Thinnan was the son of a hunter chief in the hills, and on a hunt he came on a linga under a tree and could not leave it. He had never been to a temple. He thought the god would be hungry, so he roasted the best of his kill and tasted each piece to be sure it was good; he had no pot, so he filled his mouth from the stream and spat the water over the stone; he stuck flowers in his hair to carry them. The priest who came each morning found meat and spittle on his god and prayed for the outrage to end, and Shiva told him to watch. On the sixth day the hunter came and saw blood running from one of the linga's eyes. He tried herbs; nothing helped; then he remembered that an eye can be replaced with an eye, drew an arrow, cut his own out and pressed it on the stone. The bleeding stopped. Then the other eye began to bleed. Thinnan set his foot on the spot so he could find it blind, and raised the arrow again, and a hand came out of the stone and held his wrist. Shiva gave him back his sight and his name, Kannappa, and a place beside him for ever. He is one of the sixty-three Nayanars, and the Telugu poet Dhurjati, the Basava Puranam and Harihara's Kannada Ragalegalu tell him too.
The temple on the Swarnamukhi river is the hill of the story, the place where Kannappa stood ready to give both eyes; a shrine to him faces the sanctum. The linga is the air element and is never touched by the priest's hand, and the town is named for a spider, a snake and an elephant that each worshipped it and were freed.
What is different here:
Localises the story and adds the site's own name-legend and the air-linga.