A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c20.14

c20.14

After him we might place Tirumangai, one of the most celebrated of the ālvārs. He was the petty chieftain of Ālināḍu in the Tanjore district who, legend says, became a highwayman in order to carry off and marry the daughter of a Vaishnavite doctor of a higher caste, for whom he also changed his religion. He is said to have stolen a solid golden image of Buddha from a monastery in Negapatam to pay for renovating the temple of Śrīrangam. The clear reference to Vairamegha in his hymns places him in the middle of the eighth century, a date which discredits the story of his friendly meeting with Ñānasambandar at Shiyāli. Neither story can be treated as history, though each in its own way furnishes a clue to what his followers believed in later times. His hymns, and they are many, are equally full of good poetry and attacks on Jainism and Buddhism. To Śaivism, on the whole, he evinced a more friendly attitude and there are many resemblances in literary form and religious sentiments between Ñānasambandar and Tirumangai.