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Hinduism - Who Was Sundaramurtti Among The Nayanars?

 

 

 (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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