Tiruvaymoli

(“Holy words”) Collection of 1,102
stanzas written in the tenth century
by the poet-saint Nammalvar.
Nammalvar was one of the Alvars, a
group of twelve poet-saints who lived
in southern India between the seventh
and tenth centuries. All of the Alvars
were devotees (bhakta) of the god
Vishnu, and their stress on passionate
devotion (bhakti) to a personal god,
conveyed through hymns sung in the
Tamil language, transformed and revitalized Hindu religious life.
Nammalvar’s Tiruvaymoli is an outpouring of ecstatic Vaishnava devotionalism and forms the concluding
section of the Nalayira Divyaprabandham, the collected compositions of the Alvars. For further
information see Kamil Zvelebil, Tamil
Literature, 1975; John Stirling Morley
Hooper, Hymns of the Alvars, 1929; A.
Shrinivasa Raghavan, Nammalvar,
1975; and A. K. Ramanujan (trans.),
Hymns for the Drowning, 1981.