(8th century) The
last of the Nayanars, a group of sixty-three poet-saints from southern India
who were Shiva worshippers (bhakta).
The Nayanars, along with their contemporaries the Alvars,
who were Vishnu worshipers, drove the revival of Hindu religion by their
fervent devotion (bhakti) to a personal deity, which they expressed through
songs sung in Tamil.
Sundaramurtti, like his forefathers Appar and Sambandar,
actively opposed the heterodox sects of the time, particularly the Jains, whom
he despises in his poems.
The Devaram, the most sacred of the Tamil Shaivite texts, is
composed of the hymns of the three most important Nayanars—Appar, Sambandar,
and Sundaramurtti.
Sundaramurtti's inventory of the sixty-three Nayanars is
significant since it is the earliest written source for Tamil Shaivite
hagiography.
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