united by their devotion, became a part of the Tamil social landscape. Also
during this period the Tamil Vais.n.ava and S ́aiva saints gave voice to their reli-
gious fervor in poetry. The saints and their poems subsequently became defining
elements in Tamil Vais.n.ava and S ́aiva sectarian traditions: many of the poems
were incorporated in the liturgy of temple worship, and images of the saints
were enshrined in the temples along with the images of the gods themselves.
Tamil Vais.n.avism recognizes 12 saint-poets, the a ̄l
̄
va ̄rs (“they who are
immersed [in their devotion for Vis.n.u]”); and the poems they composed, known
collectively as the “four thousand sacred compositions” (Na ̄la ̄yirat-tiviya-
pirapantam) are frequently referred to in the tradition as “the Tamil Veda.”
Beginning around the twelfth century, these poems came to be recited ritually
as part of the routine of worship in Tamil Vais.n.ava temples, and, in keeping
with their status as sacred scripture, they also became the object of erudite
theologically-oriented commentaries.
In Tamil S ́aiva tradition the match between the categories of saint and sacred
scripture also overlap, but not quite so precisely. Tamil S ́aivism recognizes 63
saints or na ̄yan
̄
ma ̄r (“leaders”) whose legendary life stories are told in the
twelfth-century hagiography, Periya Pura ̄n.am. Periya Pura ̄n.amis included as the
twelfth and last of the Tirumur
̄
ai, or “sacred compendia” of poems, which carry
canonical status in Tamil S ́aiva tradition. Like the Vais.n.ava a ̄l
̄
va ̄r poems, they
are considered to be the equal of the Vedas in sacredness. Some, but not all of
the na ̄yan
̄
ma ̄r composed poems that are included in the Tirumur
̄ai, and some,
but not all of the poems included in the Tirumur
̄
ai, were composed by na ̄yan
̄ma ̄r.
Also, like the poems of the a ̄l
̄
va ̄rs, poems from the Tirumur
̄ai, were incorporated
into the routines of temple worship, but unlike the former, prior to modern times,
one does not find written theological commentaries on these poems. Neverthe-
less, traditional S ́aiva scholars often include citations from this corpus in oral
discourses on theological topics.
The Tamil bhakti poets utilized many literary models – Tamil can.kam poems,
folksongs, Sanskrit hymns of praise (stotras), and even Vedic hymns – thus pro-
ducing a corpus of great variety with roots in both earlier Tamil and Sanskrit
sources. Nonetheless, in broad terms, Tamil bhakti poems can be distinguished
as a poetic genre in a number of ways: they employ a relatively simple diction
and phraseology modeled after the rhythms of speech; they are filled with
allusions to Hindu myths and provide “word pictures” of the Hindu gods in full
iconographic detail; they celebrate the sacredness of particular places where
local Tamil forms of S ́iva and Vis.n.u are enshrined; they are frequently set to
music. But perhaps the most distinctive feature of these poems is their emphasis
on the poet’s own experience and the relationship between poet and God.
Tamil devotees of S ́iva and Vis.n.u perceive the saints’ poems as spiritual auto-
biographies in which the saints reveal their innermost experience and set an
example for others, or, to make the point somewhat differently, as “verbal embodi-
ments of their authors’ experience of divinity” (Cutler 1987: 112). Tamil bhakti
poems blur the boundary between devotee and saint by providing a paradigm
upon which devotees model their own experience of divinity. From another, but
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