The hunter who plucked out his own eyes when the Shivalinga began to bleed

A boy who heard a name in the forest

Thinnan had never seen a linga before. But something happened when he looked at it. He could not move. He could not breathe properly. Tears came down his face for no reason he could explain. He sat down beside the small stone under the tree, halfway up Kalahasti hill, and would not leave.

His companions called him. "Thinnan! The boar is escaping!"

He did not hear them.

When he finally spoke, he spoke to the stone. "Aiyya, neenga yaaru?" ("Sir, who are you?")

The stone did not answer. But the tears would not stop.

Thinnan was the son of the chieftain of the Bedars, a tribal hunter clan in the hills around what is now Sri Kalahasti, in the deep south of the old Tamil country. The Bedars were forest people. They spoke Tamil with a rough accent, ate what they killed, knew nothing of Sanskrit and even less of brahmin ritual. The brahmin priest who tended this linga, Shiva-Gocharya, came at dawn each day with sacred water and flowers and chants of Rudram. Thinnan had wandered upon it by accident, hunting.

That evening Thinnan went home, slept badly, and at dawn the next day climbed back up the hill carrying, for the first time in his life, an offering.

The worship of the unschooled

Thinnan did not know what to offer. He had no flowers, no milk, no Vedic chants. He had only what a hunter has.

So he made his own ritual.

He stuffed his mouth full of cool spring water. He climbed up to the linga, and from his own mouth he sprayed the water over the stone, abhisheka hunter-style. He plucked wildflowers as he climbed and stuck them into his hair, then shook his head over the linga so the petals would fall on it. For prasad, the food-offering every Hindu deity expects, he hunted, killed, roasted, and tasted a portion of wild boar meat to make sure it was good. The best, juiciest, most tender pieces he laid before the linga.

He had no words for prayer. So he simply said, again and again, the only thing his heart knew:

"சிவாய நம! சிவாய நம!" "Shivāya namaḥ! Shivāya namaḥ!" "Hail Shiva. Hail Shiva."

He came every dawn for many days. The forest smelled of incense some days, of roasted boar on others. Thinnan knelt before a stone and wept and laughed and shouted the only mantra he knew.

The horrified priest

Each morning before Thinnan arrived, Shiva-Gocharya, the brahmin priest, came at sunrise and performed his immaculate puja: Sanskrit chants, ritual bath with Ganga water, sandal paste, fresh flowers, fragrant rice, aarati with a pure brass lamp.

Each morning when he returned, he found the linga desecrated: meat scattered around it, water-stains from a hunter's mouth, half-chewed bones, a single forest flower stuck crookedly on top. The priest was scandalized. He scrubbed everything clean, washed the linga twelve times with milk and Ganga water, redid the puja, and went home shaking with rage.

This continued for days. The priest could not catch the culprit. Finally, in despair, he went to the temple sanctum that night and slept inside, and he prayed to Shiva with great anger:

"Mahādeva, kaṣṭaṃ sahituṃ na śaknomi. Ko'yaṃ duṣṭaḥ?" "Great God, I cannot bear this any longer. Who is this wretch?"

That night Shiva appeared to the priest in a dream.

Shiva said: "Tomorrow, hide and watch. You will see who is desecrating my linga. But do not interfere. Watch only. I will show you something that will rearrange your understanding of worship."

The priest woke trembling. He obeyed.

The morning the eyes bled

At dawn, Shiva-Gocharya hid behind a tree. Soon Thinnan came up the path, barefoot, hair wild, bow over his shoulder, a roasted hunk of boar in one hand and his mouth full of spring water. The priest watched, choking on his disgust, as Thinnan performed his impossible puja: spitting the water, dropping the petals from his hair, laying out the meat, shouting "Shivāya namaḥ!" with tears running down his cheeks.

Then, the test.

Suddenly, from one of the linga's two carved eyes, blood began to flow.

Thinnan saw it and let out a cry so loud it shook the trees. "Aiyya, en kannu! En kannu!" ("My Lord, your eye! Your eye!")

He searched frantically for medicine. He pressed leaves against the stone. The blood did not stop. He shouted into the forest for help. No help came.

Then he remembered something his old father had once said: "For wounds of the eye, only flesh of the same kind can heal. Flesh for flesh, eye for eye."

Without a second of hesitation, Thinnan drew the arrow from his quiver, used its sharp tip, and plucked out his own right eye. Blood streamed down his face. He pressed the eye against the bleeding eye of the linga.

The bleeding stopped.

Thinnan laughed through his pain. "Pālichchudhu, Shiva!" ("It worked, Shiva!")

But then, the second test.

The other eye of the linga began to bleed.

Thinnan's whole body went still. He had only one eye left. If he plucked it, he would be blind. He would never find the linga again. He would never be able to walk up this hill again. He would not even be able to see his beloved stone face.

He thought for one heartbeat.

Then he did something that has been told for nine hundred years.

He took his foot, his left foot, and placed his big toe firmly on the linga's bleeding eye, marking the spot precisely. Because once he plucked out his second eye, he would be blind. He would not be able to find the wound to press the eye against. So he marked it with his toe first. Then he raised the arrow to his own face.

The priest, watching from behind the tree, sobbed. He had spent his life on perfect ritual. He had never imagined anyone could love Shiva like this.

Just as Thinnan touched the arrow to his second eye, a great voice filled the hill.

"Niṛuttu, Kaṇṇappā! Niṛuttu!" "Stop, Kannappa! Stop!"

A hand came out of the linga. A real, living, divine hand. Shiva himself emerged, smiling, both eyes intact, and caught Thinnan's wrist before the arrow could touch his face.

The naming

Shiva said: "Hunter. From this moment your name is no longer Thinnan. You are Kaṇṇappa, the one who gave his eye. Kaṇ is eye in Tamil. Appa is the giving. You are Kannappa Nayanar, and you will be remembered among the sixty-three saints of Tamil land for as long as Tamil is spoken."

Shiva restored Thinnan's right eye. He embraced the trembling priest. He said to Shiva-Gocharya: "Brother. Your puja was perfect. His was not. But love is what reaches me. Both of you are mine. Each in his own way."

The priest fell at Kannappa's feet, feet covered in dirt and dried blood from a forest hunter, and asked for forgiveness for his pride. Kannappa, weeping, raised him up.

What this story holds

Kannappa Nayanar is the third of the sixty-three Nayanars, the Tamil Shaiva saints whose lives are recorded in Sekkizhar's Periya Puranam. He is the only one from a tribal hunter background. The temple at Sri Kalahasti, in present-day Andhra Pradesh near the Tamil border, still has the linga he worshipped, and pilgrims still touch the spot where Kannappa's toe marked the wound.

The Tamil tradition compresses the teaching to three words.

"அன்பே சிவம்." "Aṉbē Shivam." "Love itself is Shiva."

In Tamil Nadu villages, when a child does something with messy enthusiasm, paints a god's face crookedly, mispronounces a chant, offers a wilted flower, the grandmother sometimes smiles and says: "Kaṇṇappan polrukku." ("He is doing it like Kannappa.") It is the highest praise.