Nayanar 54: Idangazhi (Itankali)

The 54th saint is Itankali Nayanar (Idangazhi). Arurar’s words have already been referred to above He refers to him as a Nampi-It shows he must be of some importance in the Shaivite world. Nampiyantar makes him the king of Irukkuvelur who proclaimed that all his wealth belonged to Shaivites.

The Darasuram sculpture represents this story with the inscriptions Itankaliyantar underneath it. We find Itankali sitting cross legged with a sacred thread on a raised seat, with ornaments and the tuft of hair knotted to the left in a peculiar makuta form, giving orders for issuing a proclamation. On his right probably representing another scene is one who is playing on the drum notifying the proclamation probably to the effect that the king’s wealth belongs to the Shaivites. It is here that Nampiyantar refers to his contemporary king Aditya and we get the new information that this Aditya adorned the roof of the Tillai temple with gold brought from the Konku country.

Cekkilar mentions the same story and both of them make Itankali the ancestor of the Cola Aditya, the founder of that line of Cola kings, which gave to the world Rdja-raja and Rajendra the great. But Cekkilar does not make Iruk-kuvelur, the capital of Irukkuvelir, the native city of Itankali, as is done by Nampiyantar. According to Cekkilar, Kotumpalur in Konatu which is a division of Pudukkatta, was the capital city of this Velir chief. The Irukkuvels are said to have ruled from Kotum-palur and, therefore, the Irukkuvelur mentioned by Nampiyantar may be taken as referring to the capital city of the Irukkuvels which was probably no other than Kotumpalur.

Cekkilar gives some more particulars about this saint. There was a Shaivite who undertook as his life mission to feed every day the followers of Shaivism. He could not get any employment for earning the money required for this kind of service. Knowing no other way of livelihood, he entered the royal store of paddy but he was caught red-handed as a thief. He was brought before the king. The Shaivite explained the truth. The Shaivite king explained, “Is not this saint my true treasure house?” and allowed him to take away all that he could from the store of paddy and from his treasury.

Itankali may mean the tiger which dismisses without touching anything that falls to its left and we know many chieftains metaphorically mentioned as ‘puli’—see, Kotpuli, Cirappuli.

Itankali is used by Tiruttakka Tevar as one beyond the reach of others: "Itankali kamam” (2038). We know of one Kotumpalur chief ‘Paradurggamardhana’ called ‘Vatapi jit’, which suggests that Kofumpalur Velirs probably accompanied the Pallavas on the northern expeditions against the Chalukyas of Vatapi. Since tradition makes Ceruttunai and Kalarcinkan, contemporaries, there is nothing wrong in our considering Itankali who comes in between the two saints in the list of Tontar, as being also a contemporary of these two saints.

The Sanskrit and Kannada traditions pronounce this name as Idamkrishi. According to them, he was a Cola king who not only excused the thief who stole grains from his palace granary to feed Shaivites, but also threw his granary and treasury open to all Shaivites and thus rendered robbery unnecessary,