Talk:The Nāyaṉmār Saints:Karaikkāl Ammaiyār (the Mother of Karaikkāl)
By Vishal Agarwal
In Southern India, on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, is the port of Karaikal. In the 6th century CE, there lived a rich merchant named Paramadattan. He married Punithavathi, who was a great bhakta of Bhagavān Śiva.
One day, some merchants visited Paramadattan and presented him with two delicious mangoes. Paramadattan took the mangoes home and gave them to Punithavathi, saying that he would eat them later.
After some time, a sādhū who worshipped Śiva arrived and begged Punithavathi for some food. As she had great regard for all bhaktas of Śiva, Punithavathi served him food with respect and also gave him one of the mangoes.
Later, when her husband returned, he asked to be fed. She brought food and the remaining mango to feed him. Paramadattan found the mango to be extremely delicious and requested her to bring the second of the two mangoes he had given her. But since she had given the other mango to the sādhū, she became scared that her husband would be angry with her because he had no faith in Śiva and regarded all sādhūs as useless.
She prayed to Śiva for help. Miraculously, another mango appeared in her hand. When she fed it to her husband, he said, “I have not tasted a more delicious mango in my whole life. It could not have been among the two mangoes that I gave to you earlier today. Tell me the truth where did you get this mango?” Punithavathi told him how Śiva had gifted her a mango to replace the one she had given to the sādhū.
In time, Paramadattan settled in another city, where he remarried and had a baby girl with his new wife. His relatives asked him to take back Punithavathi as his wife, but he refused.
Abandoned by her own husband, Punithavathi decided to devote her life to worshipping Śiva. Fearing that her beauty might attract unwanted attention and marriage proposals, she prayed to Śiva: “Bhagavān, please change my looks to that of an ugly and old woman so that I can worship you always without being disturbed.” Śiva knew that Punithavathi’s true beauty was in her pure soul, and that she did not need external beauty to be truly beautiful. Therefore, he granted her request, and she became an old and unattractive woman.
She wrote and sang beautiful hymns in praise of Śiva. People began to worship and respect her as the ‘Mother (Ammaiyar) of Karaikal’, and the name remained. In her old age, she visited Mount Kailāśa and had a darśana of Bhagavān Śiva. Śiva asked her to settle down in a place called Tiruvalangadu, where she spent the rest of her life singing his praises. Thereafter, her soul merged with Śiva.
Karaikal Ammaiyar’s life and songs are recorded in the Periya Purāṇam and Tirumurai holy scriptures of the Hindus in the Tamil language, along with the biographies of sixty-two other Nayanmār saints.