The Life
Pugazh Chola Nayanar was a Chola king ruling from Uraiyur, renowned for justice and for his devotion to Shiva and his servants. After his army won a battle, his soldiers brought the severed heads of the slain as tokens of victory and heaped them before him. As the king surveyed them, he saw among them a head bearing matted locks and sacred ash — the head of a Shaiva ascetic, a devotee of Shiva, killed in the fray. Stricken with unbearable grief at this sin against a devotee, he resolved to atone with his own life. Crowning his son, he built a funeral pyre, reverently lifted the ascetic's head in a jewelled golden vessel upon his own head, smeared himself with holy ash, and entered the flames — attaining Shiva's abode for his supreme act of expiation.