Kalidvamsa, or Neelan, is known as Thirumangai Azhwar. How he became a devotee is a very interesting story. Kalidvamsa means “destroyer of the influence of Kali.” He was known by this name after he became a Devotee. But previously he was known as Neelan which refers to his very dark complexion.
Neelan was a local chieftain and a commander of the region “Thirumangai ” serving under the reigning Chola king. He was well known for his fearsomeness and bravery. However he was smitten by a beautiful girl by the name of Kumudavalli with whom he fell in love instantly. Kumudavalli was none other than a celestial damsel re-born due to a curse from Kapila Muni. When Neelan proposed to marry her, she put two conditions on him for the wedding. First one was that he needed to surrender to Sri Narayana and serve Him as a devotee. Second was to feed 1000 bhagavadas (bhaktas) every day for the next one year. Neelan agreed to the conditions and immediately became a devotee of Sri Narayana. He started feeding 1000 bhagavadas using all the wealth he had. Once he ran out of his wealth, he started using the taxes he had collected which of course belonged to the kingdom. When the king came to know of this, he came to recover the money and had a war with Neelan. Although Neelan was undefeated in the battle, he accepted his wrong doing in taking the public funds for personal use. Eventually, when Sri Narayana revealed in his dream the location of a treasure that he can use to repay the debt, he repaid the money stolen from the kingdom and was freed from debt. After this incident, Neelan decided to start robbing rich merchants of their wealth so he can continue to feed the bhagavadas .
One night he and his associates saw a very big caravan of 30 bullock carts, at the head of which was a very wonderful looking young groom and a very beautiful bride. They were dressed in all kinds of opulent finery, jewelry and crowns. The bullock carts were being driven by servants who were equally opulent and wonderful in their appearance. So Neelan stepped out on the road and stopped the whole procession, and said to the groom, “Well my dear sir, you look to be very, very wealthy.” And the groom smiled and said, “Yes, actually all wealth is mine.” Neelan, excited by the prospect of the large loot said, “Well if all wealth is yours then you won’t mind parting with some of it.” And the groom smiled and said, “Yes, but my wealth is only engaged in helping bhagavadas”. Neelan said, “Well that’s very nice because I am also a bhagavada. So I’m sure you’ll be happy to give me your wealth.”
The groom smiled again and said “Well, I won’t give you.” “So you want to fight?” Neelan asked. “No, you just take, you are free to take, but I am not going to give.”, said the groom. “All right,” said Neelan, “Let’s go.” So they tied them all up, as they normally did, and they stripped the bullock carts, and took all the finery and jewels from the groom, his wife and their servants,. Finally, he noticed that there was a toe ring with a valuable gem on the toe of the groom. Neelan tried to personally pull this ring off the toe, but it wouldn’t come off. Finally he had to kneel down to use his teeth to pull the ring off the toe. Due to the contact of the Holy Feet of Sri Narayana, his consciousness was flooding with all sorts of wonderful ecstatic realizations. Finally he decided to let go of the toe ring and take off with the remaining loot. All the looted wealth was piled together for him and his men to carry it off, but they couldn’t lift it. It was so heavy. So then he turned to the groom and said, “I think you must have some mantra by which you move your wealth about, because obviously it is somehow charmed that it cannot be moved.” And then the groom said, “Yes, there is a secret mantra.” “You’d better tell me,” Neelan demanded. “All right, just come close,” the groom said. So then He whispered the astakhshari mantra “Om Namo Narayanayah” in Neelan’s ear. When Neelan heard this mantra he realized that this groom and His wife were none other than Lakshmi and Narayana, and he saw them in Their original forms.
Subesquently, he was known as Thirumangai Azhwar and visited all the Divyadesams and sang 1137 paasurams (poems) in praise of Sri Narayana. He also helped reconstruct many temples including the fort wall of Srirangam Temple.
The leela played by The Lord in losing His wealth to Neelan and then Neelan surrendering everything back is enacted every year with much fanfare in divya desam temples in Tamil Nadu.
