Śiva the Father

Among the Periyapurā

am's most obviously favored images of Śiva is that of father figure. Cēkki

ār's authorial voice identifies the nāya

mār as “servants according to the desire of the Father”;

²⁷

the great sage, Upama

iyar (Sanskrit Upamanyu), who first tells the stories of the nāya

mār to a crowd of assembled savants and celestial beings, “grew satisfied in mind, eating from the [primordial] ocean of milk through the grace granted by the Father.”

²⁸

Time and time again, the poet-saints of Śiva call out to their lord as “my father” or “our father.” Iya

pakai mistakes Śiva in disguise as “a servant of our Father and our Lord.”

²⁹

Ka

appar, the guileless hunter, worries at the evil omens he sees en route to his beloved image of the lord: “Woe is me, what has happened to my Father?”;

³⁰

later he cries out again, “What has happened to our Father who is dearer than life?”³¹

Ku

kuliyakkalayar ecstatically proclaims, “He rules over even me, my Father, my Lord, Śiva!”

³²

Mā

akkañcā

ar respectfully greets Śiva in disguise thus: “My Father, oh ascetic lord, I who am your servant have been redeemed by this gracious arrival”;

³³

Appar cries out in joy, “[He] is mother and father to me!”³⁴

In places far too numerous to count or list here, Cēkki

ār and his poet-saints speak of Śiva in distinctly paternal terms.

The epithet is justified by its narrative contexts. Śiva's role as father in the Periyapurā

am is evident through his interventions in the lives of several among his most favored devotees. In the story of Ca

ṭēcurar,

³⁵

for example, the child-saint who amputates his father's legs and wins as a result the rights of Śiva's own adopted son, the lord displays unprecedented tenderness—and confers unprecedented glories—upon a child who rather cruelly destroys his earthly father. In shaping the story of Ca

ṭēcurar, Cēkki

ār departs significantly from the narrative treatment of Ca

ḍi/Ca

ḍeśa/Ca

ḍeśvara found in the mythology of the Sanskrit Āgamas and the rituals of Śaiva temple worship they describe.

³⁶

Described in the Kāmikāgama as “an angry emanation of Paramaśiva” (literally, “the highest Śiva”),³⁷

Ca

ḍa is the only living being powerful enough to consume the nirmālya, the utterly pure remains of the food offered to the Śiva li

ga in daily temple worship; these ritual “leftovers” are offered to Ca

da at his shrine to the northeast of the central li

ga. The Āgamas describe Ca

ḍa's family life, assign him a wife, and dwell at some length on his reception of Śiva's glorious grace.

³⁸

Inscriptional evidence suggests that, as an emanation of Śiva's highest form and serving as the lord's most immediate subordinate in the Āgamically organized temple, Ca

ḍa functioned as an intermediary between Śiva and his human devotees so that royal donations to the temple were made directly to Ca

ḍa—acting as a sort of supervising temple authority—rather than to Śiva himself.

³⁹

Cēkki

ār's portrayal of Ca

ṭēcurar could not depart more significantly from the character of Ca

ḍeśvara in the Āgamic tradition. Cēkki

ār transforms the Sanskrit Ca

ḍa, “the fierce one,” into a precocious child of seven named Vicāra Caruma

ār, conceived through the power of his mother's austerities,

⁴⁰

learned in all Vedic and Āgamic lore, his mind forever fixed on “the One of reddish feet who performs the dance that possesses us.”⁴¹

One day, Vicāra Caruma

ār encounters a herdsman mercilessly beating a cow who has recently given birth. He restrains the herdsman, lectures the young man on the sacrality of cows in general, and resolves to tend the herd himself, thinking that “there is no religious duty superior to guarding this herd of cows with their calves.”

⁴²

The herd flourishes under the loving care of Vicāra as “the little calf of the Vedas,”⁴³

and the cows begin to produce veritable rivers of milk. Vicāra, possessed by an urge to worship Śiva born of the “unending succession of worship rites performed [by him] there in previous lives,”⁴⁴

constructs a li

ga of sand and bathes it with the now plentiful pots of milk provided by the happy cows. A stranger who fails to understand the import of Vicāra's worship happens by; he reports to the Brahmin owners of the cows that the precious milk required for their own Vedic rites is being dumped on the sands of the riverbank by an impudent child. Incensed, the Brahmins approach Vicāra's father and demand that he put a stop to such an outrage. The boy's father watches Vicāra performing his worship of the li

ga and, enraged by the seeming waste of good milk, emerges from the bushes and kicks over one of his son's pots. In a scene of devastating violence rapidly and dispassionately depicted, Vicāra reacts:

Vicāra's foolish earthly father, “the evil one without eminence,” lying legless and presumably bleeding on the sidelines, is suddenly replaced by the boy's “true” father. Śiva arrives atop Nandi, his bull vehicle, and—in an unprecedented show of divine fatherly love—embraces Vicāra and formally adopts him:

Śiva renames the boy Ca

ṭīca

, bequeaths to him his own eating bowl, garment, and garland, and restores life and limb to the boy's earthly father as the heavens rejoice; thus “he became the son of Śiva.”

⁴⁸

“Who can comprehend this state of affairs?” wonders Cēkki

ār in the final lines of the narrative. “Whatever is done by the devotees who give love to the One without end, that is austerity, is it not? Let us praise it!”

⁴⁹

Many elements in this narrative are striking, but most significant for the current discussion of the Periyapurā

am's Śaiva theology is the story's emphasis on fatherhood, both earthly and divine. The married Ca

ḍi—the “fierce one” of the Āgamas—is here stripped of all sexuality, rendered a prepubescent child conceived not through sexual contact but via the austerities of his mother. Vicāra's biological father—Brahmin custodian of the Vedic tradition that he is—is nonetheless subjected to some of Cēkki

ār's most biting sarcasm, wordplay, and double entendre. He quivers in fear at the accusations of his fellow Brahmins against his son, placating them with an obsequious plea: “Oh Brahmins of abundant greatness, you must forgive that which has occurred!”

⁵⁰

Images of the favored Ca

ṭēcurar's earthly father slinking from bush to bush while spying on his son contrast pathetically to the gracious embrace of Ca

ṭēcurar's “true” father, Śiva. Cēkki

ār here revels in wordplay, particularly in the contrasting meanings of the word ma

ai, literally “that which is hidden,” but also used to indicate the Vedic tradition.

⁵¹

The father is described as the ma

ai mutiyō

, the one “matured in Vedic knowledge,” or, alternatively, “the one matured in the art of concealment,” as he slinks behind trees and bushes and conceals himself (ma

aintu) from his young son.

⁵²

In the act of spying, he is again described as ma

aiyō

, the “concealed” or the “Vedic” one.

⁵³

In stunning contrast, Śiva arrives to reward the boy for his unswerving commitment to worship; here he adopts Ca

ṭēcurar as his own son, giving no hint of the formal stewardship role he plays in the Āgamic temple context. Śiva proves himself a loving and forgiving father as well, conferring on the young boy his begging bowl, garment, garland, and grace, and restoring the wayward Brahmin father to life.

Cēkki

ār further develops the theological motif of Śiva as compassionate father figure in the story of Campantar, the child poet-saint whose story, at 1,256 verses, is easily the longest in the Periyapurā

am.

⁵⁴

Born into a “good family [following] the ancient path of Śaivism,”⁵⁵

Campantar is adopted as Śiva's and Pārvatī's own at the tender age of three. When his father leaves him near a Śiva temple in order to perform his daily rites, the child Campantar begins to cry; seeing the image of the lord and his consort on the temple, he cries out to them: “Mother! Father!”⁵⁶

The lord and his consort appear before Campantar atop their bull-mount, Nandi, and Śiva instructs Pārvatī to “feed [the child] a golden cup of the milk that flows abundantly from [her] two breasts.”⁵⁷

Pārvatī does so, and the child is immediately filled with true knowledge of the nature of Śiva:

Throughout the narrative of Campantar's travels, as he accompanies Appar on pilgrimage, converts the Pā

ṭiya

king from Jainism to Śaivism, and converts through debate a band of Buddhists, the child-saint is repeatedly referred to as the son of the lord, as in the verse above. A local king, for example, adores the child as “the son of the lord of the celestials.”

⁶⁰

The child-saint, as in the case of Ca

ṭēcurar above, finds greater solace and meaning in the paternal figure of Śiva, rather than in the arms of his biological parents. When Campantar asks the lord for money to support the performance of Vedic rites, Śiva sends his minions to provide quantities of gold; Campantar's earthly father then leaves the pilgrimage route to return home to perform his Vedic sacrificial rituals.

⁶¹

The divine child-saint is left to the care of Śiva, who generously supports the young boy in his devotional activities.⁶²

Cēkki

ār expresses the outpouring of Campantar's love for the lord in distinctly filial terms, likening the child-saint's emotional flood of love to that felt by a calf at seeing its mother:

While it may not be surprising that the stories of two child-saints in the Periyapurā

am—Ca

ṭēcurar and Campantar—elicit a theological vision of Śiva as father, somewhat more surprising is the paternal role played by Śiva in the story of Cuntarar. Episodes from the life of Cuntarar, literally “the beautiful one,” but often referred to as tampirā

tō

ar, “the lord's friend,” and va

to

ṭar, “the harsh devotee,”

⁶⁴

provide the narrative frame on which the entire series of hagiographic stories rests.⁶⁵

The stories of Śiva's disguised and direct interventions in Cuntarar's life are curious ones at first glance; time and time again, the deity steps in to test, to goad, and even to placate his favored poet. As in the case of many of the nāya

mārs' stories, Śiva comes to Cuntarar in his dreams to demand that he visit a particular Śaiva temple;

⁶⁶

and, as he does in the case of a few of his most favored devotees, Śiva comes to Cuntarar in the guise of a Brahmin mendicant, bearing unending supplies of food and water for all his devotees in times of drought and famine.⁶⁷

Yet Śiva also reserves his most playful tricks for Cuntarar alone, and the poet seemingly gives as good as he gets from the lord. Śiva appears in the guise of an aged Brahmin on Cuntarar's first wedding day, luring him away from his beautiful bride with a deed of enslavement;⁶⁸

once Cuntarar has set off on his devotional pilgrimage throughout the Tamil country, the lord appears in disguise once again to annoy the saint-poet while he sleeps, brushing his feet against the poet's head until he awakens. Annoyed, Cuntarar asks:

Even more striking than the give-and-take play between lord and devotee, this game of hide-and-seek in which Śiva seems always to have the upper hand, are the debates waged between Cuntarar and his lord, his challenges to a deity who seems surprisingly acquiescent to rather outrageous demands. Twice, for example, Śiva plays messenger between Cuntarar and his lady-loves, first in the dreams of the poet-saint and his soon-to-be second bride, Ca

kiliyār, and then as the saint's emissary to his wronged first wife, Paravaiyār. Unable to bear the misery of his “friend” (tō

ar), Śiva agrees to go in disguise to the woman's home;

⁷⁰

Paravaiyār requires two visits from the lord—the second in his fully divine form rather than in disguise—before she acquiesces to be reunited with Cuntarar.⁷¹

How does one interpret the character of a deity who deigns to serve as errand-boy for a distraught lover? How can one comprehend the action of a supreme lord who condescends to respond to his devotee's impassioned plea for assistance in landing a second wife, since he, Lord Śiva, himself enjoys two wives? As Cuntarar points out to his lord:

Shulman suggests, in his study of images of royalty, Brahmins, and the divine in medieval South Indian literatures,

⁷³

that such images present to the world the impression of “crazed devotees in love with a crazy god,”⁷⁴

of a supreme deity who nonetheless can be “blackmail[ed],”⁷⁵

who is unable to “set limits for his devotees.”⁷⁶

Yet the vision of Cuntarar grappling with the lord for everything from financial assistance⁷⁷

to help in dealing with the women in his life also suggests another image: that of a loving and doting father, willing to indulge a sometimes willful son. As the supreme lord ultimately in charge of both his devotees' bondage and their release,⁷⁸

Śiva in the Periyapurā

am engages in only two of the pañcak

tya, the “five activities” or cosmic functions assigned him in both the Sanskrit and Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta systems. Nowhere does Cēkki

ār hint at the lord of s

ṣṭi (“emission” or “creation”), sthiti (“preservation”), or sa

hāra (“reabsorption”); before his most favored devotees' outpourings of love, his are the activities of tirobhāva (“veiling” or “concealment”) and anugrāha (“grace”).

⁷⁹

In the context of emotionally charged scenes of romantic and financial distress, Śiva steps in as father, suffering the taunts of a wayward son, ready to act by whatever means necessary—including the patterns of emergence and concealment that typify tirobhāva—in order to lead his son and “friend” to the final reward of anugrāha. Such scenes of the lord seemingly debasing himself or acting as though “crazy” are, in fact, couched by Cēkki

ār in the pan-Indic Śaiva theological concept of līlā (Tamil vi

aiyāṭṭu) or “play”; Śiva acts in the world—playing the doting father, the trickster, the aged Brahmin—simply as sport, as divine whim, for the good of his devotees. Cēkki

ār's direct references to līlā are, in fact, overwhelmingly in reference to Cuntarar's relationship to the lord. Śiva's second visit in the dreams of Ca

kiliyār is both described by Cēkki

ār as a “divine sport” (tiruvi

aiyāṭṭi

) and attributed by the poet to the “greatness of [the lady's] devotion” (aṭimaip perumai);

⁸⁰

Śiva's intervention with Cuntarar's first wife, Paravaiyār, is similarly likened to divine “play” of which the saint is “unaware” (ōrār).⁸¹

In at least one passage, Cēkkilār draws a direct link between Śiva's love of sport and his paternal love for his devotees. Cākkiyar, a Buddhist by training, expresses his profound devotion to Śiva through the unlikely means of throwing stones at a li

ga; Cēkki

ār likens Śiva's enjoyment of such sport to that felt by children and parents engaged in gentle acts of tweaking, teasing, and pulling. The demands of Śiva's “children” in the Periyapurā

am are many, and he graces each effort of devotion with the effusive love of a doting father.

While imagining a theology of Śiva as father may not set the Periyapurā

am completely apart from the rest of the Tamil-speaking Śaiva tradition, the focus on Śiva as a paternal figure reveals a striking innovation on the part of Cēkki

ār: the virtual elision from the poetic tradition of images of the lord as lover, both to his beloved spouse and to his earthly devotees.

Śiva the Chaste

In crafting a theology of Śiva through narratives that emphasize the lord's paternal qualities of indulgence, nurturance, and blessing, Cēkki

ār departs significantly from the poetic tradition he seeks to contextualize through hagiography. For the major poets among the nāya

mār—Campantar, Cuntarar, and even Appar (a former Jain monk)—images of Śiva as lover, as a sexual partner both to his consort and to his devotees who assume the voices of love-struck young girls, constitute a core element of their poetic theologies.

For both Campantar and Cuntarar—whose stories figure so prominently in Cēkki

ār's Periyapurā

am—Śiva in his form as Ardhanārīśvara, literally “the lord (īśvara) who is half (ardha) woman (nārī),”

⁸²

proves a particularly compelling focus of devotional outpouring. Yet when the poets turn their attention to Śiva in this form, they often celebrate not the male half but the female. Even Campantar, whose “adoption” by Śiva and Pārvatī is hinted at in his poetic work as well as explained more fully in the Periyapurā

am, discusses the breasts of the feminine side of Ardhanārīśvara, Pārvatī or Umā, in decidedly eroticized terms. He sings:

Cuntarar, in similar fashion, favors poetic lingering on the glories of Pārvatī's or Umā's lovely body when singing of Śiva as half-man and half-woman:

In addition to this celebration of Umā's bodily glory, another favorite image of the three Tēvāram poets—particularly Cuntarar⁸⁶

—is that of Śiva as Bhīkṣāṭana, the sexually beguiling mendicant who comes begging door to door, his gnarled frame clothed in ascetic's garb so bewitching that women leave their doorways to chase after him. Appar, for example, typically assumes the voice of one of the enchanted women, so sexually aroused at the sight of Śiva as Bhīkṣāṭana that her clothing spontaneously flies off her body; as she turns away to find food to give as alms, he disappears, leaving the woman to imagine the act of consummation:

Like Appar in the stanza above, each of the Tēvāram poets not only swoons at the sight of Bhīkṣāṭana but also sings to the lord in the voice of a lovesick young woman, yearning for conjugal union with her beloved. Campantar, the child-saint, borrows from a common Indic literary theme of winged creatures serving as messengers between lovers to implore a bee to send word to Śiva of his anguish in separation:

Cuntarar similarly revels in the agonies of loving he lord, appealing to all the flying creatures he sees to send word to his beloved lord of his distress, ending each stanza with the connotatively feminine refrain that bangles and clothing cannot stay on his/her body.⁸⁹

Even Appar, the former Jain monk, finds the image of Śiva as sexual lover no less engaging. Assuming the voice of the friend of a young woman who has lost herself to Śiva, Appar imagines a string of societal consequences for the girl parallel to those associated with illicit romance: the loss of natal home, stature, and honor. He sings:

In short, each of the three Tēvāram poets—in poetry canonized in the first seven books of the Tirumu

ai—celebrates a lord who evokes deeply passionate yearnings on the part of his devotees, eliciting from them love poetry that shares many of its conventions with secular court poetry in both Sanskrit and Tamil.

Against this backdrop of canonical poetic imagery, Cēkki

ār's emphasis on Śiva as father figure emerges as pointedly asexual. From the secondary role played by Pārvatī or Umā to the images of wives and mothers found throughout Cēkki

ār's text, the Periyapurā

am chooses to ignore several aspects of Śiva's richly embodied mythology.

Among the techniques that Cēkki

ār uses to strip the lord of any sexual connotation is the relatively minor role assigned to his female consort. Compared to her prominence in the poetic canon, Pārvatī seems to fade into the background of the Periyapurā

am, mentioned in passing, in a word or two, but certainly never playing the sexually provocative or alluring role found in the earlier hymns. The majority of references to the goddess in Cēkki

ār's text are maternal in nature, from the scene in which she compassionately offers milk to the distraught child Campantar

⁹¹

to references to Umā as “the Mother who bears and nourishes the entire world (a

i akilam ī

u a

itta ammai).”

⁹²

She is the “creeping vine of austerities (tava valli)”⁹³

who witnesses the powerfully creative dance of her husband at Tillai;⁹⁴

Ka

appar's

⁹⁵

dependence upon Lord Śiva is likened to that of Pārvatī upon her husband.⁹⁶

Cēkki

ār repeatedly refers to Śiva as the lord “who has Umā as one side of his body”

⁹⁷

or as “he whose half is the creeper of the golden mountain,”⁹⁸

yet nowhere does he elaborate upon the beauty or sexually alluring qualities of that feminine side of Śiva. Nowhere does Cēkki

ār refer to Śiva as Bhīkṣāṭana, the enchanting mendicant, not even in the stories of Cuntarar, Appar, and Campantar, in whose poetry that form finds favor. The only exception to this rigorously asexual ortrayal of both the lord and his consort is the story of Pārvatī's austerities done at Kāñcīpuram to win the attention of Śiva;

⁹⁹

here Cēkki

ār celebrates Śiva's embodied enjoyment of the spouse who endured great hardships with focused concentration in order to win his heart. As Pārvatī embraces the lord's embodied form, it softens and Śiva reveals himself to her;

¹⁰⁰

“adorned with the imprint of [her] breasts and the marks of her bangles,”¹⁰¹

he “appears in his form of beautiful bridegroom.”¹⁰²

Yet relations between devotee and lord remain utterly chaste throughout the Periyapurā

am, without a hint of the sexual imagery so evident in the poetic canon. Cēkki

ār is so concerned, in fact, with downplaying any potentially sexual elements in the lives of his devotees that women are rarely present in the hagiographies of even those among the nāya

mār who are married householders. Relations between man and wife—with one notable exception to be discussed below

¹⁰³

—likewise remain utterly chaste throughout the text; nowhere does the reader witness even a hint of a physical relationship, except for the occasional appearance of a child (who is often explicitly said to be conceived and delivered via the power of the mother's austerities).¹⁰⁴

While women are often described with the suggestive phrase pētaiyā

, literally “ignorant ones” or “simpletons,” they are anything but sexual temptresses. Even within the bonds of marriage, strict chastity is observed between Nīlaka

ṭar and his wife as they grab the ends of a bamboo pole, rather than physically grasping each other's hand, when they enter the temple tank together.

¹⁰⁵

Kāraikkālammaiyār, born beautifully resplendent like an avatāram (“incarnation”) of the goddess of wealth and beauty, Lakṣmī,¹⁰⁶

immediately loses, in a graphically physical way, all the sexual allure of her once-beautiful form when she encounters Śiva, becoming so grimly skeletal that onlookers run away in fear.¹⁰⁷

Pārvatī's austerities at Kāñcīpuram may have elicited a sexually charged response from the lord, who is described in that context as a “beautiful bridegroom”; but here, Śiva addresses the once-beautiful Kāraikkālammaiyār as “mother.”¹⁰⁸

Heavenly apsaras¹⁰⁹

visit Appar and attempt to lure him from his single-minded path of devotion;¹¹⁰

their inability to distract him with their sexually provocative ways signals Appar's coming redemption at the feet of Śiva.¹¹¹

Campantar refuses to marry as a young man of sixteen;¹¹²

pressured into another attempt at marriage, he leads his new bride and all the wedding party into a roaring fire provided by Śiva, ensuring both his own chastity and the redemption of all at the lord's feet.¹¹³

Amid these many images of carefully observed chastity on the part of the nāya

mār both married and single, Cuntarar's pursuit of two wives—no less his sexual enjoyment of each—stands out as a significant exception. Cuntarar—who so often in his poetry, as discussed above, sings to Śiva Bhīkṣāṭana in the voice of a lovesick young girl—here reserves his sexually charged passions for human wives rather than for the lord. Cuntarar's story contains the only hints of sexuality and the only open displays of affection between men and women in the Periyapurā

am. For example, Cuntarar's first wife, Paravaiyār, flies into a rage when she learns of her husband's marriage to a second wife, and she suffers the physical sickness of separation typical of classical Tamil love poetry:

The scene of Paravaiyār's joyous reunion with her husband evokes physical union in a way not encountered in the life stories of other married devotees of Śiva, however chaste and indirect the reference:

Yet Cuntarar's lovemaking with his two wives—foretold by Śiva in heaven before the nāya

ār's earthly birth and described as a punishment for letting his mind wander to two beautiful servants of the goddess

¹¹⁶

—is also likened to an “exercise of yoga” (payil yōkam)¹¹⁷

and portrayed, through the use of the term vi

aiyāṭṭu (the Tamil equivalent to Sanskrit līlā),

¹¹⁸

as part of the lord's divine sport of testing and goading his devotee. Nowhere does Cēkki

ār even hint of Cuntarar addressing the lord in the voice of a sexually impassioned young woman; vis-à-vis Śiva, even Cuntarar retains an utterly chaste devotional voice. Thus, for example, when contextualizing the composition of Cuntarar's hymn of sexually charged questions posed by a woman to the erotically alluring yet vaguely dangerous Bhīkṣāṭana, sung before the image of the lord at Tiruppaiññīli,

¹¹⁹

Cēkki

ār merely indicates that Cuntarar composed that hymn in “intimate words” (kulavu col), with “tears of love flooding from his eyes” (ka

ka

kātal nīr ve

am po

itara).

¹²⁰

Read against the backdrop of the poetic portions of the Tirumu

ai, then, the Periyapurā

am—as the twelfth and final book that closes the canon—de-emphasizes several characteristics of Śiva that are important in the theology inherent in the poetry of the nāya

mār. Repeatedly focusing on Śiva as paternal lord—nourishing, protecting, and at times even indulging his favored sons—the Periyapurā

am constructs a theology of Śiva that is stripped of the sexuality of the earlier poetry. Śiva's earthly devotees approach him as humble servants, as loving sons, as “mother” in the case of Kāraikkālammaiyār, and as “friend” or “companion” in the case of Cuntarar, but never in the guise of the lovesick young girl found throughout the poetic canon. Cēkki

ār's vision of Śiva as father strips the poetic theology of its eros, rendering love for the lord a uniquely chaste affair, full of outpourings of loving devotion but free of the bodily imagery found in the works of Appar, Campantar, and Cuntarar.

Śiva the Warrior-Hero

In addition to stripping the Tamil theology of Śiva of its sexuality, the Periyapurā

am also infuses Śiva the father with a warrior heroism that further distances Cēkki

ār's text from the poetry that precedes it. The poetry of Appar, Campantar, and Cuntarar is replete with references to Śiva's aṭṭavīraṭṭā

am, literally the lord's “eight locations of heroism,” eight major feats of violent conquest known in pan-Indic Śaiva mythology but localized in the Tamil tradition to specific temple sites. All three of the Tēvāram poets sing of Śiva's beheading of the creator deity, Brahmā, at Tirukka

ṭiyūr; of his impaling of the demon Andhaka at Kōvalūr; of his burning of the three demonic cities at Tiruvatikai; of his destruction of his father-in-law's sacrifice at Pa

iyalūr; of his battle with the demon Jalandhara at Vi

kuṭi; of the slaughter of the elephant demon, Gajāsura, at Va

uvūr; of the burning of the god of lust, Kāma, at Ku

ukkai; and of the killing of the god of death, Yama, at Tirukkaṭavūr.

¹²¹

Appar sings a hymn celebrating ten feats of Śiva,¹²²

and references to the above incidents are scattered throughout the Tēvāram.¹²³

Cēkki

ār, too, obviously knows the poetic corpus and the mythological incidents referred to there, but—as in the case of the poetic references to sexuality discussed above—significant is the choice of mythological allusions made by the Periyapurā

am.

Common throughout the Periyapurā

am are references to Śiva as “the One whose undischarged arrow destroyed the [three] cities,”

¹²⁴

as “the One who flayed the elephant of large trunk,”¹²⁵

and as “the deathless One who killed death.”¹²⁶

Cēkki

ār describes Śiva somewhat less frequently as “the One who opened [the third eye in his] forehead to destroy Kāma”;

¹²⁷

only once does he describe Śiva as “Lord Ca

kara

¹²⁸

who destroyed the sacrifice of the one without true devotion,” a reference to the deity's destruction of his own father-in-law, Dakṣa, after Dakṣa refuses to invite Śiva to his great ritual gathering.¹²⁹

Nowhere are the lord's heroic feats of killing the demons Andhaka and Jalandhara mentioned, nor are there any references to the beheading of the creator god, Brahmā. While the Periyapurā

am revels in addressing Śiva by epithets referring to other miraculous deeds—from his appearance in the form of the li

ga, configured as a column of light, to prove to Viṣ

u and Brahmā that he is the supreme deity

¹³⁰

to his swallowing of the poisonous byproducts from the churning of the cosmic milk ocean¹³¹

—it is the theology implicit in Śiva's “eight locations of heroism” that interests us here. Given the presence of numerous references to all eight acts of heroism in the Tēvāram poetry, why does Cēkki

ār focus on only four episodes?

While it is not possible to reconstruct Cēkki

ār's authorial intent with certainty, some thematic (and theological) coherence emerges from the Periyapurā

am if one considers the details of the mythological episodes in question. The four among the eight heroic episodes favored by Cēkki

ār—the burning of the three demonic cities, the slaying of the elephant demon, the vanquishing of the lord of death, and the incineration of the god of lust—all combine to infuse the Periyapurā

am's vision of Śiva as asexual lord with decidedly heroic or martial qualities. In the story of Śiva's destruction of the three cities of the demons,

¹³²

the demons—who are also Śaiva devotees and thus beyond reproach—wreak havoc in the cosmos; Viṣ

u assumes the form of a Buddhist teacher and lures them away from following Śiva. Śiva then agrees to destroy all but three who remain steadfast in their devotion to him. In this mythological episode, Viṣ

u plays the role he is assigned in the manifestation of the li

ga: that of devotee and aide to the deity whom he acknowledges as his superior. Śiva here bests the Buddhist “converts” with violence, as does the child-saint Campantar.

¹³³

Indeed, just as the stories of the Periyapurā

am are riddled with violent deeds done in the name of Śiva and rewarded with everlasting life in the deity's sheltering presence, so, too, do the demons as devotees wreak chaos without reproach. Śiva's heroic deed of kicking to death the Lord of Death, Yama, is couched in a wider narrative context that similarly bolsters the themes of the Periyapurā

am. Śiva kills Yama in order to save a young Brahmin boy, Mārka

ḍeya, who is predestined to die at the age of sixteen; as soon as he turns sixteen, the boy devotes himself entirely to worshiping the li

ga and is saved from death by Śiva himself. Not only does this story express Cēkki

ār's continual emphasis on unswerving service to Śiva,

¹³⁴

but the death of Death also insures that “Death was forbidden to touch Śiva's devotees”;¹³⁵

each of Cēkki

ār's saints, in fact, finds everlasting life at his feet. Śiva's deed of slaying the elephant-demon, Gajāsura, seems a rather straightforward story of heroic derring-do, and the burning of the god of lust, Kāma, with his third eye clearly resonates with the denial of human or divine sexuality outlined above.

Indeed, it is the theme of sexuality that would seem to explain Cēkki

ār's lack of interest in Śiva's exploits with the demons Andhaka and Jalandhara. Andhaka's story focuses on his sexual yearnings for Pārvatī;

¹³⁶

Jalandhara's story is similarly full of sexual images, both divine and demonic. The demon attempts to distract Śiva in battle by conjuring up a troupe of stunning dancing girls; he assumes Śiva's form and attempts to seduce Pārvatī. Viṣ

u, in the meantime, manages to seduce Jalandhara's own wife. This sort of sexual intrigue on the part of the celestial beings—prominent in both demon stories—is precisely the sort of mythological theme that Cēkki

ār seeks to avoid. The beheading of Brahmā would appear to undermine Cēkki

ār's focus on Brahmā and Viṣ

u as subordinate devotees and aides to Śiva, as outlined above; and the story of the beheading of Dakṣa—spurred by Śiva's passionate rage at the death of his wife, who kills herself on the sacrificial pyre out of rage at her father's insult to her husband—resounds with the themes of impassioned love between male god and beautiful consort that Cēkki

ār seeks to avoid.

What emerges, then, from Cēkki

ār's selective use of the mythology of the lord's eight heroic feats is a theology of Śiva as paternally caring, stripped of all sexuality, yet infused with a rather martial ethos of activity in the world. Śiva in the Periyapurā

am is no distant figure, inaccessible to his earthly devotees, nor is he a loving father weakened by his indulgence of Cuntarar's seemingly petulant requests. Śiva, Cēkki

ār stresses throughout his hagiographic narrative, is loving, caring, yet also a warrior—stripped of eros, infused with a sense of vīra (literally “the heroic”), capable of great feats of martial prowess, and yet also carefully tending to his community of earthly devotees.

The Human Path to Śiva

What, then, is the human condition in relation in this heavily paternalized, desexualized, and heroicized theology of Śiva that Cēkki

ār subtly constructs through narrative and epithet throughout the Periyapurā

am? How does one love this lord, worship him, attain salvation at his feet?

Human birth is prized by Cēkki

ār as that embodiment most capable of approaching the lord in love; even “the celestial beings male and female are born as [lowly] hunters and huntresses without flaw in order to worship [the lord] and to receive a different [kind of salvation].”

¹³⁷

Yet the nāya

mār are anything but ordinary human beings. Śiva's grace may be accessible in human birth, but seemingly only to those who have prepared themselves to receive it by worshiping Śiva across many lifetimes. Whereas the poetry of the Tirumu

ai is one of struggle, of yearning for the experience of the divine, Cēkki

ār's characters are born with love of Śiva in their hearts; nowhere does the audience witness a character struggling through the sixteen steps of ascent toward the lord as outlined by the Śaiva Siddhānta.

¹³⁸

Ka

appar, the uneducated hunter, is born not knowing the name of Śiva but feels an overpowering love for him when he sees an image of the lord in the wilderness; such love is said to be, rather mysteriously, “a love that became joy without end (muṭivu ilā i

pam) due to [Ka

appar's] storehouse of previously performed austerities (mu

pu cey tavatti

īṭṭam).”

¹³⁹

Cā

ṭēcurar, the child-saint who hacks off his own father's legs, is born with tremendous love for Śiva due to the lord's grace “mixed with the great fruits of old karma.”

¹⁴⁰

Each of the saints whose story extends to more than a few verses is said to be born of a storehouse of tapas (“austerities”), defined throughout the text as ritual adoration (pūjā) of Śiva performed across many lifetimes. The nāya

mār do not begin their quest to live in the presence of the lord from the first step along a long path; their stories are not about searching for the lord but about finding him—in his temples, in his shrines, and eventually in his holy abode on Mount Kailāsa. In fact, many among the nāya

mār—as in the case of Kāraikkālammaiyār above—are said to be avatāram, literally “incarnations” (from the Sanskrit avatāra) of their heavenly forms. In other words, the saints of Śiva as portrayed by Cēkki

ār have already lived in the presence of Śiva; they have returned to earth, as in the case of Campantar, “to redeem all the world”

¹⁴¹

by spreading knowledge of the path of Śaiva devotion. Śiva himself becomes embodied through the very love of his favored devotees.¹⁴²

Like the nāya

mār whose precise actions in past lives remain empty of detail, Cēkki

ār seems to be suggesting, we can never be sure of the past karmic trajectory of any individual's many lives; love for Śiva operates through many bodies and many circumstances, and is itself sufficient to overcome the lesser obstacles of caste and gender.

¹⁴³

As Pechilis notes, the Periyapurā

am envisions a path to Śiva via temple service that is quite different from the caste-bound codes of temple access found in the earlier Āgamic ritual literature in Sanskrit.

¹⁴⁴

Cēkki

ār's characterization of the nāya

mār perhaps explains why he so flouts the Āgamic prescriptions that limit access to the inner shrines of Śiva's temple by caste and initiation.

¹⁴⁵

Single-minded devotion to the lord externalized through concrete actions of adoration and service to the community of devotees are the activities of human characters honed in the practices of pūjā and temple over many lifetimes. While caste does matter to Cēkki

ār (he carefully notes each saint's caste community),

¹⁴⁶

ultimately love for the lord fired through the long practice of tapas allows one any form of devotional expression—including the gouging of an eye (Ka

appar), the amputation of a father's legs (Ca

ṭēcurar), or the beheading of a Buddhist leader (Campantar). A heroic father demands at times heroic acts of devotion, and each character's “storehouse” (īṭṭam) of devotion allows for the carrying out of any such act.

Indeed, of the four paths to Śiva outlined in the Sanskrit Āgamas and restated throughout the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta corpus—cariyai (Sanskrit caryā), the external activities of temple worship; kiriyai (Sanskrit kriyā), the more complex worship of the aniconic representation of Śiva, the li

ga; yōkam (Sanskrit yoga), practices of internal discipline and meditation; and ñā

am (Sanskrit jñāna), the cultivation of intuitive knowledge of Śiva that lies beyond language

¹⁴⁷

—Cēkki

ār's stories emphasize the value of cariyai and kiriyai as utterly sufficient unto themselves to bear a truly loving devotee to the lord. Worship of any kind—whether to Śiva enshrined in a temple or to a child's li

ga made of sand (Ca

ṭēcurar), whether to the lord himself or to one's community of fellow devotees—ensures everlasting life in the shelter of the feet of the lord, the heroic father. Civalōkam (Sanskrit śivaloka), literally “the world of Śiva,” in fact, lies not simply in the heavens or on Śiva's wondrous abode of Mount Kailāsa, Cēkki

ār emphasizes, but anywhere that devotees gather to adore the lord. The lord enshrined at Tiruppu

kūr for example, is named Civalōka

, “he who belongs to the world of Śiva,”

¹⁴⁸

implying that the temple itself is śivaloka; Campantar's native city of Cīrkā

i—a place where virtue reigns and Śiva is served—is similarly likened by Cēkki

ār to śivaloka.

¹⁴⁹

Indeed, life on earth, in the human embodied form that allows for endless service to and expression of love for the divine, is deemed, at least in the case of Appar, to be “of a greatness superior to liberation.”¹⁵⁰

The Periyapurā

am thus imagines that the human condition is molded by the presence or absence of love for the divine, a love for Śiva the heroic father that must be expressed externally in worship and service without regard to restrictions of caste or other marks of human embodiment. In portraying the nāya

mār as extraordinary individuals—as human beings born with a love for the lord developed over many lifetimes that the audience does not witness—Cēkki

ār displays not the ordinary struggles of human beings searching for the lord but the extraordinary experiences and lives of jīvanmuktas, literally “the living liberated,” those who have attained the means to liberation but who remain in the world of human activity.

¹⁵¹

Just as Cēkki

ār foregrounds certain elements of earlier Śaiva theology at the expense of others, so, too, does the Periyapurā

am celebrate the life of worship, cariyai and kiriyai, allowing the more esoteric practices of yōkam and ñā

am to fade a bit into the background. Śiva in the Periyapurā

am demands the awe and admiration owed a heroic warrior, the profound respect and love owed a caring father.

Śiva and Līlā

Cēkki

ār's theological project of stripping Śiva of his qualities of playful sexuality emerges even more clearly if one reads the Periyapurā

am in the context of other twelfth-century Śaiva literature composed in Tamil, namely the two earliest among the fourteen canonical works of the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta, which predate Meyka

ṭār's influential Civañā

apōtam by a century: the Tiruvuntiyār, attributed to Tiruviyalūr Uyyavanta Tēvanāya

ār and traditionally dated to 1147; and the Tirukka

i

uppaṭiyār, literally “That Which was Placed on the Step by an Elephant,”

¹⁵²

attributed to Uyyavanta's student, Tirukkaṭavūr Uyyavanta Nāya

ār, traditionally dated to 1178, and often loosely interpreted as a commentary of sorts on the Tiruvuntiyār. The Tirukka

i

uppaṭiyār provides one of the few extended commentaries on the nature of the nāya

mār outside the Periyapurā

am and thus shares much in common with Cēkki

ār's text. Tirukkaṭavūr Uyyavanta, for example, wrestles with the issue of the violent activities of so many of Śiva's saints, classifying the ways of devotion as twofold:

Like Cēkki

ār, Tirukkaṭavūr Uyyavanta champions not only those devotees who know the traditions of Veda and Āgama, but also those who love and serve the lord without benefit of education, caste heritage, or material support. The Tirukka

i

uppaṭiyār celebrates the service of the child Ca

ṭēcurar,

¹⁵⁴

Cākkiyar the Buddhist, Arivāṭṭāyar (who, in the Periyapurā

am, attempts to kill himself after spilling his offering of food to Śiva), and Mūrkka the gambler.

¹⁵⁵

Quoting the great ninth-century poet of the Śaiva tradition, Mā

ikkavācakar, the author sings: “There is no love like Ka

appar's!”

¹⁵⁶

Indeed, in keeping with the Periyapurā

am's celebration of the ways of cariyai and kiriyai, with that text's focus on Śiva's activities of “veiling” and “grace,” the Tirukka

i

uppaṭiyār questions the efficacy of Āgamic ritual in the absence of love for the lord:

If connections of common concern link the Tirukka

i

uppaṭiyār to its near contemporary, the Periyapurā

am, the other early Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta text, the Tiruvuntiyār, presents something of a contrast. This poem comprises only forty-five stanzas of three lines each, and the second and third lines of each stanza end with the joyful refrain, “rise up and fly (untī pa

a).”

¹⁵⁹

This refrain has led commentators to classify the poem as belonging to a genre known as unti, a song sung by young women while playing a game perhaps akin to the modern sport of badminton.¹⁶⁰

Building on a poetic form already established as a devotional genre,¹⁶¹

Tiruviyalūr Uyyavanta mimics precisely the refrain of a ninth-century Śaiva unti hymn by Mā

ikkavācakar that celebrates Śiva's destruction of his father-in-law's sacrifice and the annihilation of the three demonic cities.

¹⁶²

Yet the subject matter shifts significantly in the Śaiva Siddhānta text, from Śiva's heroic exploits to the nature of the human condition vis-à-vis the lord:

Among the many significant features of this little-studied philosophical text, it is its poetic form of game-song, believed by many scholars to be rooted in the folk songs of Tamil-speaking women,

¹⁶⁴

that most distinguishes its theological tone from that of the Periyapurā

am.

In borrowing from the game-song genre of devotional poetry, the Tiruvuntiyār clearly locates the human-divine relationship in the context of līlā (Tamil vi

aiyāṭṭu), divine “sport” or “play,” through its very selection of poetic form. In its joyful refrain of untī pa

a—“rise up and fly!”—the Tiruvuntiyār in effect makes of the human-divine relationship a game of sorts, an ever-evolving dynamic process of contact and retreat, of hide-and-seek, of joyful enticement to “rise up and fly” away from the bonds of earthly existence. Śiva himself is a participant in the game, one among the innocent young girls who sing of how Śiva, “the one of great artfulness, leads [us] into the courtyard [to play]”;

¹⁶⁵

there the players lose themselves in the flow of Śiva's līlā:

In this poetic, song-filled vision of Śiva's cosmic play, all are equal partners—teammates of the lord—and the experience of the song form itself leaves an impression of Śiva's play as fluid, creative, and containing in its rhythms and flows a sense of infinite human possibility. By recontextualizing Mā

ikkavācakar's refrain, the Tirunvuntiyār transports its readers far from the awesome power of Śiva's heroic destructive exploits as celebrated in the earlier poet's unti hymn, conjuring instead the play or līlā in which both lord and devotee share. Tiruviyalūr Uyyavanta invites his reader to “pray to the Dancer, following the bright path of the sound of his holy anklets,”

¹⁶⁷

to “travel to the highest place—rise up and fly! / [To] the abode of the Immaculate One—rise up and fly!”¹⁶⁸

This sense of play, a true celebration of Śiva's sports or līlā in the world, is markedly downplayed by Cēkki

ār in his Periyapurā

am. Vi

aiyāṭṭu, as līlā's Tamil equivalent, is used very sparingly in the hagiographic text, most often in relation to Cuntarar. Śiva commands his saint to take human embodied form again and “play on earth,”

¹⁶⁹

and later Cēkki

ār refers to Śiva's intervention in the love lives of Cuntarar and his two wives, Paravaiyār

¹⁷⁰

and Ca

kiliyār,

¹⁷¹

as “sport.” Twice is Ca

ṭēcurar's child-like worship of a hand-made li

ga of sand likened to play,

¹⁷²

but the term is seldom used elsewhere in the Periyapurā

am. Given the Tiruvuntiyār's celebration of līlā at the time when Cēkki

ār composed his text, this downplaying of the theological concept of divine sport seems significant. Śiva as paternal father figure, as warrior-hero, simply does not “play” in the Periyapurā

am as he does in the poetry of Appar, Campantar, and Cuntarar or in the philosophical work of Tiruviyalūr Uyyavanta. The games of young girls at play have ceased to be, for Cēkki

ār, an appropriate literary form or theological framework within which to explore the nature of the human-divine relationship.

The Wider Theological Context

If Cēkki

ār selects so judiciously from the wide range of theological images available to him in the mid-twelfth century, one must wonder why he chooses to push to the background earlier visions of Śiva as lover, as “player.” Why choose to claim only part of the Tamil Śaiva theological heritage?

Such questions regarding authorial motive, as noted above, can never be fully answered; in the present context, speculation on authorial intent is hampered by the incomplete historical and literary records of premodern South India. Nevertheless, two possible motivations emerge as one explores the literary milieu in which Cēkki

ār is said to have composed his Periyapurā

am, and it may be conjectured that Cēkki

ār wrote with the dual aim of distancing the Śaiva theological tradition from that of its primary Hindu rival, the Vaiṣ

ava, and of answering a scathing challenge to bhakti, as loving devotion to a personal god, issued from a variety of Tamil texts authored by Jains.

With the consolidation of the South Indian Vaiṣ

ava theological tradition in the work of the great Sanskrit scholar, Rāmānuja, in the mid-eleventh century, the Śrīvaiṣ

avas quickly emerged in the literary culture of the Cō

a courts as rivals to the Śaivas. The Vaiṣ

ava ā

vārs—poet-saints on the order of the nāya

mār—ridicule mercilessly the image of Śiva as lord of death and the cremation grounds: his ko

ai flowers are toxic to human beings, the cremation ground is haunted and a wretched place to live, and Nandi as the bull-vehicle seems frightfully slow and plodding.

¹⁷³

Śiva is merely a degraded beggar, seeking alms from house to house, proving Viṣ

u the superior deity in every way.

¹⁷⁴

Rāmānuja devotes considerable space in both his Śrībhāṣya and Vedārthasa

graha to proving the superiority of Viṣ

u over any other deity.

¹⁷⁵

As early as the tenth century, the iconography of certain nāya

mār—especially the child Campantar, Cuntarar with his first wife, Paravaiyār, and the flute-player Ā

āyar—had become virtually indistinguishable from the Vaiṣ

ava iconography of K

ṣ

a.

¹⁷⁶

The Periyapurā

am's theology of Śiva both resists and creatively adapts from the Vaiṣ

ava tradition in a number of ways. Cuntarar's poetry, for example, has numerous references to the lord in his Harihara form, an embodiment that is half Śiva and half Viṣ

u;

¹⁷⁷

Cuntarar even addresses Śiva as “cowherd” (āya

).

¹⁷⁸

Nowhere does Cēkki

ār allow such an obviously Vaiṣ

ava element to creep into his vision of Śiva. Various nāya

mār are, as children, likened to K

ṣ

a, the child-god and cowherder so central to the Śrīvaiṣ

ava tradition. Ca

ṭēcurar guards cattle and is called “the little calf of the Vedas”;

¹⁷⁹

and both Ka

appar and Campantar in play knock over the sand-castles of village girls,

¹⁸⁰

just as K

ṣ

a does in his childhood. Yet the career of each of these child-saints quickly departs from such bucolic behavior. Ca

ṭēcurar, as described above, hacks off his father's feet, Ka

appar gouges out his own eye, and Campantar beheads a Buddhist teacher, each turning the playful images of childhood into fiercely heroic, even violent, acts. Each also remains, as above, entirely chaste; rather than indulging in the love-play shared by K

ṣ

a with his favorite cow-herding girls, the saints of Śiva pursue their martially protective father with a fervor stripped of any hint of sexuality. If the Ā

vārs' poetic criticism of Śiva focuses on the god's inaccessibility—he lives on the cremation grounds outside of town, he rides a plodding vehicle—the Periyapurā

am responds by applying the ultimate Vaiṣ

ava claim of accessibility—the doctrine of divine incarnation or avatāram—to the nāya

mār themselves. Through its judicious use of avatāram terminology, the Periyapurā

am argues that if Śiva's theological nature remains one of transient embodiments, of surprise visits and quick disappearances, then the lord remains accessible through his devotees. Appar, Campantar, Cuntarar, and a host of others among the nāya

mār are all called avatāram, literally “incarnations” of their heavenly forms for the betterment of the world and the fostering of the Śaiva path. The nasty, ash-covered, ludicrously underdressed denizen of the cremation grounds satirized by the Vaiṣ

ava poets, in other words, emerges in the Periyapurā

am as a thoroughly paternal, asexual, heroic figure, readily accessible through those devotees who serve him and his community of followers.

Substantial evidence exists that yet another sectarian community vied with the Śaivas in twelfth-century South India for power and prestige: the Jains. Indeed, the fourteenth-century consolidator of the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta, Umāpati Civācāriyar, notes in his account of the composition of the Periyapurā

am that Cēkki

ār composed his text in order to distract his Cō

a king and patron away from an interest in Jainism.

¹⁸¹

In particular, Umāpati claims that the Cō

a monarch was enamored of a Tamil Jain work known as the Cīvakacintāma

i,

¹⁸²

a text that ridicules mercilessly the classical Tamil poetic conventions of love¹⁸³

and, by extension, those devotional visions of union with the lord (bhakti) that imagine the lord and devotee as lovers. Clearly the Periyapurā

am bears no great love for the Tamil-speaking Jain community; from the story of Appar's trials at the hands of evil Jain monks

¹⁸⁴

to the impaling of eight thousand Jains on iron stakes at Maturai,¹⁸⁵

Cēkki

ār depicts the Jains as evil, dirty, and corrupt.

Beyond the directly anti-Jain invectives of the text, however, one can begin to see the Periyapurā

am's construction of Śaiva theology in a new light. The construction of an asexual theology—in which both male god and largely male devotees resist the earlier poetic tradition of love-language—might be construed as an answer of sorts to the Jain challenge to bhakti as the path of “love” imagined in sexual terms. Śiva as father allows no hint of the lord as lover; erasing the sexual imagery of the earlier parts of the canon leaves room for a heroic lord stripped of eros. The downplaying of the pan-Indian Śaiva doctrine of līlā or “play” similarly elides from Śaiva theology its easy correlation with lovemaking as “sport” or play. The construction of Śiva in the Periyapurā

am as asexual, martially heroic, and paternal—a theological vision that would long prove influential in the Tamil-speaking Śaiva community—challenges the vision of bhakti so ridiculed by the Jains in early medieval South India.