Thirumudhukundram, also known as Vriddhachalam, is presented as both a sacred destination and a place where temple custom can turn on a name. Its shrine’s story, recalled by Aditha Karikalan’s companions as they ride past the confluence of the Manimutha River and Vellaaru River, turns a local act of renovation into a comic reflection on age, devotion, and royal marriage.

Setting and Royal Welcome

The travelers pass the striking natural landscape where the Manimutha River meets the Vellaaru River. Their conversation returns to the welcome and hospitality offered to Aditha Karikalan in Thirumudhukundram the previous night, adding discussion of the sacred renovation of its temple. The place is therefore introduced not only through its scenery but through the public and religious attention surrounding its shrine.

The Temple and Its Names

The anecdote concerns Sundara Murthy Naayanar, who arrives in Thirumudhukundram on a pilgrimage and proceeds directly to the temple. After the priests welcome him, conduct the rituals, and complete worship, they ask him to honor the deity in verse. He first asks the deity’s name. The priests identify the god as Vriddhagireeswarar, after the town, and the goddess as Vriddhagireeswari. Their proud answer becomes the source of the dispute: Sundara Murthy Naayanar objects that both divine names make the deities sound old and refuses to sing their praises.

Renovation, Hymn, and Afterlife

Fearing that a temple without Sundara Murthy Naayanar’s verses would be excluded from the community of sacred sites, the priests promptly install another idol of the Amman, this time naming her Balambigai, a name signifying youth. Once the change is made, they report it to the still-irate poet and ask again for hymns. He relents, returns to Thirumudhukundram, and sings a pathigam praising Vriddhagireeswarar and his young consort. The episode makes the temple’s renovation inseparable from the naming that prompted it: changing the goddess’s title secures the poet’s return and the devotional song the priests sought.

A Sacred Story Turned to Wit

As the story is recounted, Aditha Karikalan laughs at the thought that Pazhuvettarayar might have married Nandhini for a reason like the poet’s refusal to praise an old man and his aging wife. Parthibendra Pallava and Kandamaaran join in, while Parthibendra Pallava extends the joke into a complaint about the natural law of old age. Thirumudhukundram thus serves as more than the setting of a pilgrimage anecdote: its sacred history supplies the occasion for irreverent courtly humor, while the story itself shows how a temple’s standing is imagined to depend on the hymns it receives.