Narasinga Muniyaraiyar

Narasinga Muniyaraiyar is counted among the sixty-three Nayanars, the canonical saints of Tamil Shaivism, though his sainthood rests on no ordeal or spectacular vow. He was a chieftain of the Tirumunaippadi country in the northern Tamil land, remembered chiefly as the foster-father of Sundarar, one of the three great hymnists of the Tevaram.

The story

Sekkilar’s twelfth-century Periya Puranam, the standard hagiography of the Nayanars, describes him as a devout ruler who honoured Shiva’s devotees with open-handed generosity. One day he saw a child of striking grace playing in the streets of Tirunavalur — Nambi Arurar, son of the temple priest Sadaiyanar and his wife Isaignaniyar. Struck by the boy, the chieftain asked the parents for him and, with their consent, brought him up in his own household with the honours of a prince. The child grew into Sundarar, whose hymns close the seventh book of the Tevaram and whose list of saints seeded the entire Nayanar tradition.

Why he is a saint

In Sekkilar’s scheme, devotion takes as many forms as there are lives, and Narasinga Muniyaraiyar stands for devotion expressed through patronage and care. Fostering the future poet was itself service to Shiva, and the tradition treats it as such: the man who raised a saint is honoured beside the saints he served.