Thulukka Nachiyar (துலுக்க நாச்சியார்), also called Bibi Nachiyar and originally named Surathani, was the daughter of a Sultan of Delhi. At the Sri Ranganathaswamy temple in Srirangam she is honoured as a consort of Lord Ranganatha. She has no idol in the temple. Her sannidhi is in the Arjuna Mandapam, where she is worshipped in a painting.
Her story begins with a raid.
In the fourteenth century the armies of the Delhi Sultanate came south. The Koyil Olugu, the old chronicle of the Srirangam temple, says the Sultan came after defeating Prataparudra of Warangal. His men carried away Azhagiya Manavalan, the utsavar of Srirangam we know today as Namperumal, along with the idol of Cherakulavalli Nachiyar.
A woman devotee from Karambanur, near Srirangam, followed the army in disguise all the way to Delhi. There she found the Lord in the rooms of the Sultan’s daughter. She brought the news home, and the temple gave her the name Pin Thodarntha Valli, the lady who followed.
The princess had come to love the Lord. She kept him in her own rooms, and she dressed him, fed him and garlanded him every day, as he would have been cared for in his own temple.
Sixty devotees then set out from Srirangam for Delhi, with the woman from Karambanur as their guide. They sang and performed before the Sultan, and he promised to give the idols back. At night, while the princess slept, they took the Lord from her room and travelled through the night.
When she woke and found him gone, she followed them all the way to Srirangam. It is said that she fell at the door of the sanctum and died there, longing for the Lord, and that he appeared before her and took her to himself, so that her life left her body and merged into his.
The Lord then made it known in a dream that she was to be honoured as his consort. That is how the daughter of a Sultan came to have her own sannidhi at Srirangam.
The temple still keeps up her customs. On some days of the year Namperumal is dressed in a lungi, and roti with butter and jaggery, the food of the north, is offered to him. This is done especially during Pagal Pathu, the first ten days of the Vaikunta Ekadasi festival in Margazhi.
She is not the only one. Melkote, in Karnataka, tells a story very like hers, and honours its own Bibi Nachiyar in the temple there.
In 1323 Ulugh Khan’s army marched on Srirangam again. Did anyone at the court in Delhi still remember the princess, and warn him about the Lord he was riding to take?
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