9)

Mounted on their own conveyances, prepared, arrogant in their strength, / all the gods also fought, invigorated by Skanda's splendor. (10)

Then he struck down the armies of the Dānavas on every side; / severed by Viṣṇu's discus, they fell upon the earth by the thousands.

Then, O sage, broken by hundreds, the Dānavas were slain at that time; / rivers born of blood arose of manifold kinds.

Seeing that Dānava army broken, he fought in battle; / the lord of the gods immediately shattered [them] in many ways with hosts of arrows.

Having fought with his spear, urged by Kṛṣṇa, he hurled it, / and in an instant reduced him to ashes along with his chariot and charioteer.

Seeing Tāraka slain, the remainder went to Pātāla. / Then all the hosts of gods praised his valour.

The drums of the gods sounded, and a shower of flowers fell. / Having obtained victory, all of them, led by Maheśvara,

consecrated the six-faced one to the supreme command of all the gods. / Then, embracing Skanda, Pārvatī, stammering with joy,

performed auspicious rites, surrounded by her female friends. / Having thus slain Tāraka on the seventh day, the boy,

reaching Mount Mandara and bringing great joy to his parents, / Skanda, filled with supreme bliss, related everything.

In due course, Śaṃkara thought of his marriage. / With a gracious mind, he spoke to Gāṅgeya of boundless splendour:

“The time suitable for taking a wife has arrived for you, O lord. / Having obtained a wife, make marriage your duty, as approved for a man.

Sport with various pleasures and wish-fulfilling aerial chariots.” / Hearing that, the blessed Skanda said to his father: / “I alone indeed am visible everywhere and in all hosts; / among visible and invisible things, what should I grasp, what should I abandon?

All the women who exist in the universe are indeed equal to Pārvatī to me. / All men too, O lord of the gods, I behold as like unto you.

You are my guru; protect me from sinking again into hell! / By your grace this undivided knowledge has been known [by me];

would [you] plunge [me] once more into the ocean of the most dreadful worldly existence? / Just as one holding a lamp in hand, having seen the object, drops the instrument,

so the yogi, having attained knowledge, abandons worldly existence. / Having known the all-pervading brahman, O omniscient supreme lord,

one for whom all actions cease is known as a yogi. / For those whose minds are greedy for sensory objects, attachment arises even in a forest;

for those of equal vision everywhere, liberation is eternal even in a home. / Knowledge alone, O Maheśāna, is exceedingly difficult for human beings to attain.

A wise man should never cast down knowledge once it has somehow been attained. / I am not, nor is my mother, nor father, nor kinsman;

having attained knowledge, I have reached a state separate from the worlds. / By good fortune and by your power this portion was to be obtained; you ought not

to speak such words to me who desire liberation; of this there is no doubt.” / When the goddess, intent on her insistence, spoke again and again,

he then bowed to both his parents and went to Mount Krauñca. / There, in a most holy hermitage, he performed supreme austerity.

He muttered the supreme brahman, the twelve-syllabled seed-syllable, / having first brought all the senses under control through meditation.

Then, having cast aside the sense of mineness, he attained the yoga of knowledge. / When the unobstructed perfections, beginning with lightness and the rest, approached him,

then, angered at their hosts, he said these words: / “Even to me, if you have come with wicked intent,

then you shall not overpower us who are equally tranquil!” / Having known thus, even Maheśa, because the great dawning of knowledge [occurred],

[thinking,] “Even more than I, Skanda has attained a higher state through the yoga of knowledge,” / his heart filled with wonder, instructed Pārvatī.

And Hara [consoled] Umā, who was devoted to grief for her son, with auspicious, nectar-like words / [concerning] the māhātmya of the Cāturmāsya, which destroys all sin:

“Whether Maheśvara or the enemy of Madhu and Kaiṭabha, dwelling in the heart, consisting of meditation, without a second— / by a mindset of non-duality, the destroyer of supreme distress, even an enemy, becomes exceedingly dear from that.”

Sūta said: / “This māhātmya arising from the Cāturmāsya has been told to you in detail, O brahmins. What else do you wish to hear?”

Thus ends the two hundred and sixty-fourth chapter, entitled “The Slaying of Tārakāsura”, in the section on the māhātmya of the Cāturmāsya, in the dialogue between Brahmā and Nārada, in the account of the one who reclines on Śeṣa, in the māhātmya of the sacred field of Hāṭakeśvara, in the Nāgarakhaṇḍa, the sixth [part] of the eighty-one-thousand-verse collection of the glorious Skandapurāṇa.