Saints of Arunachala · The Siddhars

The 18 Siddhars of Tamil Nadu: the immortal sages

Behind the temples and saints stands a tradition older and more secret ~ the Siddhars, the perfected yogi-sages of the Tamil land who mastered body, matter and time. The 18 great Siddhars, their science and poetry, and their deep link to Arunachala.

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Behind the temples and the saints of Tamil Nadu stands a tradition older, stranger, and more secret than either ~ that of the Siddhars. These were the perfected ones, the immortal yogi-sages of the Tamil land, who mastered not only the heights of meditation but, it is said, the very forces of body, matter and time ~ conquering disease, ageing, even death, and leaving behind a treasury of cryptic, powerful verse and the whole science of Siddha medicine. Tradition speaks of eighteen great Siddhars above all ~ the Patinen Siddhar ~ and to know something of them is to touch the deep, mystical root of Tamil spirituality, of which Arunachala’s own hidden siddhas are one branch.

Who were the Siddhars?

A Siddhar is one who has attained siddhi ~ perfection, accomplishment, mastery. But the Tamil Siddhars were a particular and remarkable breed. They were, at once, mystics, yogis, alchemists, physicians, poets and scientists ~ realised beings who turned their attainment not only inward, toward liberation, but outward, toward the transformation of the body and the world. They are credited with founding Siddha medicine, one of the oldest systems of healing on earth, still practised in Tamil Nadu today; with deep knowledge of yoga, kundalini, alchemy and the transmutation of metals; and with the pursuit of kaya kalpa ~ the rejuvenation and even immortalisation of the physical body. Many are believed by the tradition not to have died at all, but to be chiranjivi ~ deathless ~ still living in secret in the hills and forests, or having attained jeeva samadhi, a conscious entombment from which the perfected body does not decay.

They were also, strikingly, rebels and outsiders. Many came from humble or low origins; they scorned caste, empty ritual, and religious hypocrisy; and they wrote not in lofty Sanskrit but in earthy, direct, often riddling Tamil, hiding the deepest truths in the plainest and sometimes coarsest language. Their poems ~ addressed to snakes, to the body, to the ignorant mind ~ are unlike anything else in spiritual literature: at once medical, mystical, satirical and sublime.

Mystics, yogis, alchemists, physicians, poets ~ and rebels: they scorned caste and empty ritual, and hid the deepest truths in the plainest Tamil.

The eighteen great Siddhars

Tradition honours eighteen Siddhars above the rest ~ though, tellingly for a secret tradition, the exact list varies from source to source, and more than eighteen names circulate. Among the most celebrated are these:

The Siddhars and Arunachala

The Siddhar tradition and Arunachala belong to the same deep current of Tamil Shaiva mysticism. The hill is spoken of, in the lore, as a haunt of the siddhas ~ perfected beings dwelling unseen upon and within it ~ and the nearby Parvathamalai is especially associated with them, held to have been established by Siddhars who came to meditate, and rich (they say) in the rare medicinal herbs the Siddhars prized. To walk this landscape is to walk ground the Siddhars are said to have walked and to still, invisibly, inhabit. Their spirit ~ the union of the highest realisation with the mastery of life itself, and the refusal of all hollow religiosity ~ runs through the whole spiritual world of which Arunachala is the heart.

Last updated 12 February 2026. Following the documented record preserved by Sri Ramanasramam and his devotees; where an account is traditional, it is told as such.