INTRODUCTION
ORIGIN, AUTHOR, AND WORK
In Hinduism, the puraanas play a great part.
The puraanas are supposed to be a compilation or collection of stories
and histories. But that would be an understatement at its best.
There are somewhat like the encyclopaedias of various branches of
knowledge. The stories are actually interwoven into the fabric of the puraana.
The puraana contained religious knowledge, Vedic knowledge, and
science, technology of the times, war-craft, politics, history, geography, rituals,
philosophy, linguistics, ethnology, ethics, code of conduct, law, dharma, and
many other things.
It would describe the universe and its creation; the worlds within it;
the continents and countries in a particular world; the inhabitants of the world;
the races and languages; the dynasties; the origins of those dynasties; the
lineage of kings; the history of the country and its kings.
The stories would usually contain sub stories, mini-stories, and
micro-stories.
The ancient narrators did not understand what was exactly handed over
to them. Because they lacked the advanced technical knowledge about things
that were there, so many galaxies away, in the very distant remote past. The
resultant was something that looked like a fantastic fabrication of the wildest
imagination possible. But, there have also been advantages and uses.
Those who wrote the puraanas were called the pauraaNikas.
Some of the puranas are huge. Skandha puraana has more than 100,000
verses.
There are 18 major and 18 minor puraanas.
Apart from these, there are innumerable 'sthala puraana's.
VEdha Vyaasa is said to have been the for-runner of all the major and
minor puraanas.
He is considered to be an incarnation of Naaraayana during the Dvaapara
yugam.
Once upon a time, it is said that there were thousands of vedhas. Vyaasa is
aid to have compiled them into the 4 vedhas - Rig, Saama, Yajur and Aharvana
vedhas.
Then, from the immense available sources, he compiled the 18 puraanas.
SKANDHA PURANA:
Among these, Skandha puraanam is made up of six books called 'Samhitha's
containing 100,000 verses.
Sanathkumaara samhithai - 55000,
Suutha samhithai - 6000,
Brahma samhithai - 3000
Vishnu samhithai - 5000
Sankara samhithai - 3000
Saura samhithai - 1000
The six books are subdivided into 50 kaandams.
Sankara Samhithai contains a subsection called 'Siva Rahasya Kaandam' of
13000 slokas.
This is subdivided into seven sub-kaandams called:
Sambhava,
Aasura,
ViiraMahendra,
Yuddha,
DEva,
Dhaksha,
and UpadEsa.
Murugan's story is told in these seven sections.
I will give a short synopsis of the Tamil KandhaPuranam and its composition
by its author, Kachchiyappa Sivachariyar.
A brief account about the Tamil Kandha Puranam......
ThoNdai nadu is one of the twelve regions of Tamilnadu. At present,
it would be the area of land between the North Pennar and South Pennar.
It was divided into 24 kOttams. Later on, it became the seat of the PallavaKanchi was the capital of Thondainadu. Kanchi is one of the ancient cities in
Empire.
the world. It was already ancient during Buddha's time.
A famous Sanskrit saying mentions:
'Among the Males - Vishnu,
among the flowers - Jasmine,
among the females - Rambha,
among the cities - Kanchi;
these are the most magnificient of all'.
It was a huge city which is now reduced very much from its original size.
Even though the late twentieth century's population explosion and the residential
developement, Kanchi has expanded, it still has not attained the original size of
ancient times.
It had sectors separately for different religious groups - Siva Kanchi, VishNu
Kanchi, Jina Kanchi, Buddha Kanchi, and other places for army groups, artisans,
workmen, business quarters, Emperor's palace and palaces of royalty and important
officials and merchant princes. It was the most important and northernmost city on
entry into Tamilnadu. So it had to be strong. Very very strong.
It was mentioned that it was a centre for Jainism, Buddhism, Saivism, and
VaishNavism. In addition, it was a very important centre for the Shakthas - Shakthi worshippers. It was also a centre of the various sub-sects of Saivism like the
Kaapaalikas, Mahavrathas, and Bairavas.
It was also a Kaumara centre. It had a KumarakOttam.
Kanchi was a centre for learning. Chinese Buddhist scholars came to Kanchi
as part of their study tour. Kanchi had a university run for Brahmins. It was called
a Katikai.
There was a Sivachariyar priest of the Kumara kOttam called KaLaththiyappa
Sivachariyar. His son was Kachchiyappa Sivachariyar. He was well-versed in
Sanskrit and Tamil and was also a great creative poet. He was an ardent devotee
of Murugan.
One night, Murugan appeared in his dream and commanded him,
"Our biography is told in the SivaRahasyam which is the first kAntam of
Sankara Samhithai which is one of the six kanTams of the Sanskrit Skandha
Purana. You must make it into a Southern Tamil book called 'Kandha PuraNam".
('Our biography', here, means the biography of Murugan. Gods, kings, gurus
and people of such eminence would address themselves in the plural. This useage
is also found in English. It is called the 'Royal We' because the royalty use that
kind of address. It is part of a grammatical and verbose style called the
'Queen's English').
He also gave the first two words of the beginning verse of the book,
"thigada cakkaram'.
Kachchiyappa woke up and was overwhelmed.
He sat in the sannidhi of Murugan and started to compose Kandha
Puranam.
Everyday he would write one hundred verses on palm leaves and then place
the suvadi in front of Murugan's sannidhi.
He would then go home.
In the morning, he would open the suvadi and see that there would be
corrections made in certain places.
Thus, all that was written by him was corrected by Murugan and accepted
by Murugan.
A total of 10345 verses were thus composed and made up into six kantams
of a book.
It was named 'Kandha Puranam'.
Sometimes the composers would give one name and the book would be called
by another name. Kamba Ramayana was named 'Ramavathara' by Kamban.
Nobody calls it by that name.
Kachchiyappa fixed an auspicious day and invited all the poets and scholars of
ThoNdai MaNdalam and convened a grand assembly for the launching of the
book.
He did pujais to Murugan and then to the Kandha Puranam book. He started
with the first stanza:
thigada cakkara cemmukam aindhuLAn
cakada cakkarath thAmarai nAyagan
agada cakkara vinmaNi yAvuRai
vigada cakkaran meyppadham pORRuvAm
As soon as he read these lines, a scholar got up and raised an objection.
'What is thigada cakkara? How was that formed and by which combination
of words? Is there any reference in any grammatical works? It is not mentioned
in any work including TholkAppiyam'.
Kachchiyappa was aghast. He could not answer that.
And the words were given by Murugan.
But an objection was raised.
Kachchiyappa answered, "O Leader among Scholars! I would not know the
grammatical rule for this. However this was given by Murugan Himself. Hence
this could be accepted as such".
The scholar replied, "Very well, then. Whomsoever has given the words,
let him come and give the answer. Or else, you must show the reference.
Otherwise, we will not allow you to proceed any further and launch the book."
The assembly of scholars went back.
Kachchiyappa fell at the sannidhi of Murugan and rolled and writhed with
remorse and agony and cried out aloud.
"O Lord! You must show the grammatical reference to what You Yourself
hath said. Otherwise, I will lay down my life at Your Feet".
Murugan appeared in his dream again and said, "Gather the scholars again
tomorrow. A scholar from Cholznadu will come with the book and show the
grammatical rule".
So Kachchiyappa called forth the grand assembly of scholarsagain, saying
that the grammatical rule will given.
When all had assembled, a young scholar with a fair complexion,
bearing a suvadi was sitting in the middle of the assembly.
The scholar who had objected the previous day, repeated it.
The young scholar said, "We are of Cholza nAdu. We have here
in Our hand, a suvadi called 'VIra COlizyam' which is a grammer book. You
yourself know this book. The 18th verse of the 'santhi patalam' of this book
shows how 'lzakaram' and 'thakaram' would combine to form 'dakaram'.
Don't you know this rule?"
('lz' + 'tha' = 'da'; 'thigalz thasa kara' = 'thigadacakkara')
All the assmbly was taken aback and they said, "Yes, we all know VIra
COlziya; we also have learned the rule. But it is strange that itnever arose in
our minds.
At this the young scholar vanished.
Everyone realised that it was Murugan who had appeared and cleared
the doubt as the new-comer.
After a few days the book launching was completed.
The people belonging to all twenty four kOttams of ThoNdai MaNdalam came
together and made an auspicious festival and carried Kachchiyappa Sivachchariyaron an ivory palanquin and went in a grand procession. They paid all the due respects
and honoured him.
Kachchiyappa Sivachchariyar taught this book to his students Gnyana VarOdhayar and others. He caused them write many copies of the book.
After sometime, he attained the Holy Feet of Murugan.
The puranam that he created lives on............
VIDYALANKARA
Dr.S.JAYABARATHI
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