Tēvāram

The Tevaram (Tamil: தேவாரம் Tēvāram) denotes the first seven volumes of the Tirumurai, the twelve-volume collection of Śaiva devotional poetry. All seven volumes are dedicated to the works of the three most prominent Tamil poets of the 7th century, the Nayanars - Sambandar, Tirunavukkarasar and Sundarar. The singing of Tevaram is continued as a hereditary practise in some Shiva temples in Tamil Nadu.

In the tenth century, during the reign of Raja Raja Chola I, a collection of these songs was found abandoned in the Chidambaram temple, along with other religious literary works, and collated by Nambiyandar Nambi. It is during the Chola dynasty that Saivism came of age and Tevaram, with its body of texts on rituals, philosophy and theology, was canonized. The 276 temples revered by these verses are called paadal petra thalam and another 276 places having Shiva temples that are casually mentioned in the verses are classified as vaipu sthalam. It was Tevaram for Saivism and Nalayira Divya Prabandam for Vaishanvism. There are 796 of these songs with a total of more than 8200 stanzas. The three poets were not only involved in portraying their personal devotion to Shiva, but also involved a community of believers through their songs. It is one of the important sources of Tamil Bhakti, a movement that inspired the agricultural community.

The word Dēvāram is to be split as Dēva-āram ( derived from Tamil word 'Deivam'means God and 'Aram' means dharma or moral).

Three stages have been identified in the evolution of Thevaram - first is the mark of Shiva as the supreme deity during the 7th - 9th century, the second involved Chola kings initiating the compilation of all the hymns and installing the images of the 3 saint poets during the 10th to 11th century and the last being the restructuring done by the pontiffs of the mathas who incorporated the hymns into Saiva Siddantha canon in the 13th century. Both the Saiva and Vaishnava textual tradition negated the Vedic orthodoxy and Smartha tradition practised during the era. The authority of the hymns were established with the Saivities calling the Tevaram as Tamil Marai (meaning Tamil Veda), while Vaishnavities called the Nalayira Divya Prabandham as Dravida Veda. The usage of Sanskrit liturgies for religion was overcome with the usage of Tamil in both Tevaram and Prabandham. Sangam literature established the convention of akam (internally orineted) and puram (externally orientated) poetry. Though influence of Sangam literature is often seen in Thevaram, the strict conventions were not followed. The verses were more oriented towards folk tradition, which was easily accessible to people.

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