Tiruvachakam

(“holy utterances”) Collection of poetry
composed in the ninth century by the
Tamil poet-saint Manikkavachakar,
who was a passionate devotee (bhakta)
of the god Shiva. Manikkavachakar’s
work comes in the tradition of the
Nayanars (a group of sixty-three Shaiva
poet-saints who lived in southern India
in the seventh and eighth centuries),
although he is not counted as one of
them because he was about a century
later than the last Nayanar, Sundaramurtti. The hymns in the Tiruvachakam
bear witness to Manikkavachakar’s
intense devotion to Shiva, and in their
devotional fervor, they can be seen as
the culmination of the earlier devotional
(bhakti) tradition. Manikkavachakar’s
hymns are also the basis for the development of the philosophical tradition
known as Shaiva Siddhanta, which
makes Manikkavachakar a pivotal figure
in southern Indian Shaivism. For further
information see Glenn Yocum, Hymns to
the Dancing Siva, 1982. See also Tamil
language and Tamil epics.