Tevaram
Starting with the Tevaram along with the rest of Tirumurai and ending with the Periya Puranam, Tamil Shaivism acquired a canonical set of sacred texts on ritual, philosophy, and theology.
[10][note 1] Tevaram has also been interpreted as "private ritual worship", with the term varam appearing in temple inscriptions with the sense of "lord's shrine".
This equivalence with the ancient Hindu Vedas has been explained by the Tamil Shaiva scholars in that the Tevaram "resembles the Vedic hymns" by being poetry of the "highest order" that also systematically builds the philosophical foundations of Shaivism.
[20] The melodic prosody, structure and genre that the Tevaram exemplifies has roots and illustrations in the Satarudriya of the Yajurveda, an ancient prototypical devotional hymn to Rudra-Shiva.
[23] During the Pallava period these three travelled extensively around Tamil Nadu, pioneering the tradition of an emotional devotion to Shiva through ritual singing in temples and public places.
This was an era where Hindus, Jains and Buddhists were rivals in seeking patronage and influence in royal and urban circles of South India.
[13] Information about Tevaram Trio comes mainly from the Periya Puranam, the eleventh-century Tamil book on the Nayanars that forms the last volume of the Tirumurai.
[13][27] The texts about the Tevaram trio are hagiographies full of mythistory where devotion leads to miracles, objects float upstream in a river, cruel Jains of the Chola kingdom repeatedly scheme to hurt and kill peaceful Shaiva saints in the Pandya kingdom, the Shiva devotees survive and thrive through divine interventions, magic cures people's diseases, stone statues spring to life to help the kind and gentle Shaiva people suffering persecution, gigantic forms of living animals such as cruel elephants become small peaceful stone statues, and other such events happen in the context of loving and intense devotion to Shiva.
[35] Other sources are the Nambiyandar Nambi's Tiru Tondar Tiruvandadi and a few inscriptions in Tamil Shiva temples about patikam singers that can be dated around the 9th century.
[36] In the Periya Puranam, Sambandar is said to have been a child prodigy, one who began composing hymns as soon as he started speaking as a baby and who mastered the Vedas by age three.
[37] As a child poet-saint, he attracted throngs of audiences, travelled through Tamil lands to Shiva temples accompanied by musician Tirunilakantayalppanar, composing melodious hymns in complex meters and rhythms.
[44] Appar's hymn are intimately devotional to Shiva, but occasionally include verses where he repents the Jain period of his life.
[47] The Tamil hagiographies allege that Jain monks approached the Pallava king Mahendravarman to take revenge on Appar for his desertion.
[51] These include Tunkanaimatam, Chidambaram, Sirkazhi where he met the child poet-saint Sambandar who lovingly called him Appar (transl. father).
[52] Other Appar destinations mentioned in the Tevaram include Nallur, Tinkalur, Tiruvarur, Tiruvavatuturai where he described the Tiruvatirai festival, Maraikkatu, Vaymur, Tiruvaiyaru, and mount Kailash in the Himalayan north.
[53] In the first part of his life, the arranged marriage of Sundarar is cancelled after a mad old man mysteriously appears and produces a palm leaf document.
A court of elders then reviews the document and finds it authentic, demands Sundarar to serve the petitioner, who then mysteriously vanishes into Shiva shrine.
This is embedded symbolism to inspire regional kings and wealthy patrons to support the spiritual and charitable works at Shiva temples.
[58] The hymns of Appar too include a signature or coda in the last verse, but they characteristically are linked to the Ramayana through Ravana's mythical devotion before he lost his way and turned evil.
[60] Sisir Kumar Das regards this poem by Sambandar as exemplifying the structural and thematic distinctiveness of bhakti poetry:[61] In the temple where he is throned, who bids us not lose heart In the hour when our senses grow confused, the way grows dim, Our wisdom fails, and mucus chokes our struggling breath, In Tiruvaiyar, where the girls dance around, and the drumbeats sound, The monkeys fear the rain, run up the trees, and scan the clouds.– Sambandar Appar's poems are emotional, very personal form of Shiva worship.
Thyself Ganga is in thy long hair, Full well canst thou comprehend Burden of woman so fair– Sundarar The hymns provide a window into the types of Shiva temples in the 7th century CE, artwork and the iconography prevalent then.
[64] His house is resplendent with five walls, with gleaming gopuras in each direction to the number of the Vedas, with five halls, which are the sheaths of the Brahman, food and the others with the holy waters, and with the shrines of the Blessed Mulasthana, Devi, Visnu, Elephant-faced Vinayaka and Skanda, Him who constantly performs His dance, there is Sheath of Bliss, Whose foot is curved, I worship.– Sambandar (Translator: Smith) The Tevaram hymns celebrate charitable giving (danam), food to pilgrims (anna), devotional singing at temples.
For example, states Dorai Rangaswamy, the Nandivarman II (Pallavamalla) inscription of the 8th century confirms Tevaram hymns singing at a Shiva temple.
[74][7] It is believed that by divine intervention Nambi found the presence of scripts, in the form of cadijam leaves half eaten by white ants in a chamber inside the second precinct of the Chidambaram Nataraja temple.
[77] He accomplished this by visiting the native village of Tiru Nilakanta Yazhpanar, where he met a woman of the Tamil Panar caste who learned the mode of divine revelation.
[79] The earliest singers of Tevaram hymns were referred to as pidarars, and were among the Tirupadiyam Vinnapam Seyvar that Nandivarman III provided for in Tiruvallam Bilavaneswara temple records dating from the 8th century.
[16] Today, odhuvars, sthanikars, or kattalaiyars offer musical programmes in Shiva temples of Tamil Nadu by singing Tevaram after the daily rituals.
[82] Periya Puranam, the eleventh-century Tamil book on the Nayanars that forms the last volume of the Tirumurai, primarily had references only to Tevaram and subsequently expanded to 12 parts.
[83] One of the first anthologies of Sambandar, Appar, and Sundarar's hymns, the Tevara Arulmuraitirattu, is linked to Tamil Shaiva Siddhantha philosophy by grouping ninety-nine verses into 10 categories.
[83] The category headings are God, soul, bond, grace, guru, methodology, enlightenment, bliss, mantra and liberation–corresponding to Umapathi Shivachariyar's work Tiruvarutpayan.
