Aiyadigal Kadavarkon is one of the sixty-three Nayanar saints of Tamil Shaivism, and one of the few who came to sainthood from a throne. His name declares his station — Kadavarkon, king of the Kadavas, is a royal title of the Pallava line — though which historical Pallava he may have been remains unsettled.
The story
Sekkilar’s Periya Puranam tells that this king, ruling from Kanchi, came to feel the weight of sovereignty as an obstacle to devotion. He set his son on the throne, put off his crown, and went out as a pilgrim, travelling from shrine to shrine of Shiva across the Tamil country. At each holy place he composed a venba — a compact Tamil quatrain — in praise of the god enshrined there.
The verses
Unusually for a minor Nayanar, his devotion survives as literature. The collection of his shrine-verses, the Kshetrat-tiruvenba, is preserved in the eleventh Tirumurai, the anthology that closes the Tamil Shaiva canon. The poems are terse and devotional rather than courtly, a king’s renunciation audible in their plainness. In the tradition’s telling, Aiyadigal Kadavarkon matters twice over: as proof that kingship could be laid down for Shiva, and as a reminder that the Nayanar canon is bound throughout to the making of Tamil verse.
Further reading
- Clothey, Fred W. The Many Faces of Murukan. Mouton, 1978
- Cutler, Norman. Songs of Experience: The Poetics of Tamil Devotion. Indiana University Press, 1987
- Dehejia, Vidya. Art of the Imperial Cholas. Columbia University Press, 1990
- Peterson, Indira Viswanathan. Poems to Siva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints. Princeton University Press, 1989
- Ramanujan, A. K. Speaking of Siva. Penguin, 1973
See also
This entry was last revised on 31 July 2026.