In the traditional telling, the two halves into which Murugan splits Surapadman become his peacock mount, Mayil, and the rooster that appears on his battle standard, transforming his defeated adversary into permanent attendants bound to serve him rather than treating the demon's destruction as a simple, final elimination, a resolution scholars of Tamil religious literature read as characteristic of the tradition's tendency to incorporate rather than simply erase defeated antagonists into the ongoing devotional and iconographic life of its central deity.
The battle is commemorated as Skanda Sashti, a major festival within Tamil Murugan devotion observed across South India, Sri Lanka and the substantial Tamil diaspora communities in Southeast Asia, Mauritius, South Africa and elsewhere, marked by six days of fasting and intensified devotional practice culminating in Soorasamharam, a dramatic ritual reenactment of the battle and Surapadman's defeat performed at major Murugan temples.
The narrative and its associated festival illustrate the significant degree to which Hindu religious practice operates through strong regional and linguistic traditions alongside the pan-Indian Sanskrit Puranic corpus, with Tamil Murugan devotion representing one of the most developed and enduring examples of this specifically regional depth within the broader Hindu religious landscape.