Meiporul

Meiporul Nayanar was a chieftain of the Sethi country in the Tamil land, ruling from Tirukkovilur — a warrior king whose reverence ran not to Shiva’s image alone but to anyone bearing Shiva’s marks: the ash, the rudraksha, the ascetic’s garb. The Periya Puranam tells his story as the costliest proof of that reverence in the whole canon.

The false ascetic

His enemy Muthanathan, beaten repeatedly in open war, resolved on treachery. Disguised as a Shaiva ascetic, carrying a bundled palm-leaf text he claimed held secret doctrine, he was admitted at night past every guard — no bearer of the holy garb was ever turned from that palace — into the chamber where the king lay. Bending as if to expound the text, he drew a knife and stabbed him. The king’s attendant Dathan burst in and seized the assassin; and the dying Meiporul gave his last command: the man wore the garb of the god, and must not be harmed — see him safely beyond the borders. It was done, tradition holds, and the king died content.

The name

Meiporul means “the true substance”. The hagiography reads the name as the king’s judgement in his final moment: the man was false, but the ash and the garb were true, and it was to the truth, not the man, that his reverence had been given. Sekkilar places him among the earliest exemplars in the canon of the principle that runs through many Nayanar lives — that the devotee honours Shiva’s emblem absolutely, whatever bears it.