Tirumurai 5: Tevaram of Appar

Tirumurai 5 is Appar's book of compact Tirukkurunthogai: one hundred pathigams in which short lines carry temple devotion, inward remembrance, ordinary household images and the certainty of belonging to Siva.

✦The middle Appar volume

Tirumurai 4 tells Appar's full life and introduces the four verse forms associated with his surviving Tevaram. Tirumurai 1 explains the pathigam, pann and the Tevaram as a whole. Tirumurai 5 can therefore begin with what is its own: every pathigam in the book is cast in Tirukkurunthogai.

The change in form changes the pace. Tirumurai 4 can unfold in broad Tirunerisai and Tiruviruttam lines. Tirumurai 5 repeatedly closes a thought within four compact lines. Appar can place two familiar things side by side, turn them toward Siva and finish before the image has time to become abstract.

✦The book's scale

The volume holds 100 pathigams and 1,015 verses, sung at 76 shrines.

Appar's full life belongs with Tirumurai 4; this volume preserves a hymn remembered from the lime kiln and another that speaks with the remembered force of the elephant trial.

Tradition remembers Appar as Marulneekkiyar of Tiruvamur, brother of Tilakavathiyar, a man who spent years as the Jain monk Dharmasena, returned to Siva at Tiruvathigai during severe illness, endured royal trials, received the name Appar from Sambandar, served temples with his own hands, travelled among shrines, received the Kailasa vision at Tiruvaiyaru and finally reached Siva at Tiruppugalur. His Jain teachers and companions belonged to many serious years of his life; his later disagreement with their path does not erase that history. The full sacred biography and the historical dating are told in Tirumurai 4.

✦The lime kiln and 5.90

One trial belongs directly beside a hymn in this volume. The Periya Puranam says the Pallava king had Appar shut inside a burning lime kiln. The sacred biography remembers him there singing the pathigam now numbered 5.90 at Pothu, a general Tani Tirukkurunthogai. Its opening does not describe heat. It describes shade.

The images are all cooling or easing images: music, moonlight, breeze, a season opening into warmth without oppression, a pond alive with bees. The story places those words inside the kiln. Whether read through that story or simply as a hymn, the centre is the same: the feet of Siva are shelter.

✦The elephant remembered in 5.91

The next general hymn, 5.91 at Pothu, contains a verse about a killing elephant and the people who belong to Siva. Traditional commentary hears Appar's own remembered elephant trial behind 5.91.5 at Pothu. Tirumurai 4 tells the trial itself; Tirumurai 5 turns that memory into a statement addressed to everyone.

Tirunavukkarasar (Appar) · All the poets and teachers ›

All one hundred pathigams use the compact Tirukkurunthogai form: four short lines, four metrical units in each line, arranged first through shrine hymns and then through twelve general pathigams.

✦What Tirukkurunthogai means in this book

The name Tirukkurunthogai points to a short verse-form. Traditional accounts describe it as **four lines with four cir in each line. Later grammatical works classify the same pattern as kaliviruttam**. The Fifth Tirumurai is gathered as one book because all its pathigams use this form.

The shortness is not merely visual. A Tirukkurunthogai verse tends to move in four measured steps. A statement can be set down in the first line, enlarged or balanced in the next two, and turned into prayer, recognition or a question in the fourth. Repeated sounds and parallel phrases become especially noticeable because the lines are close together.

The opening verse of the volume, at Tillai (5.1.1), shows the movement. Its first line says that the Little Hall of Tillai gives food, annam palikkum; the second, that it gives gold. The third turns from what the shrine gives outwardly to the longing growing within the singer. The fourth turns the whole verse into a question: will this birth be granted again? Four short lines have moved from sustenance, to wealth, to desire for Siva, to the value of human life. The Kadambur verse on the page "Known as His servant" moves in the same four steps.

✦The order of the hundred pathigams

The counts below follow the Tamil Virtual Academy account. The first 88 pathigams belong to named Siva shrines. The final 12 are general hymns, beginning with three Tani Tirukkurunthogai pathigams and then nine named groups.

The arrangement matters because the book changes its scale near the end. For eighty-eight pathigams Appar sings the Lord of named places. Then place-names recede and the last twelve gather themes that can be carried anywhere.

Appar makes difficult teaching tangible: Siva can be hidden like fire in wood and ghee in milk, and the devotee approaches through kinship, awareness and sustained inward work.

✦What ordinary things can teach

One of Appar's characteristic strengths is his trust in things people already know. Firewood has been stacked, split and kindled. Milk has been boiled, cooled and churned. A rope has been pulled tight. A churning rod has been held between the hands. He does not treat these as humble objects that must be left behind before theology begins. He lets them carry the theology.

The tenth verse of 5.90 is the clearest example in this volume.

The first half says hidden does not mean absent. Fire is not seen when we look at an unlit log, yet the wood can yield flame. Ghee is not visible when we look at milk, yet it can be brought forth through a process. Appar uses both images before telling the devotee what the corresponding work is.

The rod is uravu, kinship or relationship. The rope is unarvu, awareness. The Lord is not produced by churning, as though devotion manufactures Siva. The image says that what was hidden becomes manifest to the one who enters the relation and works with attention. In the language of Saiva Siddhanta, grace is not made by the soul; the soul becomes able to receive what it could not see clearly before.

✦The five senses in this volume

At Tirukkolampam, 5.64.1, Appar gives another compact image. The five senses are pictured as mockers whose desires people follow until they fall into a deep pit. Those who bow to the feet of the Dancer at Kolampam are called the clever ones because they do not simply follow wherever the five pull.

The image is not hatred of the senses. Appar's own hymns depend on seeing ash and moonlight, hearing music, smelling flowers and feeling the body bow. The issue is mastery: whether the senses serve worship or drag the person without direction.

✦Images that do not remain illustrations

Appar's comparisons usually turn back upon the person reading them. Firewood asks whether devotion has been kindled. Milk asks whether anything has been churned. The five senses ask who is leading whom. In 5.91.7 at Pothu, even a piece of fruit becomes a question: if people know how to receive and eat an ordinary fruit, can they recognise the fruit called the Lord when it is offered to them?

The objects are familiar. The demand they make is not casual.

Appar does not choose between outer temple and inner worship: at Tillai he sings the Lord of the Hall as the One who makes the remembering mind His temple.

✦Koyil outside and within

The second pathigam of the volume is again at Koyil, Tillai Chitrambalam. Its first verse begins with Siva's fierce elephant-skin form, then turns immediately inward.

Appar is standing within the poetry of a real sacred place, Tillai, yet says that Siva takes the mind of those who remember Him as a temple. The outer temple is not dismissed. The inward temple does not replace Chitrambalam. Each corrects a possible imbalance in the other.

Temple worship without remembrance can become movement without attention. Inward feeling without any relation to Siva's forms, devotees and places can become private mood. Appar holds both together: the Dancer is Lord of the Hall, and He dwells in the remembering mind.

A similar inward turn returns near the end of the book. 5.91.1 at Pothu, a general Tirukkurunthogai, calls Siva the One who has become a temple within the singer's own interior desire. The book moves from shrine to shrine for eighty-eight pathigams and still keeps asking what kind of place the heart has become.

✦Remembering in very small time

The final line uses tinai, the tiny millet grain, to make time feel small: not even for that little interval can the singer bear to forget. The image brings devotion out of special occasions. Remembrance is asked to continue between temple visits, between formal prayers, inside ordinary minutes.

Siva knew Appar as His servant, and so Appar came to know Siva as Lord; at Kadambur he divides the work between them: His duty is to bear me, mine is to serve.

✦“He knew me as His servant”

The eighth verse of 5.91 is only four lines, but the relationship turns twice inside them.

The verse begins with two strangers: the Lord who had not known Appar, and Appar who had not known the Lord. The important movement is in the last two lines. Appar does not present knowledge of Siva as an achievement he reached alone. The Lord's recognition comes first in the sentence. “He knew me as His servant.” The servant then knows Him as Lord.

That sequence fits Appar's remembered life. His return at Tiruvathigai is not told as a man solving his own religious problem and then offering the result to Siva. He is remembered as one taken back, named, sustained and set to service. Tirumurai 5 compresses that whole relation into four lines.

The word adiyar, “one at the feet”, belongs naturally beside this verse. So does Chariyai, the servant's path of temple service. Yet 5.91.8 reaches beneath any one task. Before sweeping a courtyard, carrying flowers or singing a pathigam, the devotee has to know whose servant he is.

✦His duty and mine

At Tirukkadambur, where the temple is built in the shape of a chariot, the karakkoyil, Appar sets the whole servant relation into four lines. Many devotees know its last line by heart.

The verse names two duties, kadan, and keeps them apart. His duty is to bear, to hold up, even this servant. Mine is to serve. Appar does not bargain between them. He does not say "I will serve so that He will hold me up." Each duty stands on its own. The holding is His to give; the serving is the servant's to do.

The last word is kidappathe: not "to stand", not "to work", but to lie there. It is the word for something placed and left, a stone in a courtyard, a lamp in its niche. The servant does not ask to be noticed, promoted or thanked. He asks only to remain where the work is.

This one line, என்கடன் பணிசெய்து கிடப்பதே, "my duty is to lie at His work, serving", has become the motto of Saiva service: it is written on temple walls and carried as the watchword of the uzhavarappani groups who clean temples today. It gathers the life told in Tirumurai 4, the hoe, the courtyards, the long roads, into one sentence.

✦Belonging without possession

To be Siva's servant is not to make Siva one's possession. The direction runs the other way. Appar belongs to the Lord. That loosens the demand to own the result, the praise and even the identity of “the one who served”.

Tirumurai 4 shows the bodily side of this in Appar's uzhavarappani, the clearing of temple grounds. Tirumurai 5 gives the inward sentence beneath that work: He knew me as His servant; I knew Him as Lord.

Appar's fearlessness does not depend on pretending that danger is unreal; it rests on the conviction that those who belong to Siva are not defined by what threatens them.

✦Mountain and elephant

A few verses before the servant verse, 5.91.5 addresses ordinary people directly.

The verse does not say that mountains never fall or elephants never kill. Its language is deliberately larger than ordinary safety. The question is what happens to the devotee's standing when danger arrives.

Traditional commentary hears Appar's own elephant trial behind the final line. In that story, the royal elephant sent against him does not destroy him. The hymn does not remain locked to the biography, though. Appar begins with manitharkal, “people”. He turns remembered danger into a teaching about steadfastness.

✦The same belonging, another form

Tirumurai 4 has Appar's famous language of fearlessness and the Namasivaya hymn of the stone cast into the sea. This volume does not need to repeat those scenes. The shorter Tirukkurunthogai form tightens the thought: mountain, steadiness, Lord, elephant. Four lines are enough.

Fearlessness in this sense is not bravado. Appar does not say “I am strong enough.” He says, in effect, “I am His.” That is the same relation expressed in 5.91.8, now tested by danger.

✦Not a promise of physical immunity

The sacred biography tells miraculous deliverance. Devotional practice receives those stories as signs of grace. They are not a general guarantee that a worshipper will escape every physical danger. The verse gives a posture of belonging and steadiness; ordinary care, judgement and responsibility remain part of life.

Tirumurai 5 lives through temple singing, remembered individual verses and daily recitation in which Appar's compact images make inward practice easy to carry into ordinary life.

✦Sung Tirukkurunthogai

Although Tirumurai 5 is organised by verse form rather than by a sequence of named panns, its hymns belong to the sung Tevaram tradition. Recordings of Tirukkurunthogai are sung today, commonly in the pann Indalam.

As part of the Tevaram, the volume belongs to Oduvar recitation and Tirumurai teaching. The compact verse makes a single stanza easy to carry in memory, but Appar's thought is fuller when the whole pathigam is learned rather than only its famous line.

✦“Masil vinaiyum”

5.90 at Pothu remains especially recognisable in devotional singing. The story hears its first verse from inside the lime kiln; devotees can use it as a prayer of shelter, placing themselves under the “shade” of Siva's feet.

That practice expresses trust. It does not promise that heat, illness or danger will change physically because the verse was recited. Appar's own image directs the mind first toward the Lord's feet and the quality of resting there.

The same pathigam gives another practice in 5.90.10 at Pothu. A devotee can take its four objects slowly: wood, fire, milk, ghee; then rod, rope and churning. The verse becomes a way to ask whether relationship and awareness are actually being brought into prayer.

✦A simple way to read one pathigam

1. 1

   Hear

   Listen to the Tamil as a sung Tirukkurunthogai and notice the four-line pulse.

2. 2

   Read

   Take one verse at a time and identify the ordinary object or action Appar uses.

3. 3

   Turn inward

   Ask what the image says about memory, relationship, service or fear.

4. 4

   Pray

   Let the verse become address to Siva rather than only an object of literary study.

Appar's bodily service remains part of the same devotional world. The practice of uzhavarappani and its link with Chariyai are treated more fully in Tirumurai 4.

Kachchi Ekambam (5.47, 5.48), the earth shrine with its sand linga: The Pancha Bhoota Sthalams.

Read Tirumurai 5 as one sustained experiment in the short Tirukkurunthogai line, moving from named shrines into the general hymns where Appar's inward language becomes especially concentrated.

✦Tamil text and form

The French Institute of Pondicherry Digital Tevaram gives the Fifth Tirumurai in the PIFI-based Tevaram text, with individual pathigams, shrine labels and vocal examples. Its discussion of musical types identifies all one hundred Fifth Tirumurai pathigams as Tirukkurunthogai.

Tamil Virtual Academy's account of Appar gives the volume totals and explains that the Fifth Tirumurai pathigams are all called Tirukkurunthogai. Its Fifth Tirumurai material also describes the form as four lines of four cir and sets out the 88 shrine pathigams followed by 12 general ones.

Shaivam.org's Fifth Tirumurai text is useful for reading the hymns continuously and for hearing individual pathigams in devotional use.

✦Read beside Appar's other two volumes

Begin with Tirumurai 4 for Appar's full life, his return from his Jain years, his service, the royal trials and the forms Tirunerisai and Tiruviruttam. Then continue to Tirumurai 6, where the short Tirukkurunthogai line gives way to the long movement of Tiruttandakam.

The three books are not three stages of a biography arranged in time. They are three received volumes of hymns, and their different verse forms give Appar's one devotional voice different kinds of room.