Vayilar Nayanar

Vayilar Nayanar is the Vannara? — the artisan-saint of Mylapore who built his temple within: the canon’s mystic of the body as shrine.

Life/Legend

The hagiography relates that Vayilar, a poor craftsman of Mylapore, built no temple of stone; his worship was the mental temple — the mind’s sanctum, the skull’s dome, the body’s nine doors its gopurams. The tradition reads his legend as the Nayanar canon’s interior-mysticism text: the whole apparatus of temple worship internalized in one poor man’s meditation.

Legacy

His story is told as bhakti’s inner pilgrimage; Mylapore’s shrines honor him among their saints.

Verification notes

• Narrative is hagiographic (Periya Puranam); dating traditional.
• Audited against Wikipedia (September 2026).