poetry'; and as to the excellence of his works Kurattalvar speaks thus : தமிழ் நன்னூல் துறைகள் அஞ்சுக் கிலக்கியம் பரகாலன் பனுவல்களே.
In his later days he resigned his office, perhaps on account of some misunderstanding between him and the Chola king, and set out on a tour of pilgrimage from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. For the diffusion of Vishnuism he toiled much and he is even said to have had religious disputations at Shiyali with Trignansambandar, the greatest of the Saiva Nayanars. Some sort of similarity which we observe in the style and composition of Tirumangai Alvar and his Saiva rival seems to countenance the above supposition. Being a man of considerable wealth and influence, Kaliyan visited all the Vishnu temples of his tiine and sang hymns in praise of the Vishnu gods. Thus out of the 108 Vishnu temples approved as holy by Acharyas he left only twenty unvisited ; and these twenty shrines—including Srivilliputtur and Alvar Tirunagari (Kurugur) — were visited, a century or two afterwards, by one or the other of the two later Alvars Vishnu Chittan and Satagopan. We shall revert to this question when we come to speak of these saints.
The above fact proves beyond dispute that these twenty temples, with the exception of Padma nabha at Trivandram, did not come into existence at the time of Tirumangai Alvar. Nevertheless, Mr. S. Krishnaswamy Aiyangar considers the celebration by Kaliyan of most of the Vaishnava temples, as a proof
