A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s2.22

c19.s2.22

The Tiruttoṇḍar-purāṇam or Periya Purāṇam of Śēkkijār composed in the reign of Kulottunga II (1133-50) is a landmark in the history of Tamil Śaivism. Umāpati-śivācārya has celebrated the event in a short Purāṇa called Śekkiḷār-nāyaṉār-purāṇam. A Veḷḷāḷa by caste, Śekkiḷār was born at Kuṉṟattūr very near Madras, and having entered the service of the Chola monarch, he rose to a high position and earned the title Uttamaśōḷa Pallavarāyan. He built a Śiva temple closely modelled on that at Tirunāgēśvaram (near Kumbakonam), a shrine to which he was greatly devoted. The story goes that the king's study of Jivakacintāmaṇi offended Śekkiḷār's deeply religious nature and that he exhorted the king to abandon the pursuit of impious erotic literature and turn instead to the lives of the Śaiva saints celebrated by Sundaramūrtti and Nambi Āṇḍār Nambi. The king thereupon commanded Śekkiḷār to expound these lives, and being greatly attracted by the theme, he wanted Śekkiḷār to write them out in extenso in a great poem and gave him much wealth to enable him to do so. Śekkiḷār then went over to Chidambaram, and with his mind filled with divine grace—there was a voice commanding him to begin his work with the words Ulagelām—he began to compose the Purāṇa in the beautiful thousand-pillared maṇḍapa within the precincts of the temple. On its completion, the Chola monarch himself came to Chidambaram and, in accordance with another divine command, he listened attentively to Śekkiḷār's exposition of the work from day to day for a whole year. It was hailed universally as a veritable fifth Veda in Tamil and immediately took its place as the twelfth and last book in the Śaiva canon. It has influenced profoundly the lives of all the Śaivas of the Tamil country and of those in Andhra and Karṇātaka through translations and adaptations. It is one of the masterpieces of Tamil literature, and worthily commemorates the great age of the Imperial Cholas and their sustained devotion to Śaivism.