Varata Paṇṭitar

Varata Paṇṭitar lived at Cuṉṉākam, in the north of Jaffna, around the year 1700. He was a Brahmin, the son of Araṅkanātar, and his family traced its line back to Kāśi, the great city on the Gaṅgā.

He was learned in more than one way. He knew the four Vedas and the healing science of Āyurveda, and he had studied Tamil grammar and poetry deeply. From that learning came a book of medicine in verse, the Amutākaram, and two purāṇams on sacred vows, the Sivarātri Purāṇam and the Ēkātaci Purāṇam.

Every day he bowed to Murukaṉ and asked for his grace, and the verse that opens the Piḷḷaiyār Katai remembers him so. He made the Katai at Accuvēli, where he had married and settled. In it he gathered into one Tamil poem the story of Piḷḷaiyār first told in Tamil by Agastya, the sage of the southern mountain, together with the stories in the Kanta Purāṇam, the Liṅga Purāṇam and the Upatēca Kāṇṭam, so that the old way might shine.

Long after him, the people of Accuvēli still called the ground near the market where he lived and died Pulavaṉār Vaḷavu, the poet's grounds. And year after year the Tamil temples of Jaffna read his Katai through the twenty-one days of the vow, a little each day, and on the twenty-first day the whole of it, when it is called the Peruṅkatai, the great story.