Two sages had one wish. Patanjali, who was the serpent Shesha come to earth, and Vyaghrapada, who had asked for a tiger's feet so he could climb for flowers before the bees, wanted to see the Lord dance. In the forest of tillai trees Shiva gave them the dance of bliss, the Ananda Tandava, the drum in one hand and the fire in another, the dwarf of forgetting under his foot. The temple that grew on the spot keeps that dance in bronze and, beside it, a curtain with nothing behind it but strung gold bilva leaves: the secret of Chidambaram is that the god is also space. The town also tells of a quarrel. The goddess and Shiva disagreed over who was greater and agreed to settle it by dancing before Vishnu, Brahma and the gods. Step for step she kept pace, until Shiva threw one leg up straight above his head. A woman would not do that before an assembly. She stopped, and by stopping lost, and in her anger she went out of the town as Kali to the place where her temple now stands, later calmed as the four-faced Thillai Amman.
The Skanda, Linga and Padma Puranas are cited for the belief that Shivaratri is the night on which Shiva performs the dance of creation, preservation and destruction; devotees keep the vigil to witness it.
What is different here:
Dates the cosmic dance to Shivaratri; no Tillai or Kali.
Shaiva Siddhanta texts (Unmai Vilakkam) and Natya Shastra
South India · Tamil NaduShaiva
The Tamil Siddhanta manuals from the twelfth century read the image rather than tell the contest: the drum is the rhythm of creation, the fire is dissolution, the raised hand says fear not, the ring of flame is the cosmic fire, the dwarf is ignorance, and the pointing hand shows the lifted foot as refuge. The dance poses themselves are the karanas of the Natya Shastra, all hundred and eight of them carved on the east tower.
What is different here:
An iconographic reading with no Kali contest; the source of the standard symbolism.