oneness-with God by sincere devotion and faith. Nanda—a Paraiya saint—attained eternal felicity by his devotions at Chidambaram. The most orthodox of the orthodox Brahmans will never stint the reputation of this greatest of Saiva saints, who after all was only a Paraiya by birth. It is the only place in the whole of India where no attempt has been made to import conventional ideas of Godhead into the purely philosophic basis of the Hindu religion. In keeping with this fame, Chidambaram is now the seat of several Sudra monasteries, where several hundreds of Sudra mendicants are taught Sanskrit. A Brahman visitor to this sacred town will be surprised to see the number of Sudras repeating the Upanishads in the early morning in these monasteries. To add to his wonder he will find that they have not only got by heart these sacred writings but that they understand their meaning and possess a perfect knowledge of the subject-matter which is a rare thing even with Brahmans.
Such is the merit of Chidambaram. Special meritoriousness is attached by the Saivites to the Ardra festival which takes place in this town on the full-moon day of the month of
