Kulothunga Chola II, then a young king, was a devotee of
Shiva at
Chidambaram and continued the reconstruction of the center of
Tamil Shaivism that was begun by his ancestors. At the same time, he was very interested in the highly erotic
Jain epic
Jivaka Chintamani. Sekkilhar, upon noticing this, advised the king to instead turn his attention to the lives of the
Shaiva saints as described by
Sundarar in his
Tiruthondar Thogai. The king thereupon invited Sekkilhar to expound the lives of the Shaiva saints in a great poem. Since Sekkilhar was a scholar in both the Vedas as well as the Agamas and being a Shaiva saint himself, knew about
Nayanars. He composed the
Periyapuranam or the
Great Narrative about the lives of the sixty three Nayanars or saints and would himself sing it in the
Thousand Pillared Hall of the
Chidambaram temple and arouse the latent Chola Shaiva zeal. According to a folklore, when Sekkilhar sat pondering at Chidambaram temple as to how to begin his work, Shiva appeared and said his first verse should be:
Kulothunga Chola II was so moved upon hearing the Periyapuranam that he placed the poem and Sekkilhar on the royal elephant and took them out on a grand procession around the streets of
Chidambaram, the king himself waved the fly-whisks and showered Sekkilhar with honors. This work is considered the most important initiative of
Kulothunga Chola II's reign. Although it is only a literary embellishment of earlier hagiographies of the Shaiva saints it came to be seen as the epitome of
Chola literary style. Among all the
hagiographic Puranas in
Tamil, the
Periyapuranam (or
Tiruttondar Puranam) stands first. The
Periyapuranam is considered a fifth
Veda in the
Tamil language and it immediately took its place as the twelfth and the last book in the Shaiva canon. ==Temples for Sekkilhar==