I am fascinated by the legend of Karaikal Ammai who was the earliest of the great saints who is one of the 63 in the Saivaite tradition. I go often to Thiruvelangadu near Thiruthani on the Tirupathi Highway.
Thivalangadu also is famous for the legend of Pazhayanoor Neeli. She is a ghost who tore to pieces a young itinerant merchant who had ventured to travel north of Kanchi, despite a warning he received.
In his younger days in a previous life he had killed Neeli, his wife in Thiruvelangadu. Her angry spirit waited in the same place for several years to wreak revenge against her husband. The man, after his heinous crime died a natural death in Kanchipuram. For all purposes, the story should have closed at that time. However the ghost was determined to get even with the man in his next birth. Fortunately for her, the man is reborn and for some reason he happens upon the same place where she had met her untimely end. He is unaware that there is a Neeli Pisasu (ghost) waiting for his blood.
When the hapless young man was caught by Neeli in Thiruvalangadu he recognises her to be the ghoul that he was warned before he set out on his journey. In desperation, he runs to the custodians, in charge of the governance of the village and prays for his rescue from a certain death and to deliver him from the peyi or pisasu. Neeli the ghost transforms herself into a damsel of great beauty and grace. She informs the guardians that the young man is indeed her husband who had earlier deserted her. She said that he was running away from his duties and responsibilities to his wife. Weeping unrelentingly, which has earned the sobriquet Neeli Kanneer meaning “crocodile tears.” She convinces the 70 custodians of the village belonging to a community called Karukatha Velalars. She invokes the authorities to allow him to spend the night with her for one night, much against the entreaties of the hapless youth who is certain that she will kill him.
The next morning, the seventy Velalars (local chiefs) who had assured the young man of his safety, as he was under their protection and responsible for his life, come to the room only to find him in strips. The ghost vanished after having taken her revenge for which she had waited for several centuries.
In a moving and emotionally gripping anecdote, the seventy guardians are full of remorse and unforgiving of themselves. With incomparable self-indictment for their inability to protect and save an innocent merchant, dig a pit and make a huge fire at Thiruvelangadu. They collectively commit suicide by jumping into the fire.
Last month, I was there at the site of this massive sacrifice and recorded in my notes all the verses showered upon the mighty Velallars by the three emperors the Chera, Chola and Pandya of the Tamil country. They had sung in praise of the incomparable and mighty sacrifice without parallel in the annals of human history whereby these honest Velallars had vanquished their own lives for their inability to honour their commitment.