Nayanar

Group of sixty-three Shaiva poet-saints,
who lived in southern India between the
seventh and ninth centuries. In concert
with their Vaishnava counterparts the
Alvars, the Nayanars spearheaded the
revitalization of Hindu religion vis-à-vis
the Buddhists and the Jains. Both the
Nayanars and the Alvars stressed passionate devotion (bhakti) to a personal
god—Shiva for the Nayanars, Vishnu for
the Alvars—and conveyed this devotion
through hymns sung in the Tamil language. The Nayanars tended to be more
overtly hostile to the Jains. According to
legend the Nayanar Sambandar was
instrumental in the impalement of
eight thousand Jain monks in the city
of Madurai. The hymns of the three
most important Nayanars—Appar,
Sambandar, and Sundaramurtti—comprise the Devaram, the most sacred of
the Tamil Shaivite texts. An important
later source is the Periya Puranam by
Cekkilar, which gives hagiographic
accounts for all the Nayanars.