Udaya

Periya Puranam

பெரிய புராணம்

Also Thiruthondar Puranam, The twelfth Thirumurai.

Devotional canon Tamil Twelfth century

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What it is#

The Periya Puranam is Sekkizhar’s account of the lives of the sixty three Nayanmars, the Tamil Saiva saints, and it is the twelfth and last book of the Thirumurai. What makes it remarkable is who is in it: a hunter, a potter, a washerman, a fisherman, a king, a woman who asked to be made a demon, a man who killed his own son to feed a devotee. Caste is present in the text and is explicitly overridden by devotion in case after case. It is the frame through which Tamil Saivism reads its own hymns, and it is read as literature as much as scripture.

Its shape#

Four thousand two hundred and eighty six verses in thirteen chapters, covering sixty three Nayanmars individually and nine groups. Sekkizhar wrote it at the request of the Chola king Anapaya, by tradition Kulottunga II, and composed it at Chidambaram. It takes its list of saints from Sundarar’s Thiruthondar Thogai, a single hymn naming them, which Nambiyandar Nambi had already expanded, so the Periya Puranam is the third and fullest telling.

What it argues about#

These are not settled texts

The book is uncomfortable on purpose and Tamil Saivism has never smoothed it. Kannappan the hunter offers meat he has tasted and water from his mouth and is accepted; Nandanar the untouchable is admitted to Chidambaram through fire; Siruthondar cooks his own child because a guest asks for it. Modern readers, including devout ones, find some of these stories appalling and say so, and the tradition’s answer has generally been that the point is the complete abandonment of self regard and that the stories are deliberately beyond the limit. Anti caste readings take Nandanar’s story as evidence of exclusion rather than of its overcoming, since he had to be burnt to be let in.

Episodes worth knowing#

Kannappan’s eye

A hunter who knew no rite brought the linga at Kalahasti water carried in his mouth, meat he had tasted to check it was good, and flowers from his hair. The brahmin priest who came each morning found the offerings and was horrified. When blood came from one eye of the linga, Kannappan gouged out his own and set it in place; when the second eye bled he put his foot on the linga to keep the spot and reached for his other eye. Siva stopped his hand. The story is in the canon of a priestly tradition and every element of it breaks that tradition’s rules, which is why it is told.

Nandanar at the gate

Nandanar was of a community that could not enter the temple at Chidambaram and longed to see Nataraja. He was told, by the brahmins of the town in the usual telling, that he must pass through fire first. He did, and walked in. The traditional reading is of a devotee purified and accepted. The anti caste reading, which Tamil Dalit writers have made forcefully, is that a man was required to burn in order to enter a building, and that the miracle conceals the demand. Both readings are current in Tamil Nadu and the story is taught in schools.

Whose telling#

There is no single text

Sundarar, Thiruthondar Thogai
The original hymn naming the sixty three, eleven verses long, from which everything else grows.
Nambiyandar Nambi
The Thiruthondar Thiruvandhadhi, which expanded the bare list into short accounts before Sekkizhar.
Sekkizhar, twelfth century
The full telling, written at Chidambaram at the Chola king’s request, which became the twelfth Thirumurai.
Gopalakrishna Bharathi, nineteenth century
The Nandanar Charitram, a Tamil musical telling of Nandanar’s story that is still performed and is itself now argued about.

Where the regions differ#

  • Tamil
  • Kerala
  • Telugu
  • Kannada
  • North
  • Maharashtra
  • Bengal
  • Punjab
  • Assam
  • Sri Lanka
  • Nepal
  • Gujarat
  • Odisha
  • Mithila
  • Kashmir
  • Tulu Nadu
  • manipur
  • rajasthan
  • konkani
  • sindhi
  • jharkhand
  • himalayan
  • kodava
Where it is kept: 3 of the 23 traditions this app follows. The filled one is where it is from.
Tamil Nadu
Read as scripture and as literature, with the sixty three Nayanmars in bronze in the Siva temples and carried in procession.
Kerala
The Saiva Siddhanta tradition is shared and the Malayalam speaking old Chera districts keep some of the sung temples.
Sri Lanka
The Tamil Saiva tradition of the north keeps the Thirumurai complete, including this book.

All the works