Siruthondar: The Story the Tradition Argues About Most

Before the story, the man it is attached to, because he is a documented historical figure and that part is separable.

Paranjothi:

• A Pallava commander in the seventh century
• General to Narasimhavarman I, the Pallava king who ruled from Kanchipuram
• He led the campaign against the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II
• The Pallava forces took Vatapi, the Chalukya capital, which is present day Badami in Karnataka, around 642
• Pulakeshin II was killed or died in the conflict

What is documented:

• The Vatapi campaign happened and is recorded in inscriptions on both sides
• Narasimhavarman I took the title Vatapikonda, the one who took Vatapi
• The Badami inscriptions record the Pallava occupation
• The Pallava Chalukya wars ran for generations in both directions, with capitals sacked on both sides

What he brought back. Traditionally, the Ganapati image from Vatapi.

The Vatapi Ganapati at Thiruchengattangudi in Nagapattinam district is said to be the image he brought.

And the connection to Carnatic music. Worth knowing, because it is how most people encounter the name.

Muthuswami Dikshitar's kriti Vatapi Ganapatim, in raga Hamsadhwani, is one of the most performed pieces in the entire Carnatic repertoire. It opens a great many concerts.

It is addressed to the Vatapi Ganapati, and the reference is to this image and this history.

So a war between two Indian dynasties in 642 produced a temple image, which produced a composition around 1800, which is sung at the start of concerts today.

After the campaign:

• He returned
• He gave up military service
• He settled at Thiruchengattangudi
• He became a devotee, and specifically took up the service of feeding Shaiva devotees
• He is called Siruthondar, the little servant, which is a self diminishing name of the same kind as Thondaradippodi Alvar's

What his service was. Every day, he would not eat until he had found a Shaiva devotee to feed.

He would go out, look for somebody, bring them home, and his wife Thiruvenkattu Nangai would cook and they would serve them, and only then eat themselves.

They had a son, Seeralan.

That is the situation the story begins from: a former general who had left the army and whose daily practice was finding somebody to feed.

This is what the Periya Puranam says. It is set out here because the entry would be dishonest without it, and it is not endorsed.

The account:

• On a particular day, Siruthondar went out to find a devotee and could not find one
• Eventually he found an ascetic in Bhairava form, who agreed to come
• At the house, the ascetic said he had conditions about what he would eat
• He said he ate only on certain days and only certain food
• And he stated the condition: he would eat the flesh of a child, an only son, of a certain age, killed by the parents, cooked by the mother, with the father holding the child
• And that the parents must do it willingly

• Siruthondar agreed
• His wife agreed
• The child, Seeralan, was at school; he was brought home
• They killed and cooked him
• The ascetic then asked whether anything had been kept back; he was told the head had been set aside, and required that too
• He then said he would not eat alone and required the parents to eat with him
• They agreed to that as well

• And at that point Shiva revealed himself
• The child was restored, alive and unharmed
• The family was taken to Kailasa

That is the story.

What the tradition says it means. The stated reading is that it is a test of the limit of obedience, that nothing was actually lost, and that the parents' willingness rather than the act is what is being displayed.

Why that reading does not resolve it:

• The willingness is precisely the problem
• The child was not a party to it
• Presenting parents' willingness to kill their child as the highest devotion is a claim about what devotion is, and it is a claim that can be rejected

This guide rejects it. There is no reading on which the story describes anything good, and the fact that the child was restored does not make the willingness admirable.

What the story is structurally. It belongs to a recognisable type.

• The Abraham and Isaac narrative in the Abrahamic traditions
• Harishchandra, who is required to give up everything including his son
• The Sibi story, where a king cuts flesh from himself for a dove
• Dadhichi, who gives his bones
• Various Puranic tests of a devotee's limit

These narratives all work by naming the thing a person would not give and then requiring it, in order to establish that nothing was withheld.

Why this one is worse than the others. Because the person harmed is a child who had no say, and because the parents are required to do it themselves.

Abraham is stopped before the act. Siruthondar is not; the act is completed and reversed afterward.

That difference is the reason this story is argued about and the others less so.

The criticism of this story is old, is Tamil, and comes substantially from within the culture rather than from outside it.

Who has objected:

• Tamil reformist and rationalist writers, extensively, from the nineteenth century onward, and it is one of their standard examples
• Modern Tamil literary writers, several of whom have reworked or attacked the story
• People within the Shaiva tradition who regard it as a later accretion or as requiring a purely allegorical reading
• Ordinary readers, continuously, since it is the story people stop at

The standard objections:

• The child had no say and was killed
• The parents' willingness is presented as virtue
• The restoration does not undo the willingness
• The story places obedience above the protection of a child, which inverts the ordinary moral order
• It has been recited and depicted approvingly for centuries

The defences offered, set out fairly:

• That the whole thing is a test and nothing was real, since the ascetic was Shiva and the child was restored
• That the story is allegorical and the child represents attachment
• That it belongs to a genre and is not meant as an account of conduct
• That the point is the impossibility of the demand, which is what makes the compliance meaningful
• That it should be read as literature with a specific rhetorical purpose

Where this guide stands. It is worth being direct rather than balanced.

The allegorical reading is available and many people use it. The genre argument is accurate.

Neither changes the fact that the story, in the form the tradition tells it and depicts it, presents the killing of a child by his parents as the highest devotion, and that a very large number of people have found that unacceptable, in Tamil, for a long time.

A reader is entitled to say so, and saying so is not an attack on the tradition. The tradition contains the criticism.

How to hold it alongside the rest:

• The Periya Puranam is a great book and this is the worst thing in it
• Sekkizhar recorded rather than invented; the story was already circulating
• The other sixty two lives contain nothing of this kind
• The canon's overwhelming content is hymns about temples, ash, the five syllables, the poet's own state, and service
• One story does not define a tradition and a tradition is not obliged to defend every story in it

A note on how it is depicted. It appears in temple sculpture and painting, including at Thiruchengattangudi.

A visitor may encounter it. Knowing what it is beforehand is better than being confronted with it.

What should not be done with it:

• It should not be told to children as an inspiring story
• It should not be used to argue that obedience to a religious figure overrides anything
• It should not be cited in support of any demand made of anybody

And the general principle it makes necessary:

If any person, in any tradition, tells you that a religious duty requires you to harm somebody, or to permit somebody to be harmed, or to hand over a child, that is not religion. It is a crime, and the response is the police.

Childline: 1098. Police: 112.

That is not a modern imposition on the tradition. The tradition's own law texts treat the protection of dependents as a first obligation and the killing of a child as among the gravest offences that exist.

The historical part of the entry is separable and is worth having, because Badami is one of the great sites of India and most visitors do not know the connection.

The Pallava Chalukya wars:

• The Pallavas ruled from Kanchipuram, the Chalukyas from Vatapi, present day Badami
• They fought for generations, from roughly the sixth to the eighth century
• Pulakeshin II defeated Mahendravarman I and took territory, reaching close to Kanchipuram
• Narasimhavarman I counterattacked, took Vatapi around 642, and Pulakeshin II died
• The wars continued afterward under later rulers, with further sackings in both directions
• Eventually both dynasties were displaced, the Chalukyas by the Rashtrakutas and the Pallavas by the Cholas

Pulakeshin II. Worth knowing about independently.

He is the Chalukya king who defeated Harshavardhana of Kannauj at the Narmada, which stopped Harsha's southern expansion, and it is one of the better documented events of the period.

He received an embassy from the Persian king Khusrau II, which is depicted in a painting at Ajanta by some readings, and the exchange is recorded in Persian sources.

Badami. What is there now.

• The cave temples, four of them, cut into the red sandstone cliff: three Hindu and one Jain
• Cave one, Shiva, with the eighteen armed Nataraja relief
• Cave two and three, Vishnu, with the great Varaha, Trivikrama and Narasimha panels
• Cave three has a dated inscription of 578, which makes it one of the securely dated early temples in India
• Cave four, Jain, with Mahavira and Bahubali
• The Agastya lake, with the Bhutanatha temples on its edge
• The Malegitti Shivalaya and the upper and lower Shivalayas on the hill
• Traces of the Pallava inscription of the conquest

Why Badami matters architecturally. It is one of the places where the Nagara and Dravida styles are both present and are being worked out.

The Chalukyas at Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal were experimenting with both northern and southern temple forms simultaneously, and at Pattadakal you can stand between temples in the two styles built within decades of each other.

Pattadakal is UNESCO listed and is around 20 kilometres from Badami. Aihole, with its very early temples including the Durga temple and the Lad Khan, is nearby.

The circuit:

• Badami, Aihole, Pattadakal, in Bagalkot district, Karnataka
• Two or three days
• Hampi is around 140 kilometres and is usually combined
• October to March; it is very hot otherwise

And the Ganapati. The image at Thiruchengattangudi, said to have been brought from Vatapi.

Whether the specific image was taken in 642 is not established. What is established is that images were taken as spoils in these campaigns, on all sides, throughout the period, and that the practice was normal.

Dikshitar's kriti. Vatapi Ganapatim in Hamsadhwani.

Composed around 1800 by Muthuswami Dikshitar, one of the Carnatic trinity, it is probably the single most performed piece in the repertoire and opens an enormous number of concerts.

It is a Sanskrit composition, addressed to Ganapati, containing standard iconographic description and the raga name embedded in the lyric, which is a Dikshitar signature.

Most people who have heard it do not know that the name refers to a seventh century military campaign, an image taken as spoil, and a general who left the army afterward.

On reading traditions honestly

This entry is the point in the series where the method matters most, so it is worth stating it.

A tradition is not improved by being edited. If a canon contains something indefensible, the options are:

• Pretend it is not there, which is dishonest and does not work, because readers find it
• Defend it, which requires defending something that should not be defended
• Or state what it says, state that it is not acceptable, note that the tradition itself contains the criticism, and continue

The third is what this series does.

Why that is better for devotion, not worse:

• A person who has been given a sanitised tradition will eventually meet the difficult material, and will then have to decide whether everything they were told was managed
• A person who knows the difficult material and has thought about it is not destabilised by it
• And the tradition's own internal critics, who are numerous, are part of the tradition rather than opponents of it

The general rule this entry establishes:

Nothing in any tradition overrides the protection of a child.

Not obedience, not a guru's instruction, not a vow, not a family's honour, not a text, not a story, not a saint's example.

• Childline: 1098
• Police: 112
• Every district has a Child Welfare Committee
• Reporting is a duty in defined circumstances under POCSO and the Juvenile Justice Act

And the wider version:

If a religious figure asks you for something that harms you or somebody else, the answer is no, and the tradition's own texts support the no.

The acharya criteria set out in the Madhurakavi entry apply: a teacher who asks for anything that damages you is not one.

What the rest of Siruthondar's life was. Worth ending on, because it is the part that can be used.

He was a general who came home from a war in which a capital was sacked and a king killed.

He gave up military service.

And his practice for the rest of his life was that he would not eat until he had found somebody to feed.

That is his actual daily discipline, it is what his name refers to, and it is available to anybody.

Annadanam. The practice.

• Most temples run food distribution and welcome contributions of money, materials or labour
• Many run daily meals
• Community kitchens, langars and temple annadanam feed very large numbers
• The rule Siruthondar kept, not eating until somebody else had been fed, is a household practice anybody can adopt in some form

A household version:

• Set aside a portion before you eat
• Feed anybody who comes
• Contribute to a temple or community kitchen
• Do it daily rather than occasionally, which is the part that is hard

Places

Thiruchengattangudi:

• In Nagapattinam district, Tamil Nadu
• The Uthrapathiswaraswamy temple
• The Vatapi Ganapati
• A Paadal Petra Sthalam
• The story is depicted there

Badami, Aihole, Pattadakal:

• In Bagalkot district, Karnataka
• The Chalukya sites, where the historical part of this entry happened
• Two or three days, best combined with Hampi

A closing thought

A man led an army that destroyed a city and killed a king. He came home, put down his weapons, and decided that he would not eat until he had found a stranger to feed.

That is a life worth recording.

The tradition recorded something else about him as well, and that thing is indefensible, and Tamil writers have said so for two centuries.

Both are in the book. A reader can take the first and refuse the second, and refusing it is not a departure from the tradition. It is what a considerable number of people inside the tradition have already done.