Kanampulla

Kanampulla is one of the sixty-three Nayanar saints of Tamil Shaivism, named for the kanampul grass that sustained his last years of service. His legend, told in Sekkilar’s Periya Puranam, belongs with those of the lamp-lighting saints, for whom the small economy of wick and flame became the whole of religion.

The story

Tradition makes him a man of means who spent his wealth lighting lamps in the temples of Shiva, and who moved at last to Thillai — Chidambaram — to serve the god of the dancing hall. There his fortune ran out. Reduced to poverty, he cut kanampul grass, sold it, and bought lamp-oil with the coins. When a day came with no buyer, he burnt the grass itself before the god for light. And when even the grass was gone, he bent his head to the lamp and fed the flame with his own hair. Shiva, the Periya Puranam tells, granted him grace and a place among the saints.

Legacy

Like Kalia the oil-monger, Kanampulla marks the point where the logic of offering reaches the offerer’s own body. The tradition remembers him not for the wealth he first gave but for the hair he gave last — the gift that cost everything because nothing else remained.