Munaiyaduvar

Munaiyaduvar — the name means one who fights at the battle-front — is one of the sixty-three Nayanar saints of Tamil Shaivism. Tradition places him at Tiruneedur in the Chola country and makes him a professional soldier, a man whose sword was for hire.

The story

Sekkilar’s Periya Puranam tells that chiefs and kings facing battle would engage Munaiyaduvar for his prowess, and that he fought their wars faithfully and well. The wages and spoils he earned at the front he carried home and spent entirely on Shiva’s devotees — feeding them, clothing them, meeting their needs — keeping nothing back for himself. War was his trade; the service of the devotees was his religion; the one existed to fund the other. For this he was numbered among the saints.

A mercenary in the canon

The Nayanar tradition is notably unsqueamish about occupation: it canonised a fisherman, a washerman, a hunter, and in Munaiyaduvar a mercenary. What the hagiographer weighs is not the trade but the direction of its earnings. In that accounting, the soldier who converted the profits of violence into the maintenance of the devout stood as high as any renunciant.