Born in a peasant Shaiva family, raised as an orphan by his sister, he lived about 80 years and is generally placed sometime between 570 and 650 CE.

His characteristic iconography in temples show him carrying a farmer's small hoe – a gardening tool and weed puller.

After he returned to Shaivism and began composing devotional hymns to Shiva, he has been historically referred to as Appar (lit.

[11] His sister gave him Tiruniru (sacred ash) and taught him the five syllable mantra "namaccivaya" (Namah Shivaya).

[8] Appar's hymns are intimately devotional to Shiva, but occasionally include verses where he repents the Jain period of his life.

Of these 313 hymns (3,130 stanzas) have survived, later compiled in the fourth, fifth and sixth volumes of the Tirumurai, the Tamil poetic canon of Shaiva Siddhanta.

In the last four decades of his life, he visited on foot no less than 125 shrines of Shiva, scattered over a territory of a one thousand miles (1,600 km).

[17] Multi-vocal rhetoric is commonly used taking on personal emotions and genres and some voices of classical Sangam literature.

[2] The metaphors used in the poems have deep agrarian influence that is considered one of the striking chords for common people to get accustomed to the verse.

[20] The poems also involved glorifying the feat of Shiva in the particular location – the usage of locale continuously occurring in the verses is a testament.

[24] It is believed by Tamil Shaiva that Nambi found the scripts by divine intervention, in the form of cadijam leaves half eaten by white ants in a chamber inside the second precinct in Thillai Nataraja Temple, Chidambaram.

They stated that these were some of the hymns from Devaram (Tevaram) that they could hear being chanted in South Indian Shiva temples of their times.

[28] In 1959, Dorai Rangaswamy published a prose translation with commentary on about 100 Appar's hymns in Volume 3 of his collected works on Tevaram.

[31] His efforts helped expand the sacred geography of Shaivism and bring fame to smaller Shiva temples.

[32][33] According to John Cort – a scholar of Jainism and Hinduism studies, the Agamic temple rituals perpetuate the Vedic practices.

Odhuvars, Sthanikars, or Kattalaiyars offer musical programmes in Shiva temples of Tamil Nadu by singing Tevaram after the daily rituals.

[35] The singers of these hymns were referred as Tirupadiyam Vinnapam seyvar or Pidarar, from the inscriptions of Nandivarman III in the Tiruvallam Bilavaneswara temple records.

The charitable establishments that ran on philanthropy of individuals and merchant caravans had come to be because after the 13th century, the time of ancient nation states viz.

A Chola bronze of Appar with 57 cm (22 in) in standing posture dated to about 12th century was found in Vembavur in Perambalur district.

Given Appar's study of Digambara Jainism prior to returning to Shaiva Hinduism, it also includes a historic view into the two traditions.