Nine Poisons and a Broken Promise

This paper traces the formation, dissemination, and impact of a corpus of narratives about an alchemical icon of the god Murukaṉ. It was purportedly crafted by Bhogar, a Siddhar-alchemist, at the Tamil temple site of Palani in ancient times. These narratives, beginning in the early twentieth century, asserted that any object coming into direct contact with the icon was imbued with miraculous healing properties. Such lore placed Palani as a unique pilgrimage site, attracting pilgrims from the world over, and stimulating its economy to an unprecedented degree, making it the second wealthiest temple in India. Eventually, the demand for icon-touched substances and the assertion of the icon’s healing properties reached its terminal limit, whereby the body of the god itself became available for sale, first as scrapings and then, in a complicated conspiracy of bait and switch, in its entirety. This article explores how recent myths respond to the challenges of late colonial modernity in the 1930s and Tamil identity politics in the twenty-first century.