Tiruvachakam
(“holy utterances”) Collection of poetry
composed in the ninth century by the
Tamil poet-saint Manikkavachakar,
who was a passionate devotee (bhakta)
of the god Shiva. Manikkavachakar’s
work comes in the tradition of the
Nayanars(a group of sixty-three Shaiva
poet-saints who lived in southern India
in the seventh and eighth centuries),
although he is not counted as one of
them because he was about a century
later than the last Nayanar, Sundara-
murtti. The hymns in the Tiruvachakam
bear witness to Manikkavachakar’s
intense devotion to Shiva, and in their
devotional fervor, they can be seen as
the culmination of the earlier devotional
(bhakti) tradition. Manikkavachakar’s
hymns are also the basis for the devel-
opment of the philosophical tradition
known as Shaiva Siddhanta, which
makes Manikkavachakar a pivotal figure
in southern Indian Shaivism. For further
information see Glenn Yocum, Hymns to
the Dancing Siva, 1982. See also Tamil
languageand Tamil epics.
Tiruvalluvar
(5th–6th c.) According to tradition, the
author of the Tirukkura l, one of the
most important pieces of early Tamil lit-
erature. The Tirukkuralis a collection of
brief verses on religious, social, and
moral life, organized according to vari-
ous themes. Many of these epigrams
have become proverbial expressions in
Tamil and have become the cultural
property of Tamils from all religious
communities. See also Tamil language
and Tamil epics.
Tiruvannamalai
Temple town and sacred site (tirtha) in
the northern part of the state of Tamil
Nadu, about 100 miles southwest of
Madras, the capital. Tiruvannamalai is
most famous as a temple to the god
Shivain his form as Arunachaleshvar,
“the Lord of Arunachal [Hill],” the
hill on which the temple is built.
Tiruvannamalai is also one of the
bhutalingas(“elemental lingas”), a net-
work of five southern Indian sites sacred
to Shiva. In each of these sites, Shiva is
worshiped as a linga, the pillar-shaped
object that is his symbolic form, and at
each site the linga is believed to be formed
from one of the five primordial elements
(bhuta)—earth, wind, fire, water, and
space(akasha). Tiruvannamalai’s linga is
associated with the primordial element
of fire, making this an extremely
powerful image. Aside from the image
and the temple, Tiruvannamalai is also
famous as the place in which the mod-
ern Indian saint Ramana Maharshi
spent most of his life, from 1896 until his
death in 1950.Tiruvaymoli
(“Holy words”) Collection of 1,102
stanzas written in the tenth century
by the poet-saint Nammalvar.
Nammalvar was one of the Alvars, a
group of twelve poet-saints who lived
in southern India between the seventh
and tenth centuries. All of the Alvars
were devotees (bhakta) of the god
Vishnu, and their stress on passionate
devotion (bhakti) to a personal god,
conveyed through hymns sung in the
Tamil language, transformed and revi-
talized Hindu religious life.
Nammalvar’s Tiruvaymoli is an out-
pouring of ecstatic Vaishnava devo-
tionalism and forms the concluding
section of the Nalayira Divya-
prabandham, the collected composi-
tions of the Alvars. For further
information see Kamil Zvelebil,Tamil
Literature, 1975; John Stirling Morley
Hooper, Hymns of the Alvars, 1929; A.
Shrinivasa Raghavan, Nammalvar,
1975; and A. K. Ramanujan (trans.),
Hymns for the Drowning, 1981.Tiruvayur
Southern Indian temple town about
thirty-five miles east of the city of
Tanjorein the state of Tamil Nadu. The
town is most famous for an enormousTiruvachakam