Tiruneelanakka

Tiruneelanakka Nāyanār was a brahmin of the Chola country, remembered in connection with the shrine of Tirumarugal, and one of the sixty-three Nāyanārs. A Vedic ritualist by training and temperament, he owes his place in the canon to the moment his ritualism was corrected.

The story

The Periya Puranam tells that while he was performing worship, a spider dropped onto the liṅga. His wife, fearing it would harm the god, blew it away. To the saint this was defilement — human breath upon the liṅga — and in his anger he set his wife aside. That night Shiva came to him in a dream, his body covered in blisters from the spider's venom, whole only in the one place her breath had cooled. The saint understood: her act, impure by the book, had been the only true worship offered that day. He begged pardon and took her back.

Tradition also remembers him as a host of Tirujnanasambandar, and adds that at the young saint's bidding he lodged Tiruneelakanta Yazhpanar — the low-born master of the yazh who accompanied Sambandar's hymns — with full honour in his own brahmin household, caste notwithstanding.

What the tale carries

Both episodes make the same point from different sides: purity codes yield to love. The spider corrects the ritualist within his own worship; the musician's welcome corrects him within his own house. Sekkilar's canon returns often to this theme, but rarely with so light a touch — the whole doctrine carried by a spider and a breath.