Arunagirinathar

Arunagiri was born at Tiruvannamalai, under the hill where Shiva stood as a column of fire. His own songs say he wasted his youth on pleasure, and that his body fell to disease. In despair he climbed the gopuram of the Arunachaleswara temple and threw himself down. Murugan caught him in his arms, set him on the ground, touched his tongue with the vel and gave him the first word of a song: muthai, the one who is a pearl. Arunagiri sang Muthai tharu, and from then on did nothing but sing of the Lord who had saved him.

He walked to every shrine of Murugan he could reach, the six Padai Veedu and hundreds more, and left a song at each. The tradition counts sixteen thousand songs in the Thiruppugazh; some 1,300 have come down to us. They are known for their sound: long chains of syllables in fixed rhythmic patterns, the chandam, so exact that drummers learn tala from them.

A court poet named Sambandandan, jealous of his fame, challenged him before the Vijayanagara ruler Praudhadeva Raya: whoever could make Murugan appear before the court would win. Sambandandan's goddess did not come. Arunagiri sang, and Murugan appeared on his peacock from a pillar of the temple; at Tiruvannamalai that pillar is honoured as the Kambathu Ilayanar shrine. Besides the Thiruppugazh he left the Kandar Anubhuti, Kandar Alankaram and Kandar Andadi.