The god who dances on every hill
The fifth section of Nakkeerar's poem does not name a town. Its title, Kunruthoradal, means the dancing that goes on from hill to hill, and what it describes is a festival.
The hill people gather. The hunters, skilled with the bow, drink a toddy made from honey and dance the kuravai to the beat of a small drum, the thondagam. The women of the hills come with flowers in their hair and skirts of leaves, moving with the grace of peacocks.
At the centre is the priest, the Velan. He wears a small garland of flowers and sandal paste on his chest. He is red in complexion and dressed in red. He carries a lance; he has a rooster flag, a ram and a peacock with him, and he plays the flute and the horn. He takes the dancing maidens by the shoulders and dances with them.
The section's closing line explains what the reader has been watching: Murugan takes the form of the Velan and dances on every hill.
That is the whole of the fifth abode as the text gives it — a practice rather than a place, a god who is found wherever the hill people dance for him.
The modern circuit names Tiruttani for this slot. The temple, as the Tiruvallur district administration describes it, crowns a single rock about 700 feet above sea level. But the poem itself does not name Tiruttani or any other single hill, and the identification is supplied by later tradition and by editors, not by the text. That is why Tiruttani's place in the Arupadai Veedu is open to question: we know of no published case for a different hill, but the text names a kind of hill shrine rather than one place.
Where this account comes from
- Hymn: Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai of Nakkīrar, ll. 190–217 (Kuṉṟutōṟāṭal section, part 5 of 6), with English meaning by S. Sachithanantham kaumaram.com · seen 2026-10-09
- Hymn: Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai of Nakkīrar, introduction and section outline, with English meaning by S. Sachithanantham — section 5 glossed as Kunruthoradal, 'hill sanctuaries' kaumaram.com · seen 2026-10-09
- Hymn: Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai of Nakkīrar, section sequence across its 317 lines — Tirupparaṅkuṉṟam (1–77), Tiruccīralaivāy (78–125), Tiruvāviṉaṉkuṭi (126–176), Tiruvērakam (177–189), Kuṉṟutōṟāṭal (190–217), Pazhamudircholai (218–317). Part of the Pattuppāṭṭu anthology and counted in the Eleventh Tirumurai. kaumaram.com · seen 2026-10-09
- Government: Tiruvallur District Administration, "Tourist Places" listing — Arulmigu Subramaniya Swami Temple, Tiruttani tiruvallur.nic.in · seen 2026-10-09