Tevaram
தேவாரம் tēvāramThe body of Tamil devotional hymns to Shiva composed by the Nayanar saints Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar (7th-9th c.). Recovered and compiled under Chola patronage, it became the core of the Tirumurai, the Tamil Shaiva canon, honoured as the 'Tamil Veda'.
Where this term appears
- The Chola Age and the Temple as Institution History
…court, was so moved that he set out to recover the whole corpus — the Tevaram , the passionate Tamil hymns to Shiva composed centuries earlier by the poet-saints called the Nayanars.
- The Bhakti Saints Philosophy
The Nayanars' songs, the Tevaram and the Tiruvachakam , became the heart of Tamil Shaiva worship.
- The Four Streams of Hinduism Essentials
In the Tamil country there is again a bhakti flowering, the Nayanars , the sixty-three Shaiva poet-saints whose Tevaram hymns pour the same devotional heat over Shiva that the Alvars poured over Vishnu.
- What is Shaivism? Lineages
This is the philosophy that gathered up the devotion of the Nayanars , the sixty-three Tamil poet-saints whose hymns, the Tevaram , sang Shiva into the daily life of the south.
- Who is Shiva? Deities
Three of them, Sambandar and Appar in the seventh century and Sundarar in the eighth, composed the hymns later gathered as the Tēvāram .