A Turkish Nachiyar
Indian subcontinent is filled with the most curious tales one can hear and they are very much still alive. One such story from the twelfth century features a Muslim Tughlaq woman revered to this day as Tulukka Nachiyar (literally, ‘Tughlaq Princess’ or ‘Turkish Princess’), who is said to have fallen in love with the deity in the temple of Srirangam. Even a mere outline of the legend is fascinating: When Muslim troops from Delhi plundered temples in southern India, on their list was the great Vaishnavite shrine at Srirangam in Tamil Nadu. The temple chronicle, Kovil Ozhugu , tells of the attack of the invading armies, and the fall of heroic warrior men and women in defence of the temple. The sultan’s men then seize the idols, and the image of the deity was transported to Delhi. Unknown to the soldiers, a good woman devoted to the deity travels with them to the north in disguise, even gaining access to the sultan’s residence and confirming that her beloved deity is now parked in a palace storeroom. This lady, recalled hereafter as Pin Thodarnda Valli (‘she who followed’), now returns to Srirangam where she at once informs the temple authorities of the whereabouts of their lost deity, liberated from their anguish and sorrow. Led by their informant, sixty of them make their way to the court of the sultan to reclaim their deity. Coming into the imperial presence there, they entertain the king with music and dance, and ask for the deity of Srirangam to be returned to his rightful place in the south. Pleased with their performance, the Tughlaq sultan happily grants them this wish, commanding his men to go to the storeroom and retrieve Srirangam’s deity. Everyone is rather pleased with the turn of events, and there is hope in the air of a happy conclusion.
This is where the twist occurs. It so happens that the sultan’s daughter had long before gone into the storeroom and collected the idol, taking it to her apartments and there playing with it as if it were a doll. The implication, however, is that by dressing him, feeding him and garlanding him, as is done to deities in temple rituals, the princess was essentially worshipping the image, winning divine affection – while during the day he(deity) kept her company in the form of an idol, at night, the Koil Ozhugu(temple manual) mischievously suggests, he played with the princess in a completely human form. As soon as the appeal from the Srirangam party is heard, however, the deity puts his Muslim beloved to sleep and agrees to return with his original devotees. With the consent of the sultan, who is somewhat startled by the animate image, they set out immediately, only for the Tughlaq princess to wake up in distraught. She hastens to catch up with the brahmins, who meanwhile have split so that one group can conceal the idol in Tirupati, lest it be kidnapped again. For the princess this separation is unbearable – arriving in Srirangam but finding her beloved absent, she perishes in the pangs of viraha(separation). Her sacrifice is not for nothing, though, for when eventually the deity comes home – which is a separate adventure altogether – he commands the priests to recognise his Muslim consort. She is commemorated in Srirangam in a painting on the wall, where during his processional round, to this day, the deity appears before her in a colourful lungi (the costume associated with the peninsular Muslim) and accepts north Indian food which features such items as chapatti. The story is a memorable one, with an exact parallel in the Melkote Thirunarayanapuram temple in Karnataka – in this tale, however, the princess is enshrined as a veiled idol in a shrine of her own and not in a wall painting. What is fascinating in either case is not the legend itself but what it seeks to convey. Though it seems unlikely that a Tughlaq princess actually came to the south, head over heels in love with an idol that nightly took human form, could it have been that a Muslim woman was instrumental in having Hindu idols released from Delhi? Or is it a ‘counter-epic’ where the roles are reversed: Instead of a Muslim king chasing after Hindu princesses, we have a Muslim princess besotted with the Hindu divine? By accepting the concept of a Tulukka Nachiyar within the temple, were the leaders of that time creating a space to locate newcomer Muslims within the world of the orthodox Hindu? Were they seeking to prevail over Islamicate principles by celebrating the Hinduised daughter of a sultan? The truth probably lies in a combination of these.
