The saint who could not choose between two wives, so the Lord himself walked the message

The wedding the Lord interrupted

The bridegroom was already seated, the priest was already reciting the first mantras, when a wild-haired old brahmin walked into the wedding hall, a leaf-wrapped bundle under his arm, and announced in front of everyone that the bridegroom was his bonded slave. He had a palm-leaf deed, he said. He had brought it. The wedding would not proceed.

The bridegroom was Sundarar, then known by his birth name (a long Tamil compound the village used, which we will not weigh the page down with). He was a brahmin boy raised in the household of a chieftain who had adopted him. He was handsome in a way that made arrangements easy. The girl, the wedding, the bride-price, all had been settled the proper way. And now this old man at the door.

The wedding party was scandalised. The chieftain was insulted. Sundarar was summoned to read the deed himself. He read it. The deed, in his own grandfather's handwriting, made over the boy and his descendants in service to the old brahmin's lineage.

Sundarar tried to argue. The old brahmin took the deed before the village council. The council read it. The deed was authentic. By Tamil law, the wedding could not happen; the boy belonged to another household.

The old brahmin led the bridegroom out of his own wedding by the wrist, walked him along the road to the small Shiva temple at Tiruvennainallur, and there, at the temple's threshold, the old brahmin vanished.

The locked sanctum opened. Inside stood Shiva.

Thaduthaat kondaar.

தடுத்தாட் கொண்டார் (He stopped him and took him as his own.)

This is the phrase the Periya Puranam uses, and it became the saint's episode-name in the tradition: the puranam of being stopped and taken.

Shiva spoke to the young man from the sanctum. Sing for me. Sing what is in your heart. Begin with whatever word your tongue first finds.

The boy, still bewildered, said the first word that came to him. He said pithaa, madman.

Pithaa pirai soodi perumaane arulaala.

பித்தா பிறை சூடீ பெருமானே அருளாளா (O madman, O moon-crowned, O great Lord, O bestower of grace.)

That word, pithaa, became the opening of the first hymn. Shiva accepted it laughing, yes, address me as a madman, that is my name now between us, and from that day the young brahmin was the saint Sundarar, the youngest of the three great Saiva hymnists alongside Appar and Sambandar. He never went back to that bride.

Paravai of Tiruvarur

Some years later, Sundarar travelled to the great temple town of Tiruvarur and there he saw, in a dance recital, a temple-dancer named Paravai Nachiyar. She was beautiful in the way that Tamil poets describe with a single word, kuyilanaiyaal, like a koel. He fell in love at the first recital.

He went to her. She received him. They were married in Tiruvarur in front of the form of Shiva who lives there. The Lord himself, in the saint's telling, presided. Sundarar settled in Tiruvarur as her husband, and for some years he sang from there.

Paravai was, by every account, a woman of immense character. She tolerated her husband's frequent travels. She tolerated his temperament. She tolerated his arguments with the Lord: Sundarar's hymns are famous for the saint scolding Shiva, demanding gold, demanding rice, demanding that a monkey not bite him on the road. Paravai held the household.

Sangili of Tiruvotriyur

But Sundarar travelled. On a pilgrimage north to the temple of Tiruvotriyur, outside what is now Chennai, he saw in the temple gardens a young woman named Sangili Nachiyar weaving flowers for the Lord. She was the daughter of a Vellala family who had given her to the temple's service.

The saint fell in love a second time.

He prayed to the Lord of Tiruvotriyur to intervene with Sangili's family. The Lord agreed but, knowing his saint, set a condition. If you marry her, you must vow not to leave Tiruvotriyur. Take the vow at the makizham tree in the temple compound.

The makizham tree at Tiruvotriyur was a sacred tree, the tree under which vows were absolutely binding. To swear under it and break the swearing was to invite a curse one could not negotiate.

Sundarar agreed too easily. He went to the tree. He swore. He married Sangili. They lived together in Tiruvotriyur as husband and wife.

But Tiruvarur called him. Paravai called him, not by message, but by absence. Within months he was composing hymns in Tiruvotriyur about Tiruvarur. Within a year he could not bear it. He decided to slip out, see Paravai once, and return.

The Lord of Tiruvotriyur, knowing this would happen, had been merciful in the wording of the vow. The vow, technically, had been to not leave Tiruvotriyur while the makizham tree could see him. If he left at night, when the tree could not see, he would be technically clear.

The saint took the technicality. He left at night.

But Sangili, who knew her husband better than the Lord did, had asked the Lord, that very evening, to please also be present under the tree, since she suspected what was coming. The Lord could not refuse her. The Lord was under the tree. The tree, with the Lord under it, was awake.

Sundarar left, at night, walking south. The tree saw. The vow was broken.

Blindness on the road

By morning, his eyes were going. By noon he could not see the road. He sat down, weeping, and recognised the curse for what it was. He composed a hymn there:

தலையே நீ வணங்காய் - தலைமாலை தலைக்கணிந்து தலையாலே பலி தேருந் தலைவனை - தலையே நீ வணங்காய். (O head of mine, bow down. Bow down to the Lord who wears a garland of skulls upon his head, who collects alms with a skull in his hand. O head of mine, bow down.)

The Lord answered. He restored sight in the saint's left eye, partially, enough to walk. He told him: the rest of your sight is in Tiruvarur. Walk to Paravai. I will return it temple by temple as you go.

Sundarar walked. At each temple on the road he composed a hymn. At each temple, a fraction of his sight returned. By the time he reached Tiruvarur he could see in both eyes, dimly. He fell at Paravai's feet. She accepted him.

But now, and here the Periya Puranam grows very tender, the saint had a problem he could not fix by himself. He had two wives in two cities. He could not move freely between them. Paravai, having taken him back, was understandably reluctant to share him. Sangili in Tiruvotriyur had been wronged.

The Lord becomes a messenger

The saint, in his old pleading voice, did what he had always done. He composed a hymn asking the Lord to please go to the other wife and please carry the apology. He had the audacity, in the hymn, to address Shiva by name and tell him exactly which household to visit and what to say.

The Periya Puranam says: the Lord went.

He took the form of an old brahmin, the same form he had taken at the first wedding decades earlier, and walked, on foot, from Tiruvarur to Tiruvotriyur and back, carrying the saint's apologies one way and Sangili's grievances the other. He did this several times. He brokered, eventually, a settlement: Sundarar would visit Tiruvotriyur on certain feast days; Paravai would understand; Sangili would forgive; the Lord himself would guarantee the schedule.

Sekkizhar, narrating this in the twelfth century, does not flinch. He does not apologise for his saint. He does not soften the bigamy or the curse or the divine errand-running. He writes it as it stood, because the Saiva tradition's position is that the Lord is exactly the kind of Lord who would walk between two women's houses for a man he loves, and the saint is exactly the kind of saint who would have two women loving him and ask the Lord to handle it.

Sundarar lived to compose around a hundred Tevaram hymns. He died young, the Tamil tradition says, carried up to Kailasa on a white elephant sent by the Lord himself, with both Paravai and Sangili eventually following. The Periya Puranam ends his life with a phrase Tamils still quote at funerals:

Aaroorar thambiraan thozhan.

ஆரூரன் தம்பிரான் தோழன் (Sundarar, the friend of the Lord.)

Not the devotee. Not the slave. The thozhan. The friend.