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MAY, 1896.)
THE AGE OF TIRUNANASAMBANDHA.
113
ON THE AGE OF TIRUNANASAMBANDHA.
BY P. SUNDARAM PILLAI, MA. AMONG the Saiva community of Southern India, no name is held in greater veneraA tion than that of Tirunanasambandha. By the Saiva community, I mean the Hindus that regard Siva as the head of the Hindû trinity. Saivas, in this sense, form the bulk of the population in the districts of Tinnevelly, Madura, Trichinopoly, Tanjore, South Arcot, Chingleput, Madras, North Arcot, Salem, and Coimbatore, and are also found in large numbers in certain parts of Ceylon, Malabar, and Travancore, -in short, wherever Tamil is the prevailing tongue. The Kanarese people are also more or less exclusively Saivas; but they adopt a bigoted form of the common faith, and are therefore known as Vira-Saivas or Lingayats. Among the Brahmans too, there is a section specially called Saivas, and the vast majority of the rest, though known as Smartas, venerate Saiva traditions and ceremonials, and are Saivas to all appearance.1 For all the Saivas, and particularly for the non-Brâhmanical Tamil Saivas, Tiruñûnasambandha is the highest authority, and his works have all the sanctity of the Vedas.
The Tamil Saivas have their own system of sacred literature, compiled and arranged so as to match the Vedas, Puranas and Sástras in Sanskțit. The hymns of Sambandha, together with a few other songs, are in fact known as the Tamil Vedas. These hymns and songs were compiled and arranged into eleven groups, or Tirumurai, by one Nambi Andar Nambi, a Brahmaņ priest of Tiranâraigür in the Tanjore district, — the sovereign who patronized this Tamil Vyasa being Rajaraja Abhaya Kulasekhara Chola, as will be seen further on. Of these eleven collections or Tirumurai, the first three contain the hymns of Sambandha, and the next three those of a Vélala saint, called Appar or Tirunavukkarabu, an elder contemporary of Sambandha, and an earnest and pathetic writer, whose thorough renouncement of Buddhism seems to have been the first of the irreparable reverses which that religion experienced in Southern India. The seventh comprises the rather humorous hymns of Sundara, a Brahmaņ devotee of a later generation. These seven collections form the compilation called Devaram, also known as Adangal-Murai, and are perhaps meant to match the hymns of the earlier portions of the Vedas, which they closely resemble in being but praises and prayers offered to the deity. They are used alo, much in the same way as the Vedic hymns, on ceremonial and religious occasions. The mere learning of them by rote is held to be a virtue, and special provision is made in respectable Saiva temples, throughout the Tamil districts, for their public recitation after the daily pújás, by a class of Velåla priests, called Oduvår. The earlier work, the Tiruvasagam, forms a part of the eighth Tirumurai or collection. It is perhaps intended to take the place of the Upanishads, and there is decidedly no work in the Tamil language more deserving of that distinction. There are, indeed, but few poems in any language that can surpass the Tiruvasagam or the holy word' of Manikkav bagar in profundity of thought, in earnestness of feeling, or in that simple childlike trust, in which the struggling human soul, with its burdens of intellectual and moral puzzles, finally finds shelter. The hymns of nine other minor authors, composed in apparent imitation of the Dévára hymns, make up the ninth group called Tiru-Isaippa. Among these nine authors was a Chola king named Kanqaraditya, and I am glad to find his
1 For instance, they use holy ashes, ruraksha beads, etc. See the Tirumurai-kanda-Purânam, verse 2.
Under the term Buddhism, I include all forms of anti-Védio heresy that provailed in this age. Though they differed among themselves, all the schismatics, known variously as Kshapaņas, Bauddhas, Jainas, Thêras, Sakyna, Aragar, etc., were at one in rejecting the authority of the Vedas. Useful pieces of interesting information may be gathered from the Devlira hymns concerning all the sects of South Indian Buddhists.
. See the Tirumurai-kanda-Puranam, verse 16.
6 The priority of ManikkavAsagar is generally accepted only on tradition, and on the genealogy of the Pandyas given in the Madara Sthala-Purana. Bottor evidence is found in the Devaram itself. See verse 2, page 652 of Ramasvami Pillai's edition, where Appar directly alludes to a miracle ascribed to Mapikkavasagar.
See verse 10 of his Tint-Isaippa.
