Devaraya Swamigal

Very little is written down about the life of Devaraya Swamigal, and he would perhaps have wanted it so: his name survives in a single line near the end of the Kanda Sashti Kavacham, the armour-hymn to Murugan that millions of Tamils recite every day. Most accounts place him in the nineteenth century in the Kongu country of western Tamil Nadu, and the tradition connects the Kavacham with the hill temple of Chennimalai near Erode, where it is said to have been first sung.

A kavacham is a protective hymn. The devotee asks the deity to guard each part of the body in turn, head to foot, and then to drive away every fear: ghosts and spirits, poisons and fevers, enemies and thieves. Devaraya Swamigal wrote his in simple, rhythmic Tamil that a child can learn, built on the six syllables sa-ra-va-na-bha-va and on the vel, Murugan's spear. The hymn opens by naming Skanda Shashti, the six-day festival in the month of Aippasi when Murugan destroyed the asura Surapadman at Tiruchendur, and that is when it is chanted most of all.

In Tamil homes it is often the first prayer a child hears, and it is sung through the six days of the Shashti fast, at Thai Poosam and on every Tuesday. His few lines of autobiography are inside the hymn itself: he asks only that the Lord protect him and those who recite it.