The paddy that the rain did not touch
The town was not always called Tirunelveli. Before that name, the district administration records, it was known as Venuvanam, the bamboo forest, and also as Nellore and Saaliveli.
Here lives a Brahmin named Vedha Sharma, a devotee of Shiva. He has been collecting paddy, and the grain is not for his own table: it is for an offering to Shiva. Before it can be offered it has to be dried, so he spreads the paddy out in the open.
Then rain comes. It strikes the town while the grain lies exposed, and the offering Vedha Sharma has gathered is about to be lost.
He does the one thing he can. He prays to Shiva.
Shiva answers by sheltering the grain. The rain falls on the town, but the paddy laid out for the god is protected from it, and the offering is saved.
The episode gives the god a name. Because he sheltered the paddy, he is called Nelvelinathar. The name passes from the god to the town, which from then on is called Thirunelveli — the name it carries today, in place of the older Venuvanam.
The story explains why paddy, rather than the bamboo of the older name, sits at the centre of the temple's identity: it accounts for the god's name and for the town's. The bamboo has not been forgotten. The district administration still records bamboo as the temple's sthala vriksha, the sacred tree of the site, and the god's other title, Venuvananathar, keeps the forest in his name. That second title comes from a different episode, the stumble of the milkman Ramakone in the same forest, told in the next account.
Where this account comes from
- Government: District Administration, Tirunelveli, "Arulmigu Nellaiyappar Arultharum Gandhimathi Amman Temple Tirunelveli Town" tirunelveli.nic.in · seen 2026-10-09