01The child in the tamarind
Born to Kariyar and Udaiyanangai at Tirukurugur, now Alwarthirunagari, the child did not cry, feed or open his eyes. His parents left him at the temple, and he crawled into the hollow of a tamarind tree and sat there in silence for sixteen years. The Brahmin poet Madhurakavi, travelling in the north, saw a light in the south and followed it to the tree. He asked a riddle: if the small is born in the body of the dead, what will it eat and where will it lie? The boy answered, “That it will eat, and there it will lie”, his first words.
02The Dravida Veda
He sang four works: the Tiruviruttam, the Tiruvasiriyam, the Periya Tiruvantati and the Tiruvaymoli. Sri Vaishnavas count them as the Tamil equal of the four Vedas, and recite the Tiruvaymoli in temple processions ahead of the deity. The hymns were nearly lost; the acharya Nathamuni heard ten verses sung at Kattumannarkoil, went to Tirukurugur, and, the tradition says, recovered all four thousand verses of the Alvars there. The tamarind tree still stands in the temple at Alwarthirunagari.
