Idangazhi is one of the sixty-three Nayanar saints of Tamil Shaivism. Tradition makes him a ruler of Kodumbalur in the Konadu region of the Tamil country, a seat associated with the Irukkuvel line of chieftains, and his legend is one of the gentlest in a canon not short of severity.
The story
Sekkilar’s Periya Puranam tells that a poor devotee of Shiva, unable to feed the god’s servants, broke into the royal granary by night and was caught carrying away paddy. Brought before Idangazhi, the man confessed that the rice was not for himself but for the feeding of Shiva’s devotees. The chieftain’s response made his sainthood: he released the man, declared that what was taken for the devotees could never be theft, and threw open his granaries so that any servant of Shiva might draw from them freely, without asking.
Legacy
Where other royal Nayanars are remembered for the sword, Idangazhi is remembered for the storehouse. His chapter turns the machinery of state provisioning into an instrument of bhakti, and the tradition honours in him a specifically kingly virtue — the ruler who understood that his wealth was held in trust for the god’s community.
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.