The Pandya King charged the court sculptor with carving a statue of his queen. As the sculptor was carving the thigh, his chisel slipped and a mole-like defect appeared. Discarding the statue, he began again, since the queen’s statue could have no defect. Then suddenly, to his surprise, he found that as he was carving the thigh, the same thing happened, again. And again. And again. When this had happened for the fifth time, he went to the Dikshitar for advice.Neelakanta Dikshithar closed his eyes for a while and then told the sculptor “go, finish your statue and submit it to the King. It will be so, since the queen actually does have a mole on her thigh.”
When the sculptor presented his masterpiece to the King, the King was enraged on seeing a mole-like defect on the thigh, and demanded an explanation of the nervous sculptor. The sculptor then blurted out the entire story.
Suspecting that Neelakanta Dikshithar had had the gumption to lay eyes on the queen’s thigh, the King immediately ordered his soldiers to ride out and bring the Dikshithar, who had retired and was living in a village nearby, to his court. The king intended to blind the Dikshithar in public, as an example to everyone
When the soldiers reached him and gave him the message, the Dikshithar closed his eyes for a minute. He then told the soldiers, “go tell your master that I have done what he wanted to do.”
When the soldiers told the king this, he rushed to the Dikshithar, and found that the Dikshithar had blinded himself with a pair of coals. he then realized that the Dikshithar was genuinely a saint, and as atonement, presented him with the village, Palamadai.
There's more.
Unhappy that he had caused Neelakanta Dikshithar so much pain, The King asked him to use his divine powers to get his eyesight back. Neelakanta Dikshithar then went to the Madurai Meenakshi temple, and standing in front of the goddess, composed, on the spot, his seminal poem in her praise, Anandasagarastava. When he reached the 61st stanza, and sang "with which eyes will I see your lotus feet?", lo and behold! he got his eyesight back!!
Neelakanta Dikshithar was the nephew of another famous saint, Appaiya Dikshithar.
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