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150 Saiva Philosophy in some Important Texts [CH. a system of philosophy in the modern sense of the term. Pope wishes to place Māņikka-vāchakar in about the seventh or eight century, apparently without any evidence. R. W. Frazer, in his article on Dravidians, places him in the ninth century, also without any evidence. Māņikka-vāchakar is supposed to have been born near Madura. The meaning of his name is "he whose utterances are rubies.” He is supposed to have been a prodigy of intellect and was a consummate scholar in the Brahmanical learning and the Saivāgamas. These Agamas, as we have pointed out elsewhere, are written in Sanskrit verses and also in Tamil. It appears, therefore, that the background of Māņikka-vāchakar's thought was in Sanskrit. The mythical story about Māņikka-vāchakar, available in the Tiru-viļaiyāļil and in the Vātavurar-purāņa as summarised by Pope, need not detain us here. We find that he renounced the position of a minister of the king and became a Saiva ascetic. His mind was oppressed with the feeling of sadness for all people around him, who were passing through the cycles of birth and death, and had no passionate love for Siva which alone could save them. This state of his mental agitation, and the confession of his ignorance and youthful folly, are specially described in some of his poems.
Later on Siva Himself meets him, and from that time forward he becomes a disciple of Siva. Siva appears before him with His three eyes, His body smeared with ashes, and holding a book in His hand called Siva-jñāna-bodha, the well-known work of Meykaņdadeva. Pope himself admits that the Siva-jñāna-bodha could not have been written by the sixth century A.D., the supposed date of Māņikka-vāchakara.
In the course of his career he travelled from shrine to shrine until he came to Chidambaram, where in a discussion he completely discomfited the Buddhists, partly by logic and partly by the demonstration of miraculous powers. He then returned to other devotees and set up a lingam under a tree and worshipped it day and night. It was from that time that he began his poetical compositions which are full of the glory of Siva and His grace.
1 In Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
2 Siva-jñāna-bodha is supposed to have been written by Meykaņdadeva in or about A.D. 1223. See article on Dravidians by Frazer in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
