01Ponnanaiyal’s gold
The Tiruvilaiyadal Puranam tells of Ponnanaiyal, a temple dancer of Tiruppoovanam who fed Shiva’s devotees every day and longed to cast a golden image of the Lord, but had no gold. Shiva came as a siddha, asked her to bring all the metal in her house, and turned it into gold. She had the image made, and it came out so beautiful that she pinched its cheek in love; the mark, the temple says, is on the cheek still. That image is the utsava murti of Tiruppoovanam. Sambandar, Appar and Sundarar all sang the shrine.
02The sand that was lingas
When Sambandar came to the far bank of the Vaigai, he saw every grain of the river sand as a Shiva linga and would not set foot on it. He worshipped from the other bank, and the Nandi before the sanctum is set a little aside so that he could see the Lord across the river. The Vaigai bank here is a place for tarpanam to the ancestors, as at Kashi, and crowds come on the new moons of Aadi and Thai. The temple stands in the town of Tiruppoovanam on the Madurai–Rameswaram road.
About 18 km south-east of Madurai on the Rameswaram road.
