Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c8.436

c8.436

Once when the King was holding his durbar he got information that in one of the eastern ports had landed a set of good war-horses for sale. He sent Tiruvādavūrār to that place. The minister, when near the port of Tirupperundurai, heard a sound of Vedic utterances and he immediately went to the place from where the sound came. He saw Lord Śiva sitting under a tree in the guise of a Guru. Forgetting all state affairs he became engrossed in the meditation of Śiva. Suddenly he developed a talent for poetry and music and sweet attractive poems in praise of Śiva started flowing from his tongue. Śiva was immensely pleased and gave him the name Māṇikyavācakar meaning that every Vācaka (sentence) coming out of his tongue was equal in value to a māṇikya (Ruby). The guru gave him a ruby too. Māṇikyavācakar in the garb of a mendicant joined a troop of Śiva devotees and spent all the money he had for the service of the devotees of Śiva and also for the reconstruction of a dilapidated Śiva temple in Tirupperundurai.