[INDOLOGY] Periyapurāṇam

[Buchholz, Jonas]

Dear colleagues,

This is a question for those of you familiar with the Periyapurāṇam (or Tiruttoṇṭarpurāṇam), Cēkkiḻār’s hagiography of the Tamil Śaiva saints.

In the Māṇḍukarṇīśvara temple in Kanchipuram, there is a local tradition according to which the Nandī in the temple turned his head on Śiva’s command in order to allow Campantar and Appar have an unobstructed view of the god when they visited this site. This story is recorded in a modern inscription in the temple itself, where it is attributed to the “second part of the Civapurāṇam in the Periyapurāṇam composed by Saint Cekkiḻār” (cekkiḻār perumāṉ iyaṟṟiya periya purāṇattil uḷḷa civapurāṇam iraṇṭām pākattil). However, I have not been able to locate this episode in the Periyapurāṇam, neither by conducting a full-text search of the e-text on Project Madurai nor through reference to the indices in Alastair McGlashan’s translation. As such, I start suspecting that the ascription may not be factual.

My questions are the following:

  1.  Can anyone confirm the presence or absence of this episode in the Periyapurāṇam?
  2.  How to understand the reference to the “second part of the Civapurāṇam in the Periyapurāṇam”? I am familiar with Civapurāṇam as the title of the opening section of Māṇikkavācakar’s Tiruvācakam, but it does not seem to make sense to me in the context of the Periyapurāṇam.

Any insights would be appreciated!

Best wishes,
Jonas Buchholz

                                                           ____                _____
Dr. Jonas Buchholz
Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Project “Hindu Temple Legends in South India”

Karl Jaspers Centre
Voßstr. 2 | Building 4400 | Room 004
69115 Heidelberg, Germany

P:  +49 (0)6221 54 4095
E:  jonas.buchholz at hadw-bw.de<mailto:jonas.buchholz at hadw-bw.de>
W: https://www.hadw-bw.de/htl

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20250307/6e56d6d7/attachment.htm>