INTRODUCTION
Arivattaya Nayanmar or Thayanar is one among the 63 Nayanmars.
Thayanar was born in a rich family in a village located at Thanjavur district. Thayanar was an ardent devotee of Lord Shiva and lived in Thanjavur with his family.
Though he was a rich person in his village, he led a simple and a noble life. He was the owner of several farm lands. Through that, he and his noble wife cultivated the crops and provided food to the shiva devotees.Due to his continuous service, one day he had lost all of his wealth, but even then, he continued his routine service of feeding food to the devotees of Lord Shiva.
In course of time, he sold out all of his farm lands,and he and his wife were begun to work as laborers in other wealthy people’s fields. Their situation further worsened due to the severe drought occurred, he and his wife starved for several days without food.
One day, somehow the couple managed to prepare simple food and arrived a Shiva temple to offer the food to the Lord as Prasad and then to offer it to the devotees of Lord Shiva. Due to hunger and starvation, the couple fell down on the ground with the food. Unable to tolerate, he took a weapon and tried to pierce it on his neck.
He was stopped from doing that act, by Lord Shiva, he appeared along with Parvati and they appreciated the couple’s sincere bhakti and s given them Salvation.
“OM SREE ARIVATTAYA NAYANMARE NAMAHA”
“OM NAMAH SHIVAYA”
WRITTEN BY R.HARISHANKAR
