Divya Prabandham

(“Divine Composition”) Shorter name
for the Nalayira Divyaprabandham,
the collected hymns of the Alvars. The
Alvars were a group of twelve Vaishnava
poet-saints (devotees of the god
Vishnu), who lived in southern India
between the seventh and tenth centuries. In conjunction with their Shaiva
(devotees of the god Shiva) counterparts, the Nayanars, the Alvars spearheaded the revitalization of Hindu
religion vis-à-vis the Buddhists and the
Jains. Both the Alvars and the Nayanars
stressed passionate devotion (bhakti) to
a personal god—Vishnu for the Alvars,
Shiva for the Nayanars—and conveyed
this devotion through hymns sung in
the Tamil language. In the southern
Indian religious community known as
the Shrivaishnavas, the collected
hymns of the Alvars have such high status that they are known as the “Tamil
Veda”—that is, the religious texts in
the Tamil language which carry the
authority of the Veda, the oldest Hindu
religious texts.