Nammalvar (Shathakopan)

Nammalvar, our own Alvar, was born at Thirukurugur on the Tamraparni to Kari and Udaiyanangai. The child did not cry, did not open his eyes and did not take milk. His parents carried him to the temple and laid him at the foot of a tamarind tree, and he crawled into a hollow in its trunk and sat there in silence, in meditation, for sixteen years. The tree still stands in the temple at Alvar Tirunagari.

Far away in the north, the Brahmin Madhurakavi saw a light in the southern sky and followed it for many days until it led him to the tree. He tested the silent boy with a riddle: if the small one is born in the belly of the dead, what will it eat and where will it lie? The boy spoke for the first time: it will eat that, and there it will lie. The soul, born into the body, lives on the body's experiences and stays in it until it knows the Lord. Madhurakavi became his disciple and wrote down what he sang.

Nammalvar's four works stand for the four Vedas. The Tiruvaymoli, 1,102 verses, is called the Dravida Veda and the Tamil Upanishad; Ramanujacharya's tradition reads it alongside the Sanskrit Upanishads. Centuries later the Divya Prabandham was lost, and Nathamuni recovered it at Kurugur by chanting Madhurakavi's eleven verses on his guru twelve thousand times, until Nammalvar appeared and gave him all four thousand. In Vaishnava temples the silver crown placed on devotees' heads, the Shathari, carries his name.