Kripapureeswarar Temple, Tiruvennainallur

01The old man’s bond

Sundarar was at his wedding at Puthur when an old Brahmin walked in and said the groom was his slave: Sundarar’s grandfather had signed a bond pledging his line. Sundarar laughed and called him a madman, pitha. The old man took him before the elders of Tiruvennainallur, the original deed was produced and matched, and the elders asked him where he lived. He walked into the temple and was gone. Sundarar understood, and the Lord told him to sing, beginning with the word he had used in anger. So the seventh Tirumurai opens with Pitha pirai soodi, madman crowned with the crescent. The Lord here is Thaduthatkonda Nathar, he who stopped and took me.

02Meykandar’s town

In the thirteenth century Meykandar lived at Tiruvennainallur and wrote the Sivagnana Bodham, twelve sutras that became the root text of Shaiva Siddhanta; his samadhi shrine is in the town. The Chola queen Sembiyan Mahadevi endowed the temple in the tenth century, and it stands on the bank of the Pennai within a granite wall, with a five-tiered rajagopuram. The court where the bond was read is shown to pilgrims.