Tirumurai (with the Tevaram)

01The Panniru Tirumurai

Tirumurai means the sacred ordering, and the Panniru Tirumurai, the twelve books, are the scripture of Tamil Shaivas beside the Vedas and the Shaiva Agamas. The Agama governs how the puja is done; the Tirumurai is what the heart says while it is done. Shaiva Siddhanta, the school of philosophy that grew in the Tamil country, takes its teaching from both, and its fourteen Meykanda Shastras, beginning with Meykandar's Shivajnana Bodham, explain in doctrine what the hymns sing. Twenty-seven poets are gathered in the twelve books, from a child of three at Sirkazhi to a king's minister writing the lives of the saints.

02Found in a locked room

The Tirumurai Kanda Puranam tells that King Rajaraja Chola heard a few Tevaram hymns and longed for the rest. Nambiyandar Nambi, by the grace of Pollapillaiyar, the Ganesha of Tirunaraiyur, learned that the palm leaves lay in a sealed chamber of the Chidambaram temple. The priests would open it only in the presence of the three saints, so the king brought their images in procession. Inside, much had been eaten by white ants. A voice declared that what remained was what was needed for this age. Nambi arranged the hymns into books and, the account says, a woman of the line of Tiruneelakanta Yazhpanar was found to set them again to their panns.

03Three saints, one Shiva

Tirujnana Sambandar, fed milk by Mata Parvati at Sirkazhi as a child of three, sang the first hymn on the spot, pointing at the sky: "todudaiya seviyan", he wears a ring in his ear. Appar, who as a young man had become a Jain monk, came back to Shiva when his sister Tilakavati's prayers cured him of a burning illness; he survived a lime kiln and a stone tied to him in the sea, and sang of Shiva as father and master, a servant's voice. Sundarar, the friend of Shiva, argued with him like a companion and even sent him as messenger. Their hymns, called padigams, are songs of ten or eleven verses to the Shiva of a particular temple, and the 275 temples they sang are the paadal petra sthalams.

04How the twelve are arranged

The first seven books are the Tevaram, close to eight hundred padigams: Sambandar fills the first three, Appar the next three, and Sundarar's hundred or so padigams make the seventh. Within each book the hymns are grouped by pann, the old Tamil melody to which they were sung. The eighth is Manikkavacakar's Tiruvasakam with his Tirukkovaiyar. The ninth gathers the Tiruvisaippa of nine poets with Sendanar's Tiruppallandu. The tenth is Tirumular's Tirumantiram. The eleventh holds forty works by twelve poets, among them Karaikkal Ammaiyar, the oldest voice in the collection, and Nambi himself. The twelfth, Sekkizhar's Periya Puranam, was added a century after Nambi.

05Tiruvasakam

Manikkavacakar was chief minister to a Pandya king, sent with gold to buy horses. At Tirupperunturai he met Shiva as a guru under a kurundam tree and spent the gold building the temple there. When the king imprisoned him, Shiva turned jackals into horses and led them to Madurai himself, and when they turned back into jackals in the night, Shiva came again as a labourer carrying earth to mend the Vaigai's bank for an old woman's sweet pittu, and took the king's cane on his back. The Tiruvasakam opens with the Sivapuranam, "namachchivaya vazhga", and its Tiruvempavai is sung in Margazhi beside Andal's Tiruppavai. Tamil has a saying: one whom the Tiruvasakam does not melt, no word will melt.

06Tirumantiram

Tirumular's three thousand verses, in nine tantras, are the Tirumurai's book of yoga and doctrine. The tradition says a siddha from Kailasa, a disciple of Nandi, came south to meet Agastya, found a cowherd named Mulan lying dead with his cows grieving around him, entered the body out of compassion, and stayed at Tiruvavaduthurai, uttering one verse a year in samadhi for three thousand years. The verses treat the Agamas, the body as the temple of Shiva, the breath, the chakras, the guru and grace. Verse 270 is the one every Tamil Shaiva knows: the ignorant say love and Shiva are two; when one knows that love is Shiva, one rests as that love, as Shiva.

07Periya Puranam

Sekkizhar was chief minister to the Chola king Kulottunga II, and the tradition says the king, finding him unhappy with a court poem of worldly themes, asked him to write something better. Seated in the thousand-pillared hall at Chidambaram, he began with the first word Shiva gave him, "ulagelam", all the worlds, and told the lives of the sixty-three Nayanmars in over four thousand verses. Kings and potters, a hunter, Kannappa, who gave his own eyes to the linga at Kalahasti, a woman, Karaikkal Ammaiyar, who went up Kailasa walking on her head, Nandanar who longed to see the dance at Chidambaram. Every caste and every station is there, and the only measure is love of Shiva.

08The odhuvar's voice

In the Shiva temples of Tamil Nadu the odhuvar sings Tevaram after the Sanskrit Agamic puja, in the ancient pann melodies the hymns were set to, and at the close of every service the word "Tiruchchirrambalam" is said, the name of the hall at Chidambaram. Rajaraja's Brihadeeswara at Thanjavur endowed forty-eight singers of the Tiruppadiyam in its inscriptions, with drummers to accompany them. At the Kapaleeshwarar temple in Mylapore the Arupathimoovar festival carries the bronzes of all sixty-three saints in procession, and the Shaiva mathas of Dharmapuram and Tiruvavaduthurai still train odhuvars and publish the hymns with commentary.

What it contains

1. 1
   Tirumurai 1–3

   The Tevaram hymns of Tirujnana Sambandar, arranged by pann. The first padigam is the one he sang at Sirkazhi as a child, "todudaiya seviyan". His hymns travel the whole Chola and Pandya country, temple by temple.

2. 2
   Tirumurai 4–6

   The Tevaram hymns of Appar (Tirunavukkarasar), grouped by metre: the Tirunerisai and Tiruviruttam in the fourth, the Tirukkurunthogai in the fifth, the Tiruthandagam in the sixth. Here are "masil veenaiyum" and the Namashivaya padigam, "sotrunai vediyan", that he sang when cast into the sea bound to a stone. His voice is that of the servant, dasa marga.

3. 3
   Tirumurai 7

   The Tevaram hymns of Sundarar, about a hundred padigams. It opens at Tiruvennainallur with "pitta piraisudi", sung when Shiva, as an old man, stopped his wedding and claimed him as a bonded servant. His Tiruttondattogai, naming the devotees of Shiva, is the seed from which the Periya Puranam grew.

4. 4
   Tirumurai 8

   Manikkavacakar's Tiruvasakam, fifty-one poems, and Tirukkovaiyar, four hundred verses on love read as the soul's love for Shiva. The Tiruvasakam was sung at Tirupperunturai and Chidambaram. Tradition says Shiva himself wrote it down as the saint recited, signing it "Tiruchchirrambalam".

5. 5
   Tirumurai 9

   The Tiruvisaippa of nine poets, among them Tirumaligai Devar and Karuvur Devar, with Sendanar's Tiruppallandu. Several hymns praise the great Chola temples, Thanjavur and Gangaikonda Cholapuram among them. It is the shortest book of the twelve.

6. 6
   Tirumurai 10

   Tirumular's Tirumantiram, three thousand verses in nine tantras, of Shaiva yoga and Agama. It is the oldest Tamil statement of Shaiva Siddhanta doctrine. Its line "anbe sivam", love is Shiva, is quoted all over the Tamil country.

7. 7
   Tirumurai 11

   Forty works by twelve poets, including Karaikkal Ammaiyar, Nakkirar, Pattinattar and Nambiyandar Nambi. Karaikkal Ammaiyar's verses on Shiva dancing in the burning ground at Tiruvalangadu are among the oldest in the whole collection. Nambi's own poems on Sambandar and the Nayanmars close it.

8. 8
   Tirumurai 12

   Sekkizhar's Periya Puranam, the lives of the sixty-three Nayanmars and of nine groups of devotees, in over four thousand verses. It was written in the twelfth century under Kulottunga II and accepted into the canon as the twelfth book. Tamil Shaivas read it as itihasa of the saints.

Famous verses

தோடுடைய செவியன் விடையேறியோர் தூவெண்மதி சூடிக் காடுடைய சுடலைப் பொடிபூசி என் உள்ளங்கவர் கள்வன்

He wears a ring in his ear, he rides the bull, he bears the pure white moon; smeared with the ash of the burning ground in the forest, he is the thief who has stolen my heart.Sambandar, Tevaram, Tirumurai 1.1.1 (Tirupiramapuram, pann Nattapadai)

மாசில் வீணையும் மாலை மதியமும் வீசு தென்றலும் வீங்கிள வேனிலும் மூசு வண்டறை பொய்கையும் போன்றதே ஈசன் எந்தை இணையடி நீழலே

Like a flawless veena, like the evening moon, like the blowing south wind, like the swelling young spring, like a pond humming with swarming bees: such is the shade of the twin feet of Isan, my father.Appar, Tevaram, Tirumurai 5.90.1

பித்தா பிறைசூடீ பெருமானே அருளாளா எத்தான் மறவாதே நினைக்கின்றேன் மனத்துன்னை

O mad one, wearer of the crescent, great lord, giver of grace: how could I forget you? I hold you in my mind always.Sundarar, Tevaram, Tirumurai 7.1.1 (Tiruvennainallur)

நமச்சிவாய வாழ்க நாதன் தாள் வாழ்க இமைப்பொழுதும் என் நெஞ்சில் நீங்காதான் தாள் வாழ்க

Hail Namashivaya, hail the feet of the Lord; hail the feet of him who does not leave my heart even for the blink of an eye.Manikkavacakar, Tiruvasakam, Sivapuranam 1–2 (Tirumurai 8)

அன்பு சிவம் இரண்டு என்பர் அறிவிலார் அன்பே சிவமாவது ஆரும் அறிகிலார் அன்பே சிவமாவது ஆரும் அறிந்தபின் அன்பே சிவமாய் அமர்ந்திருந் தாரே

The ignorant say love and Shiva are two. No one knows that love itself is Shiva. When one knows that love itself is Shiva, one abides as love, as Shiva.Tirumular, Tirumantiram 270 (Tirumurai 10)