Udaya

Thevaram

தேவாரம்

Also Thirumurai, The first seven Thirumurai, Panniru Thirumurai.

Devotional canon Tamil Sixth to ninth century, compiled about the eleventh

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What it is#

The Thevaram is the hymns of the three great Tamil Saiva poets, Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar, and it forms the first seven books of the Thirumurai, the twelve book Tamil Saiva canon. The poems are sung, not read: they were composed to be sung in the temples they name, in pann, the old Tamil modal system, and the Odhuvars still sing them before the deity. Two hundred and seventy four temples are sung in them, the Paadal Petra Sthalams, and a Tamil Siva temple’s standing depends on whether it is among them.

Its shape#

Twelve Thirumurai in all. The first three are Sambandar, the next three Appar, the seventh Sundarar, and those seven are the Thevaram proper. The eighth is Manikkavasagar’s Thiruvasagam and Thirukkovaiyar; the ninth the Thiruvisaippa; the tenth Thirumular’s Thirumandiram, three thousand verses of Saiva Siddhanta; the eleventh a miscellany; the twelfth Sekkizhar’s Periya Puranam, the lives of the sixty three Nayanmars. The Thevaram alone runs to some eight thousand verses.

What it argues about#

These are not settled texts

The hymns are polemical as well as devotional: Appar and Sambandar lived during the period when Jainism and Buddhism were strong in the Tamil country, and a good deal of the Thevaram argues against them, sometimes with real hostility. Sambandar’s hymns in particular are connected by tradition with the impalement of Jains at Madurai, an episode depicted in temple murals and disputed by historians as to whether it happened at all. Tamil Saiva tradition has generally not disowned it; Jain scholars and some historians read the period as a persecution, and the matter is live in Tamil cultural argument.

Episodes worth knowing#

Appar and the stone

Appar had been a Jain and returned to Saivism, and the Pallava king, urged by the Jains, had him thrown into a lime kiln, poisoned, trampled by an elephant and finally tied to a stone and thrown into the sea. He sang, and floated. The hymn he is said to have sung while sinking, Sottunai, is still sung, and the detail Tamil tradition keeps is not the miracle but the words: he asks for nothing and says only that those who are the servants of Siva are not slaves to anybody, which the Tamil tradition has quoted in other contexts since.

The pann that was lost

The Thevaram was composed in pann, Tamil modes, and the musical notation was lost. The palm leaves survived with the pann named at the head of each hymn but no one could say what the pann was. The reconstruction in the twentieth century, by the Odhuvar families and by scholars working from the names, surviving practice and the Silappatikaram’s music chapters, is an educated recovery rather than a transmission, and musicians disagree about how close it is. The hymns are sung daily in temples in the reconstructed modes.

Whose telling#

There is no single text

Nambiyandar Nambi, eleventh century
Recovered the palm leaves at Chidambaram, where tradition says they had been walled up, and arranged the canon into the Thirumurai.
Sekkizhar, twelfth century
Wrote the Periya Puranam, the lives of the sixty three Nayanmars, which became the twelfth Thirumurai and the frame through which the hymns are read.
Odhuvar tradition
Hereditary singers who perform the hymns before the deity in the temples; the office survives on temple appointment and the numbers have fallen sharply.
Pann reconstruction
The modes were lost and were reconstructed in the twentieth century from the names and surviving practice; how faithful the recovery is remains argued among musicians.

Where the regions differ#

  • Tamil
  • Kerala
  • Telugu
  • Kannada
  • North
  • Maharashtra
  • Bengal
  • Punjab
  • Assam
  • Sri Lanka
  • Nepal
  • Gujarat
  • Odisha
  • Mithila
  • Kashmir
  • Tulu Nadu
  • manipur
  • rajasthan
  • konkani
  • sindhi
  • jharkhand
  • himalayan
  • kodava
Where it is kept: 3 of the 23 traditions this app follows. The filled one is where it is from.
Tamil Nadu
The two hundred and seventy four Paadal Petra Sthalams are the Saiva pilgrimage map, and the Odhuvars sing the hymns in the temples daily.
Kerala
The Malayalam speaking districts of the old Chera country hold several of the sung temples, and the Saiva Siddhanta tradition is shared.
Sri Lanka
Two of the sung temples are in Sri Lanka, Koneswaram and Ketheeswaram, and the Tamil Saiva tradition of the island keeps the canon.

All the works