Pugal Chola

Pugal Chola Nāyanār — 'the renowned Chola' — is one of several kings among the sixty-three Nāyanārs, remembered by tradition as a just ruler of the Chola line. His hagiography is short and terrible, and turns on a single object: a coil of matted hair.

The story

The Periya Puranam tells that while the king was at Karuvur, his forces put down a defiant chieftain, and, as the custom of war then was, the heads of the slain were laid before the throne. Among them the king saw one bearing the jata — the matted locks of a Shiva ascetic. A devotee of the god had died in his war. To Pugal Chola the fact admitted no mitigation: whoever wears Shiva's marks is Shiva's servant, and the king's arms had destroyed one. The tradition tells that he made his decision as calmly as a judgment: he settled the succession, ordered a fire built, and — bearing the devotee's head with reverence — walked into the flames reciting the five syllables, and so passed to Shiva.

What the tale carries

The canon offers the story as the royal limit of its central ethic: an offence against a devotee, even unknowing, even lawful by the codes of war, outweighs a kingdom and a life. Where other Nayanar kings are honoured for patronage, Pugal Chola is honoured for a verdict against himself. The hagiographers' point is characteristically severe — that in the reckoning of devotion, a crown is the smallest of the things a servant of Shiva may be asked to give up.