Pann and the Oduvars

A pann gives a melody its identity; comparisons with modern ragas help listeners recognise it without replacing its history.

✦A mode learnt by hearing

Panns belong to the older Tamil musical vocabulary, found in literary accounts of singers, instruments and performance and carried into the Tevaram. A pann is more than the instruction to sing high or low. It gives the hymn a melodic character that a teacher demonstrates through phrases and that a pupil learns by hearing and repeating.

A raga (இராகம்) likewise has a melodic identity, including characteristic movement and emphasis. Modern raga names can help a listener approach pann singing. An ascending and descending note-list alone cannot tell us everything about the way a hymn is voiced: the shaping of the phrase and the place of the word matter too.

✦Commonly cited comparisons

The comparisons below follow **D. Pattammal and Dr Dhandapani's Raga Pravaham**, which reports Tamil Isai Sangam deliberations; additional identifications name their teachers beside them.

Nattapadai, Indalam and Sevvazhi receive differing identifications in these accounts, so the comparisons describe received musical practice rather than settle an exact equivalence across centuries.

The received hymn collections preserve pann names beside numbered pathigams, allowing us to hear the three poets within shared and distinct musical groupings.

✦A listening map

The table gives an example for every named pann represented in each poet's pann-arranged sections. 1.23 means Tirumurai 1, pathigam 23. The examples follow the received Tamil hymn headings; the number identifies a hymn, not a date in the poet's travels. An empty cell means that no example is listed for that poet in these named sections.

These are twenty-three named panns; Yazhmuri (யாழ்மூரி), Sambandar's 1.136, is a special musical division shown separately from them.

Sambandar's first three books take the reader through successive pann families. Appar's fourth book begins with named pann sections and then gives divisions named for verse forms. Sundarar's seventh book has seventeen pann headings, including Senthurutti. The books preserve different ways of gathering the hymns into an order that can be learnt.

Tirumurai 1, Tirumurai 2 and Tirumurai 3 follow Sambandar's collections; Tirumurai 4 and Tirumurai 7 introduce the other two poets' pann-arranged hymns.

Pann concerns melody; metre concerns the arrangement of the words, and Appar's metre headings do not themselves name a pann.

✦Words, melody and beat

A metre organises the verse's syllables and metrical units into lines. A pann gives the singing its melodic frame. Talam (தாளம்) organises a recurring cycle of musical beats. The three meet in performance, but they answer different questions about the song.

A hymn in Tirukkurunthogai can still be sung melodically. Its metre heading alone does not determine which tune an Oduvar uses. Likewise, calling a hymn a Tiruttandagam describes the poem's form without making “Tiruttandagam” one more pann in the preceding table. Tirumurai 5 and Tirumurai 6 open these two collections.

✦Four short lines, several kinds of quiet

Appar's 5.90.1 compares the shelter of Siva's feet to experiences the listener can recognise. Its collection heading is Tirukkurunthogai.

The verse gathers sound, light, air and a living landscape into its comparison. Hearing it sung gives us time to remain with each image before the final line names the refuge they help us imagine.

The recovery account remembers a woman of the Yazhpanar line as the person who restored the musical ordering of the hymns.

✦Manuscripts and a living voice

The Tirumuraikanda Puranam (திருமுறைகண்ட புராணம்) tells this account as tradition. The king Rajaraja and Nambiyandar Nambi (நம்பியாண்டார் நம்பி) seek the hymns sung by the three saints. At Chidambaram they recover palm-leaf manuscripts from a closed room, finding that insects have damaged many of the leaves. Nambi gathers the surviving songs into their Tirumurai order.

The hymns also need their music. Nambi and the king go to Tiru Erukkattampuliyur and pray. Siva directs them to a woman descended from the line of Tiruneelakanta Yazhpanar (திருநீலகண்ட யாழ்ப்பாணர்). She has received the musical knowledge they seek. They hear her sing and bring her before the dancing Lord at Chidambaram; through her singing the pann ordering is established. Verses 30–34 of the account tell this part of the recovery.

✦The musician's part

The narrative leaves the woman's personal name unstated, while making her musical knowledge necessary to the work. A king supports the search; a compiler gathers the texts; a singer supplies what the manuscripts alone cannot sound. The recovered hymn becomes something that can be offered again through a voice.

The yazh (யாழ்) is an ancient Tamil harp. Yazhpanar belongs to Sambandar's remembered circle of devotees and musicians; the woman in Nambi's account belongs to his later lineage. Stories of the Nayanmars and Periya Puranam lead into the saint's life and his companionship with Sambandar.

Oduvars train the voice and memory for an offering of Tamil scripture within the temple's daily worship.

✦Learning to carry the words

An Oduvar is a trained Tirumurai singer. The work calls for knowledge of the Tamil text, its pronunciation, the received singing and the temple setting. Learning can begin with a family teacher, another Oduvar or a dedicated school. Repetition develops memory; the teacher listens to the words, the musical phrases and the places where the pupil breathes.

Dharmapuram Adheenam records the beginning of its Devara and Veda-Sivagama schools in 1942. Sacred-song training and priestly training have distinct duties within worship. Madurai's Meenakshi-Sundaresvara temple maintains an Oduvar Training School on North Aadi Veethi. In his published account of learning at Chidambaram, Sargurunathan recalls a five-year programme joining Tamil, music and practice in the temple. The Adheenams describes the institutions that sustain this work.

✦At the daily puja

Oduvars sing before Siva as part of the daily worship, including its concluding moments; the selection and timing follow the temple's practice. A hymn belonging to the shrine places the poet's own address to that Siva before the gathered devotees. “Tiruchitrambalam” (திருச்சிற்றம்பலம்) commonly opens and closes the Tirumurai offering.

The Oduvar's task is a distinct service alongside the priest's ritual duties and the other musicians' work. The Tamil hymn allows a devotee to hear Siva addressed in the words of an earlier worshipper. Worship at that moment has a voice the congregation can follow.

✦The Panchapuranam

Panchapuranam (பஞ்சபுராணம்) is a five-part offering drawn from the following works. It does not mean five Sanskrit Puranas or one unchanging set of five verses.

The selection brings several voices of the canon into one act of worship. Worship and daily practice places the Panchapuranam alongside the other forms of a devotee's daily observance.

Named recordings let us follow a hymn in a trained voice and return to its words with a more attentive ear.

✦Voices to begin with

The links open collections or hymn pages. Each identifies its singer; the hymns can be approached one at a time.

✦Listen, read, return

Begin with a pathigam whose words you can keep beside you. Listen once to the whole movement. Read a verse and its meaning, then hear that verse again. Notice how the singer joins the syllables, where a word is sustained and how the phrase arrives at its ending.

Sundarar's 7.95, in Senthurutti, addresses Siva at Tiruvarur with the pain and freedom of someone who belongs to Him. The repeated ending is part of the address, not merely a musical return. A pann comparison with Madhyamavati does not remove the particular feeling of the words.

A recording can bring a voice into the home. A teacher can also hear your own attempt and respond. The two forms of listening meet when the pupil returns to the text, repeats a short passage and learns to let the words remain clear inside the melody.

Read the hymn headings, hear named singers and study the musical accounts alongside the words of the canon.

✦Pann names and musical study

• French Institute of Pondicherry digital Tevaram: T. V. Gopal Iyer's corpus, with Tamil hymn headings and credited vocal renditions; follow the contents for book 2, book 3, book 4 and book 7.
• D. Pattammal and Dr Dhandapani, Raga Pravaham: the musical handbook used for the attributed comparisons; its compiler's note identifies the Tamil Isai Sangam deliberations.
• M. A. Bhageerathi, Introduction to Tamil Music: a musicologist's account of pann singing and modern comparisons.
• The Journal of the Music Academy Madras, 2024: printed pages 9–10 report B. Sargurunathan's demonstration Panngalum Soozhalgalum of 18 December 2023, including Indalam and Nadanamakriya.

✦Recovery, teaching and worship

• Tirumuraikanda Puranam at Project Madurai: read verses 30–34 for the woman of the Yazhpanar lineage and her musical part in the recovery.
• Tamil Virtual Academy's account of the Tirumurais: recovery, temple singing and the five works used in Panchapuranam.
• Tamil Virtual Academy's pann-singing curriculum: named hymns with numbers and examples of Panchapuranam selections.
• Dharmapuram Adheenam's schools and Madurai Meenakshi temple's institutions: the institutions' own accounts of their teaching work.
• Sargurunathan's account of Oduvar training: a 2007 interview describing study and service; its historical student and singer totals belong to that time.

✦Continue hearing and reading

Thevaaram.org brings the Tamil canon and its explanations together. Shaivam's Panchapuranam collection and the named collections in Hearing the singers offer paths into recorded Tirumurai singing.

Worship and daily practice follows the sung offering into daily observance. The Adheenams follows its teachers and schools. Tirumurai 1 opens Sambandar's pann-arranged hymns, and Tirumurai 7 opens Sundarar's. Tirumurai 11 includes Karaikkal Ammaiyar's earlier Tiruv-alankadu hymns: 11.2 in Nattapadai and 11.3 in Indalam.