Saints of Arunachala · The saint by the Esanya lingam

Isanya Desikar: the saint by the Esanya lingam

On the old pradakshina road, across from the Esanya lingam, stands the samadhi of Isanya Jnana Desikar ~ a yogi who came to Arunachala late in life and, through the sheer intensity of his love for the hill, became one of its major saints. His story, and the miracle of Ayton.

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On the old pradakshina road around Arunachala, across from the Esanya lingam, stands a math and samadhi that many a Girivalam walker passes without knowing whose presence they are near. It belongs to Isanya Jnana Desikar ~ often simply Isanya (or Esanya) Desikar ~ a yogi who came to the hill late in life and yet, through the sheer intensity of his love for Arunachala, became one of its major saints. His story, preserved in Tamil and brought to English by the scholar David Godman, is one of the most vivid in the saintly history of the hill ~ and includes one of its most charming miracles.

Kandappan of Rayavelur

He was born in 1750 in a small village called Rayavelur, near the River Palar in northern Tamil Nadu, to a farming family. His parents, long unable to have a son, had prayed to Lord Murugan at Arunachala for a child ~ and when the boy came, they named him Kandappan, after Murugan (Kandan). So from birth he was, in a sense, Arunachala’s child, given in answer to a prayer made at the hill he would one day make his home. In his earlier life he studied, married, and lived an ordinary householder’s existence ~ the spiritual call that would define him came, as it does for some, only later.

The years of seeking

When the longing for God overtook him, Isanya Desikar left the settled world and became a wanderer, visiting the great temples and seeking out realised beings. He spent time at Chidambaram, and met at least two celebrated saints of the age ~ a fellow siddha, Dakshinamurti Swami of Tiruvarur, and Ugandalinga Jnana Desikar near Nagappattinam. When at last his wanderlust settled, he sought solitude for the deep work of meditation, and found a large uninhabited cave on a small hill near Vettavalam, a few miles from Tiruvannamalai. There, supported by a simple local farmer, he spent many years absorbed in the practice of nirvikalpa samadhi ~ the formless, objectless absorption in the Self.

Coming home to Arunachala

Only late in life did Isanya Desikar come to settle at the foot of Arunachala itself ~ but the relationship, when it came, was of extraordinary intensity. Like Guhai Namasivaya before him and Ramana after, he loved the mountain not as a symbol but as a living presence, an intimate personal reality ~ Arunachaleswara as his own Lord and liberator. It is this intense, personal bond with the hill, more than the length of his time here, that earns him his place among the major saints of Arunachala. He established his math (monastery) on the old circumambulation road, and there he taught, and there his samadhi remains ~ across from the Esanya lingam, on the quieter alternate Girivalam pathway.

He came to the hill late, and loved it so intensely that lateness did not matter ~ it is the depth of the bond, not its length, that makes a saint of Arunachala.

The miracle of Ayton the Collector

The best-loved story of Isanya Desikar concerns an Englishman ~ a rare and telling episode from the colonial era. A British official named Ayton, the District Collector for the region from Tiruvannamalai to Vriddhachalam, had suffered for years from tuberculosis, then an often-fatal disease. Having heard of the holy man’s greatness, Ayton came to Isanya Desikar in hope of a cure. The saint, the account goes, simply smiled, paused, and spat upon the ground ~ and in that instant Ayton was cured of the disease that had afflicted him for years. The grateful Collector, who had recently acquired much land, offered the saint as much of it as he wished. It is a story that captures something of how these saints were regarded, and how the power attributed to them crossed even the great divide between the Tamil devotee and the British ruler.

His math today

The Esanya (Isanya) Ashram / math stands to this day on the old pradakshina road, across from the Esanya lingam, on the alternate Girivalam pathway that runs parallel to the main road ~ and it contains the saint’s samadhi. For the pilgrim walking Girivalam who takes the quieter parallel path, or who seeks it out, it is a place of genuine, settled power ~ the resting place of a farmer’s son named for Murugan, who came late to the hill and loved it so completely that he became one of its own. He is remembered as proof of a truth the whole tradition teaches: that it is never too late to answer Arunachala’s call, and that the depth of one’s love for the hill, not the length of one’s time upon it, is what liberates.

Last updated 14 February 2026. Following the documented record preserved by Sri Ramanasramam and his devotees; where an account is traditional, it is told as such.