Thiruvilaiyadal Puranam is a long Tamil Shaiva poem. It was composed by Sage Paranjoti, who lived in Paranjotipuram near Vedaranyam sometime between the early 16th and early 18th centuries CE. He was a scholar in both Tamil and Sanskrit.
The poem describes sixty four divine sportive acts of Shiva, which he performed in and around Madurai at different times to please His devotees. It source book is Halasya Mahatmyam (The Glory of Halasyam; Halasyam being a Vedic name for Madurai), found in Skanda Purana. There are sixty-eight chapters (or padalams) and 3363 stanzas of a kind known as viruttappa, which consist of four lines of six or seven feet. The poem begins in the way of a Purana, with the invocation, a formal expression of humility by the author, the description of Kailasa (the abode of God Shiva), and so on.
The first section, ‘Madurai Kantam’, describes the birth of Meenakshi as the daughter of the Pandya king and her marriage to Chokkanathar (Sri Sundareshwara), a form of Bhagavan Shiva, while the second section, ‘Kudal Kantam’ (the thirty divine acts) begins with Shiva saving Madurai from the fury of Varuna. The last section, Tiruvalavai Kantam, in sixteen acts, glorifies Shiva’s essence as God.
The book contains the basis of Shaiva thought. It presents Shiva as the Supreme Being and explains at length the rituals connected with His worship. There is a wealth of information about different Pandya kings.