Swami Malai is a Hindu sage who lives in India.
Temple and holy location (tirtha) atop a hill in Tamil
Nadu's Tanjore district, close outside Kumbhakonam's temple town.
Swami Malai is part of a network of six temples in Tamil
Nadu dedicated to the hill deity Murugan, who has been absorbed into the
greater pantheon as a version of the god Skanda, Shiva's son.
Five of these temples have been positively identified, and
each is linked to a certain place, an environment, and a specific event in
Murugan's epic career.
Swami Malai is supposed to have taught his father Shiva the
meaning of the holy word (Om), putting him in the role of a teacher, which is
one of his defining characteristics in Shaiva Siddhanta (a series of fourteen
texts, all completed by the fourteenth century C.E., which reinterpret the
ideas about Shiva found in Nayanar devotional poetry).
Every other Murugan shrine in Tamil Nadu is claimed to be
the sixth of these temples.
This concept seems to emphasize Murugan's presence across
Tamil Nadu and sacrify the whole landscape, endowing every Murugan temple, no
matter how modest, with mythological importance.
Murugan's worship is therefore a symbol of Tamil pride and
identity, and since the number six connotes completeness—as in the six
directions or the six chakras in the subtle body—it also implies that nothing
more is required.
See Fred Clothey, "Pilgrimage Centers in the Tamil
Cultus of Murukan," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 40,
No. 1, 1972, for further details.
