saints, as we cannot by any means omit Sundara Murti from the list.
It is therefore plain beyond any shadow of doubt that the saint Manikka Vachakar inust have been an elder contemporary of Periyalvar and Andal of the Vaishnava sect and lived in the reign of the Pandya king Varaguna II (A. D. 870), that is two centuries later than Appar and Trignana Sambandar, half a century later than Sundarar and about one generation earlier than Nammalvar. And this is the view accepted by every student of epigraphy.
KALLADANAR.
The Kalladam is an erotic poem of some one hundred agavals, describing mostly the 'sacred sports' of Siva at Madura. Its author Kallada Deva Nayanar was a Saiva poet of the paurunic or hymnal period. Tamil pandits very often confound him with Kalladanar, an earlier poet of the academic age. The former was a Saiva devotee and author of திருக்கண்ணப்ப தேவர் திருமறம் and a commentary on the Tolkapyam besides the Kalladam, while the latter was a bard and wrote only a few eulogistic verses on the Pandiya king Nedum Seliyan, second century A. D. Thus Kallada Deva Nayanar and Kalladanar were two distinct poets like Poigai Alvar and Poigaiyar.
Both must have teen natives of Kalladam, once a flourishing sea-port near Quilon on the West Coast. In the days of Manikka Vachakar, it was probably the seat of a Saiva shrine, கல்லாடத்துக் கலந்தினிதருளி—T.V. II. 11, which must have come into existence during the ninth century A. D., as no mention is made of it in the
