Tamil Sacred Literature

Tamil is one of the oldest living literary languages in the world, and one of the very few classical languages of India that is not Sanskrit. For Tamil Hindus — in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and far beyond — it is also a language of revelation. The saints who sang in Tamil are honoured beside the Vedic seers, and their hymns are sung in temples every day. For many families, these are the scriptures they actually know by heart.

Before the hymns: Sangam poetry

The oldest Tamil literature is the poetry of the Caṅkam (Sangam) age, usually dated by scholars to roughly the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE — the dates are debated. Its anthologies, the Eight Collections and the Ten Songs, are mostly not religious: they are poems of love (akam, the “inner”) and of war, kings and generosity (puṟam, the “outer”).

Yet the gods are already there. Murugaṉ, the young god of the hills, is the most Tamil of deities; Tirumāl (Vishnu) and Koṟṟavai, a fierce goddess, also appear. The Paripāṭal collection contains hymns to Murugan and Tirumāl, and the first of the Ten Songs is the Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai by Nakkīrar, “the guide to Murugan” — a poem that leads the devotee to the god’s sacred places. Those places became the basis of Murugan’s āṟupaṭaivīṭu, the six sacred abodes, though the later list of six does not match the poem exactly. Scholars usually see this poem as one of the latest in the Sangam corpus; it was later also included in the Shaiva canon.

The Tirukkuṟaḷ

The திருக்குறள் Tirukkuṟaḷ of Tiruvaḷḷuvar is the best-loved book in Tamil. Its 1,330 couplets (kuṟaḷ means “short”) are arranged in 133 chapters of ten, in three books: on aṟam (virtue), poruḷ (wealth and public life) and iṉpam (love). The Four Aims of Life page explains why there is no book on liberation. It opens:

Its date is uncertain — proposals range from before the common era to the 6th century CE, and many scholars favour around the 5th. Valluvar names no sect and no particular god, and Hindus, Jains (who have long claimed him), Christians and secular Tamils all treasure it. Generations of Malaysian Tamil schoolchildren have memorised its couplets. In 1886 the missionary G. U. Pope published a celebrated English translation, and it has since been translated into dozens of languages.

The Tirumurai: the Shaiva canon

Between about the 6th and the 9th centuries, Tamil country was transformed by the bhakti movement — the first great devotional movement in India. Poet-saints walked from temple to temple singing of the god who lived there, in that village, by that river. The devotees of Shiva are the Nāyaṉmārs; their hymns, with later works, form the twelve books of the Tirumurai. Tap the spines:

The three Tēvāram poets are called the mūvar, “the three.” Each hymn is set to a paṇ, an ancient Tamil melodic mode. Here is Appar describing the refuge of Shiva’s feet:

Two more voices stand out. Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār (perhaps 6th century), one of only three women among the 63, is the earliest of all the Shaiva poets. In the Periya Purāṇam, she gives up her beauty to become a gaunt, ghostly devotee singing of Shiva’s dance in the cremation ground, and Shiva himself calls her “Mother.” And the Nāyaṉmārs came from every level of society — kings and potters, a hunter, Brahmins and a washerman. The story of Nantaṉār, born into a caste barred from the temple, who longed to see Chidambaram and was admitted only after passing through fire, shows both the movement’s embrace and the caste walls it lived among.

How the hymns were found

Popular tradition A later account, the Tirumuṟai Kaṇṭa Purāṇam, tells how a Chola king — usually identified as Rājarāja I — sought the lost hymns with the help of the young priest Nambiyāṇḍār Nambi. They were found sealed in a chamber of the Chidambaram temple, which the priests would open only in the presence of the three saints — so the king brought their images in procession. Inside, most of the palm leaves had been eaten by white ants; a voice told them that only what was needed for the age had been kept. Historians date Nambi’s compilation of the first eleven books to around the 10th–11th century; the Periya Purāṇam was added as the twelfth.

The Divya Prabandham: the Tamil Veda

Alongside the Nāyaṉmārs sang the twelve Āḻvārs, “those immersed” in Vishnu. Their roughly four thousand verses are the Nālāyira Divya Prabandham, compiled by Nāthamuni around the 10th century. Popular tradition He is said to have heard ten verses of Nammāḻvār sung at Kumbakonam, searched for the rest, and received the whole collection in a vision after reciting a short hymn by Madhurakavi twelve thousand times.

The only woman among the Āḻvārs is Āṇṭāḷ (Kōtai), foster-daughter of Periyāḻvār of Srivilliputtur, who would marry no one but the Lord himself. Her Tiruppāvai, thirty verses in the voice of a cowherd girl waking her friends for a dawn vow, is sung throughout the month of Mārkaḻi (mid-December to mid-January), one verse each day, in homes and temples:

The verse ends with the promise நாராயணனே நமக்கே பறைதருவான், “Nārāyaṇa himself will give us the drum” — the drum being both the reward of the vow and, for her commentators, the Lord’s grace. Śrīvaiṣṇavas recite the Prabandham beside the Sanskrit Veda; Ramanuja’s tradition calls this ubhaya-vedānta, the “double Vedānta.” As with the Nāyaṉmārs, the Āḻvārs crossed caste lines: Tiruppāṇāḻvār was a Pāṇar, a caste of minstrels kept outside the temple.

Kamban and Arunagirinathar

Kamban’s Irāmāvatāram, the Kamba Rāmāyaṇam (usually dated to the 12th century), is not a translation of Vālmīki but a new and deeply devotional epic, in which Rama is plainly Vishnu himself. It is counted among the summits of Tamil poetry.

Arunagirinathar (15th century) of Tiruvannamalai composed the Tiruppukaḻ, “holy praise,” to Murugan — over 1,300 surviving songs in dazzling, drum-like rhythms (cantam). Popular tradition Tradition says he lived a dissolute life until, in despair, he threw himself from the temple tower and was caught by Murugan, who gave him his first words. For Malaysian Hindus, whose great festival is Murugan’s Thaipusam at Batu Caves, Tiruppukaḻ is near the heart of devotion. So is the much later Kanda Ṣaṣṭhī Kavasam of Devarāya Swāmigaḷ (19th century), recited daily in countless homes — a devotional classic, though not part of the old canon.

Sung, not just read

These texts live in the voice. In Shiva temples, hereditary or trained singers called ōtuvārs sing Tēvāram and Tiruvācakam at the daily worship, after the Sanskrit Āgamic rites. In some Vishnu temples — Srirangam, Srivilliputtur, Alvar Tirunagari — the araiyar sēvai presents the Prabandham as sung and acted drama, an art kept by a few families. During festivals, reciters of the Prabandham walk ahead of the deity’s procession.

Community practice In Malaysia, many Shaiva temples have an ōtuvār, or a devotee who leads Tēvāram at the evening pūjā; children learn Tēvāram and Tirukkuṟaḷ in religious classes and recite them in competitions; Tiruppukaḻ groups sing through the night before Thaipusam; and Vishnu temples hold Tiruppāvai at dawn through Mārkaḻi. Practice varies from temple to temple — and in many Tamil homes, a Tēvāram or a Tiruppukaḻ is the first “scripture” a child learns.

Through the centuries

Approximate dates, mostly debated:

1. c. 3rd c. BCE–3rd c. CESangam poetryLove and war poems; Murugan and Tirumāl already honoured.
2. c. 5th c. CE?The TirukkuṟaḷDate strongly debated; it may be earlier or later.
3. c. 6th–9th c.The age of the saintsKāraikkāl Ammaiyār first; then Appar, Sambandar, Sundarar, Māṇikkavācakar, and the Āḻvārs including Āṇṭāḷ and Nammāḻvār.
4. c. 10th–11th c.The canons compiledNāthamuni gathers the Divya Prabandham; Nambiyāṇḍār Nambi the first eleven Tirumurai.
5. 12th c.Sekkiḻār and KambanThe Periya Purāṇam completes the Tirumurai; the Kamba Rāmāyaṇam is composed.
6. 15th c.ArunagirinatharThe Tiruppukaḻ songs to Murugan.
7. 19th–20th c.Print and diasporaThe texts are printed, translated (Pope’s Kuṟaḷ, 1886) and carried to Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Singapore and beyond.

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Sources & further reading

• G. U. Pope (trans.), The Sacred Kurral of Tiruvalluva-Nayanar (W. H. Allen, 1886); and The Tiruvāçagam (Clarendon Press, 1900).
• Kamil V. Zvelebil, The Smile of Murugan: On Tamil Literature of South India (Brill, 1973).
• Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Poems to Śiva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints (Princeton University Press, 1989).
• A. K. Ramanujan, Hymns for the Drowning: Poems for Viṣṇu by Nammāḻvār (Princeton University Press, 1981).
• Archana Venkatesan, The Secret Garland: Āṇṭāḷ’s Tiruppāvai and Nācciyār Tirumoḻi (Oxford University Press, 2010).
• Elaine Craddock, Siva’s Demon Devotee: Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār (SUNY Press, 2010).
• Karen Pechilis Prentiss, The Embodiment of Bhakti (Oxford University Press, 1999).
• Vasudha Narayanan, The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual (University of South Carolina Press, 1994).
• Tamil texts: Project Madurai electronic editions of the Tirukkuṟaḷ, Tēvāram and Nālāyira Divya Prabandham.