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by previous works. And the third one is "The Thiruvathavurar Puranam' written by Kadavulmamunivar at the beginning of the 19th century A.D. Unlike the above two this is devoted exclusively to a graphic account of the life of our Saint; and this for the most part of our Saint's life which is touched but very briefly and incompletely in the other. And the last one 'The Thirupperunthurai Puranam' by meenakshisundaram Pillai, was writtern in the latter half of the 19th century and possesses little or no historical value for our purpose. Though the four treatises agree in giving a general description of his life as a whole, points of differences in details are many and numerous among them. wherever it seemed useful and necessary to note the differences between one narrative and the other, I have not only shown them but also argued for and against the one or the other and chose what was possible and reasonable under the circumstances pertaining to our Saint's life. In many a place I have quoted the very words of our Saint to make clear why I have chosen one account in preference to another. For fortunately for us and for the whole religious world, the sacred syrical utterances themselves of our Saint are interspersed with number of incidental references to all the important events to his life, so that a careful student who studies them with a critical understanding cannot but notice the points which, if picked up and strung together, will constitute a coherent and genuine autobiography of a great soul that was God face to face and attained spiritua perfection. in the matter of studying the lives of such great religious founders as Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mahomed and others, it is not given for us to rely upon the words uttered by the teachers themselves - for they were irretrievably lost unrecorded, but are left to look up to the accounts given by interested persons who came long after them. The description of a rose-flower by a poet, however glowing it may be cannot set before us the exquisite beauty of its form and its colour and the sweetness of its perfume, as the flower itself can directly do. so too the accounts given of a great saint by
