Tirumurai 2: Tirukkadaikkappu (Tevaram)

Tirumurai 2 continues Sambandar's temple-centred song while giving particular force to sacred ash, trust in Siva amid fear, and Tamil verse shaped by demanding formal patterns.

✦The second Sambandar volume

Tirumurai 2 stands between Tirumurai 1 and Tirumurai 3. It contains 122 pathigams and 1,331 surviving verses in the Shaivam and IFP/PIFI presentations. Tamil Virtual Academy gives 90 Siva shrines for the volume.

The basic form of a pathigam, the meaning of Tirukkadaikkappu, the role of pann, Sambandar's recurring verse pattern and the idea of picture-poetry are explained in Tirumurai 1. Here the attention moves to what is distinctive in the second volume.

✦Four landmarks

These hymns should not be reduced to charms. Sambandar's own centre is Siva: His presence, His signs, His shrine, His devotees and the confidence created when the heart rests in Him.

Sambandar's full life belongs on Tirumurai 1; this volume preserves hymns tied to moments of illness, danger and the journey to Madurai.

Tradition remembers Tirujnanasambandar as the child of Sirkazhi who received the milk of knowledge from Uma, began singing Siva as a small child, travelled among Tamil Siva shrines, formed a close bond with Appar, met devotees and rulers, and finally entered the divine light at his wedding. He is conventionally placed in the 7th century CE, though the exact chronology remains debated. The full life, with the distinction between hagiography and recoverable history, is told in Tirumurai 1.

✦Episodes heard inside this volume

At Tirumarugal, the Periya Puranam connects 2.18 with a young merchant who had died after snakebite. The grieving woman beside him draws Sambandar's compassion, and the hymn addresses Siva through her distress. The later sacred biography says the young man was restored to life. That miracle belongs to the traditional life and is not independently verifiable as history.

The Madurai cycle matters still more here. Sambandar was preparing to go south to Madurai when concern was raised about the day and the planets. 2.85, the Kolaru Pathigam, answers not by denying the planets but by placing them beneath a stronger confidence: Siva has entered the singer's heart, and therefore what is feared becomes good for His devotees. The precise narrative setting before the Madurai journey follows the later hagiographic tradition.

At Tirualavai, Madurai, 2.66, the Tiruneetru Pathigam, is linked to the Pandya king's fever. The sacred biography says Sambandar sang the hymn and applied sacred ash as the king's fever was relieved. The hymn itself is securely 2.66 and is wholly centred on sacred ash; the healing episode is hagiography rather than independently established seventh-century history.

Tirujnanasambandar · All the poets and teachers ›

Tirumurai 2 contains 122 pathigams in six pann groups, from Indalam to Sevvazhi, with two of Sambandar's picture-poems at its centre.

✦The pann sequence

The ranges and counts below follow the digital Tevaram index of the French Institute of Pondicherry. Some other sources give different counts for Indalam and Kantaram.

The volume holds 1,331 verses, sung at about 90 shrines. The count of shrines varies a little between sources, depending on how places with more than one name are counted.

✦The turning wheel: Chakramaatru, 2.73

Tirumurai 1 introduced Sambandar's picture-poems. Here one of them can be seen in its own volume. 2.73 is identified in the received tradition as Tiruch-chakramaatru (திருச்சக்கரமாற்று), the "turning wheel". Its twelve verses repeatedly gather the sacred names of Sirkazhi, changing their order so that the names seem to turn through the poem.

The first verse already carries the chain of twelve names. In later verses the sequence shifts, so the "wheel" is not an illustration added beside the hymn: the turning is made from the names themselves. The wheel of names on the Tirumurai 1 page shows it.

✦The winding line: Gomutri, 2.74

The next hymn, 2.74, is identified by Shaivam as Tirukkomutri (திருக்கோமூத்திரி). Its name evokes a winding track rather than a straight line. Printed as ordinary lines, it hides part of its design.

Tradition describes the Gomutri as read in a winding course between its lines, the way a cow's track swings from one side of the road to the other.

In the Tiruneetru Pathigam, sacred ash is not one symbol among many: Sambandar makes it mantra, worship, knowledge, truth and the visible mark of belonging to Siva.

✦"The mantra is the ash"

The repetition is the teaching. Niru, ash, closes statement after statement. Sambandar does not begin by explaining its manufacture or giving a philosophical theory of matter. He tells the devotee what sacred ash means inside worship: mantra, praise, discipline, identity and the mark of the Lord of Alavai.

The next verses widen the field. The ash is linked with the Veda, knowledge, truth, devotion and liberation. The hymn therefore joins an outward mark to an inward orientation. What is worn on the body points toward what the mind remembers.

✦Ash and the Madurai story

The Periya Puranam places this hymn in the contest at Madurai and says Sambandar applied sacred ash while the Pandya king suffered from fever. The story gives the hymn a healing setting. The hymn itself gives sacred ash a still wider meaning than remedy: it belongs to Siva and to the whole shape of Saiva practice.

✦Not a mechanical guarantee

The hymn speaks in the confident language of devotion. Its healing story is likewise told as an act of grace. Present-day recitation can honour that confidence without turning ash or verse into a guaranteed medical procedure. The sacred sign belongs to worship; illness also calls for appropriate care.

The Kolaru Pathigam does not teach that the planets cease to exist; it teaches that the devotee's deepest security rests in Siva who has entered the heart.

✦The hymn's turning point

The decisive words come before the list of planets: "He has entered my heart." The hymn's confidence begins there. The cosmic forces that ordinarily provoke anxiety are named one by one, but they are not allowed to become the devotee's final authority.

This is why the title Kolaru is apt in devotional usage: kol can refer to a celestial body or planet, while the hymn is received as removing the feared harm associated with planetary influence. The pathigam continues beyond the nine planets to other sources of danger and unfavourable circumstance.

✦Courage before departure

The Periya Puranam connects 2.85 with Sambandar's departure toward Madurai. The day was considered astrologically unfavourable; Sambandar's answer was to sing from trust in Siva. The setting comes from the later sacred biography, not from an independent record.

✦What the hymn asks of the devotee

The pathigam's devotional logic is not "I control the universe because I recited a verse." It is closer to this: I belong to Siva; therefore I will not let calculations of danger become greater in my mind than the Lord I worship.

That distinction matters when the hymn is used today.

At Tirumarugal, Sambandar lets another person's grief enter the hymn; devotion speaks to Siva from inside helplessness rather than waiting for calm.

✦"Is her wasting away fitting?"

The Tirumarugal pathigam, 2.18, is remembered in connection with a young woman grieving beside the man she was to marry after he had been bitten by a snake. Its opening verse is shaped as an appeal.

The singer does not stand outside the woman's distress and offer a lecture. He repeats her speech: she calls to Siva, names Him as refuge, trembles and falls. Then Sambandar turns the question toward the Lord.

The merchant youth, the story says, was restored to life through the hymn. That belongs to the saint's sacred biography. What the verse itself lets us see directly is the form compassion takes: another person's pain becomes one's own prayer.

✦Compassion without bargaining

The hymn does not make suffering unreal. Nor does it turn prayer into a contract by which a particular outcome can be demanded. It gives grief a language directed toward Siva. In that movement, helplessness becomes relation.

This is one reason Tevaram can live outside the historical circumstance of its first singing. A devotee need not reproduce the old event to recognise the cry.

Tirumurai 2 repeatedly gathers landscape, sacred story, worship and the devotee's inner life into the named shrine where Siva is encountered.

✦A book of places, not a travel diary

The 122 pathigams move across many shrines, but their received pann order is not a chronological itinerary. Tiruppuntarai, Tiruvaiyaru, Tirumarugal, Tiruvanaikka, Tirumayilappur, Tiruvengadu, Madurai, Sirkazhi, Tirumaraikkadu and other places appear as living settings of worship.

A typical shrine verse can hold several scales at once: Siva's cosmic acts, the temple's local landscape, the sound of Veda or music, flowers and water, devotees at worship, and the singer's own need for grace. The local place does not confine Siva. It gives the devotee somewhere to meet Him.

✦Names become worship

The Chakramaatru and Gomutri make this especially visible. Sirkazhi's many sacred names are not merely supplied as historical aliases in a footnote. Sambandar works them into the architecture of the hymn. Naming the place becomes an act of praise.

The same instinct appears in 2.39, the Tirukshetrakkovai, which gathers many sacred places into one composition. The shrine-map itself can become song.

✦The world is not outside worship

Flowers, rivers, fields, bees, groves, moon, Ganga, planets, poison, illness and fear all enter Tirumurai 2. Sambandar does not first empty the world in order to find Siva. He sings Siva through the world while insisting that none of its threatening powers is ultimate.

The result is neither nature poetry alone nor doctrine set to metre. It is worship that gathers what the devotee actually sees and fears and brings it before the Lord.

Tirumurai 2 lives in temple singing and household recitation, with the Kolaru and Tiruneetru pathigams especially used as prayers of trust and Saiva identity.

✦In temple and home

As part of the Tevaram, Tirumurai 2 belongs to the living repertoire of Oduvar recitation and to Tirumurai study. Individual pathigams also travel beyond their original shrine context into household prayer.

The Kolaru Pathigam, 2.85, is widely recited by devotees when they are anxious about planetary influence, an unfavourable time, travel or an undertaking. In that practice, the hymn is received as a prayer for protection. Its own first verse places the reason for confidence in Siva's presence within the heart, not in a promise that every event will follow the devotee's preference.

The Tiruneetru Pathigam, 2.66, is recited in connection with sacred ash and with prayer for well-being. Its Madurai healing story gives that use a traditional setting. The practice expresses faith; it should not be stated as a guaranteed cure.

✦A way to read these hymns now

1. 1

   Read

   Begin with the Tamil and identify the shrine, pann and repeated words.

2. 2

   Hear

   Listen to an Oduvar or a careful Tirumurai teacher where a traditional rendition is available.

3. 3

   Remember

   Learn one verse accurately rather than many approximately.

4. 4

   Pray

   Use the hymn as address to Siva, allowing its own images and claims to guide the prayer.

The formal hymns ask for another kind of attention. With 2.73 and 2.74, part of the craft lies in the layout: read them slowly with the lines set out, as well as hearing them sung.

Tirukkedaram (2.114) and Kedarnath among the twelve shrines of light: The Jyotirlingas and the Himalayan shrines.

Tiru Anaikka (2.23), the water shrine among the five: The Pancha Bhoota Sthalams.

Read Tirumurai 2 from a complete Tamil text, use the IFP/PIFI index for its pann structure, and return to Tirumurai 1 for Sambandar's life and the common architecture of his pathigams.

✦Primary text and structure

Shaivam.org's complete Second Tirumurai text gives the 122 pathigams and 1,331 verses in sequence. Its individual hymn pages are useful for checking shrine and pann labels, including 2.66 and 2.85.

The French Institute of Pondicherry digital Tevaram index, based on the PIFI Tevaram edition, sets out the six pann groups with their hymn ranges.

Tamil Virtual Academy's survey of Sambandar gives the volume's totals and its shrines.

✦Read beside the first and third volumes

For Sambandar's traditional life, historical dating, the meaning of Tirukkadaikkappu, the common pathigam pattern and an introduction to his picture-poems, begin with Tirumurai 1.

Then continue to Tirumurai 3, the third and final Sambandar volume. Appar follows in Tirumurai 4, and Sundarar completes the Tevaram in Tirumurai 7.

✦Follow four hymns closely

A useful path through this volume is to read four complete pathigams rather than isolated famous verses:

• 2.18, Tirumarugal — grief carried into prayer.
• 2.66, Tirualavai — sacred ash as the repeated centre of the hymn.
• 2.73 and 2.74, Sirkazhi — formal craft built from sacred names.
• 2.85, Kolaru Pathigam — trust in Siva before feared cosmic influences.