Tirumurai 9: Tiruvisaippa and Tiruppallandu

Tirumurai 9 is a small Chola-age anthology with a wide reach: twenty-eight Tiruvisaippa pathigams by nine poets, then Senthanar's thirteen-verse Tiruppallandu as the final blessing.

✦Two works, one sacred book

Tiruvisaippa and Tiruppallandu are distinct works, but they stand together as the Ninth Tirumurai. The Tiruvisaippa portion runs from 9.001 to 9.028. Senthanar's Tiruppallandu, 9.029 at Koyil, Tillai, follows as the closing pathigam.

The received sequence counted below contains 301 verses in all: 288 in Tiruvisaippa and 13 in Tiruppallandu. Fifteen of the twenty-eight Tiruvisaippa pathigams are for Koyil, the customary Saiva name for Tillai Chidambaram; Tiruppallandu is for Koyil too. The Golden Hall therefore holds the book together even while the poets move through other shrines.

✦Not Tevaram, yet in its wake

The Tiruvisaippa poets come after the three Tevaram poets in time. Their poems retain familiar features: named shrines, pann, direct address to Siva, the company of devotees, temple streets, festivals, the dancing Lord and the repeated movement from outward worship to inward experience.

Yet their world is recognisably later. A Chola king himself sings in 9.020 at Koyil. Karuvur Thevar sings temples tied to Rajaraja I and Rajendra I in 9.016 at Tanjai Rajarajesvaram and 9.013 at Gangaikondacholesvaram. Tiruvisaippa is therefore not an appendix to the Tevaram. It is evidence that the Tevaram way of singing a Lord in a place continued into another historical landscape.

The nine Tiruvisaippa poets are not one school gathered around one teacher; they are a Chola-age company joined by song, shrine and canon, with Senthanar appearing again as the poet of Tiruppallandu.

✦The lives remembered

The life stories below are told as Tamil Saiva tradition remembers them in later author histories and, for Senthanar at Tillai, in Tillai Perunkoyil Varalaru. Where the poems, royal chronology or inscriptions give a firmer historical foothold, that is stated separately.

✦Tirumaligai Thevar · திருமாளிகைத் தேவர்

Tirumaligai Thevar has four pathigams, 9.001–9.004, all at Koyil, Tillai. Later accounts connect him with Tiruvavaduthurai, an ascetic life and instruction from the siddhar Bogar. Stories of yogic powers surround his name, but the poems themselves are the secure centre of what remains. His exact date is uncertain; he belongs to the earlier part of the Chola-age group preserved in this Tirumurai.

✦Senthanar · சேந்தனார்

Senthanar has three Tiruvisaippa pathigams: 9.005 at Tiruvizhimizhalai, 9.006 at Tiruvavaduthurai and 9.007 at Tiruvidaikkazhi. He then returns at the end of the volume with Tiruppallandu, 9.029 at Koyil, Tillai. He is usually placed in the 10th century, though attempts to narrow the date further remain uncertain.

His remembered life begins near Tiruvenkadu at Nangur. He is said to have served Pattinattu Adigal as a trusted accountant or chief clerk. After a dispute over wealth distributed from his master's treasury, he was imprisoned and later released. He then came with his family to Tillai, lived by cutting and selling firewood, and made a discipline of feeding a devotee of Siva each day before eating himself.

One day, the story says, Siva came as an elderly devotee and ate the simple kali Senthanar had prepared. Some of the food was carried away; traces of it were later seen in the Hall at Tillai. The point of the story is quiet: a poor household's food, given to an adiyar, reaches the Lord before whom the city worships.

The story lives on in worship. On Tiruvathirai, the festival of the Dancer in the month of Margazhi, kali is offered to Nataraja as naivedyam and shared as prasadam, the Tiruvathirai kali that Tamil Saiva homes still make on that morning. Senthanar's simple offering became the festival's own food.

✦The temple car and Tiruppallandu

At the Tiruvathirai festival in Tillai, the temple car became stuck and would not move. Senthanar was called to sing. He sang Tiruppallandu, 9.029 at Koyil, and the remembered account says the car moved to its place without being pulled.

The story does not make Tiruppallandu a command for moving a chariot. Its remembered setting fits the poem's own sound: a crowd, a festival, Tillai, devotees gathering, and blessing spoken aloud before Siva's dance.

Later accounts take Senthanar to Tiruvidaikkazhi, where his 9.007 at Tiruvidaikkazhi is addressed to Murugan. They also remember him as establishing a matha there and reaching Siva's feet on Thaipusam.

✦Karuvur Thevar · கருவூர்த் தேவர்

Karuvur Thevar contributes ten pathigams, 9.008–9.017, the largest share by one Tiruvisaippa poet. They are at Koyil (9.008), Tirukkalandai Adittesvaram (9.009), Tirukkilkkottur Maniyambalam (9.010), Tirumugattalai (9.011), Trailokkiya Sundaram (9.012), Gangaikondacholesvaram (9.013), Tiruppuvanam (9.014), Tirucchattiyakkudi (9.015), Tanjai Rajarajesvaram (9.016) and Tiruvidaimarudur (9.017).

Later accounts remember him as a siddhar from Karuvur and as a disciple of Bogar. The poems give firmer chronological ground. Rajarajesvaram at Thanjavur was consecrated in 1009–1010 CE, and the great Siva temple at Gangaikondacholapuram was completed in 1035 CE. Because Karuvur sings both, his surviving corpus reaches into the 11th century.

✦Poonthuruthi Nambi Kadanambi · பூந்துருத்தி நம்பி காடநம்பி

Poonthuruthi Nambi Kadanambi has two pathigams: 9.018 at Tiruvarur and 9.019 at Koyil, Tillai. Later accounts place him at Poonthuruthi near Tiruvaiyaru and describe him as learned in the Vedic tradition. His Koyil song preserves the pann Calarapani (சாளரபாணி), a melodic name not found among the Tevaram panns. An inscription from the reign of Rajadhiraja I may name the same Nambi Kadanambi, which would place him in the 11th century.

✦Kandaradittar · கண்டராதித்தர்

Kandaradittar has one pathigam, 9.020 at Koyil, Tillai. Unlike most poets in this book, he can be placed within a royal genealogy: he is the Chola king Kandaraditya, son of Parantaka I and husband of Sembiyan Mahadevi, ruling in the mid-10th century, about 950–957 CE. His presence gives Tirumurai 9 a rare combination: royal power and the voice of a worshipper standing before Tillai's dancer in the same person.

✦Venattadigal · வேணாட்டடிகள்

Venattadigal has one pathigam, 9.021 at Koyil, Tillai. His name links him with Venadu, and later accounts remember him as one who left a ruling family for the religious life. History gives us much less: neither his personal name nor a firm date has been recovered. The one surviving pathigam is therefore more certain than the biography around it.

✦Tiruvaliyamudanar · திருவாலியமுதனார்

Tiruvaliyamudanar has four pathigams, 9.022–9.025, all at Koyil, Tillai. Later accounts connect his name with Mayilai and remember a Brahmin family background in which Vishnu was honoured before his own devotion turned strongly toward Siva. Which Mayilai is meant, and how precisely he can be dated, remain unsettled. His four Tillai songs, however, place him firmly inside the Ninth Tirumurai's Chidambaram centre.

✦Purushottama Nambi · புருடோத்தம நம்பி

Purushottama Nambi has two pathigams, 9.026–9.027, both at Koyil, Tillai. His poems present a learned devotional voice, and later accounts remember him as a man trained in the Vedas. Beyond this, little biography survives. He is generally placed somewhere in the 10th–11th-century span of the anthology.

✦Sethirayar · சேதிராயர்

Sethirayar closes the Tiruvisaippa poets with one pathigam, 9.028 at Koyil, Tillai. His name is a ruling title connected with Sethi country and the Malaiyaman sphere. The poem itself supports the image of a ruler-poet, but the exact historical Sethirayar represented by the name is uncertain. After his pathigam, Senthanar's Tiruppallandu completes the Tirumurai.

✦Several Chola generations in one book

The poets cannot all be compressed into one decade. Kandaradittar anchors one point in the mid-10th century. Karuvur Thevar anchors another after the building of the great temples at Thanjavur and Gangaikondacholapuram. Between them stand poets whose lives are much less securely dated.

That unevenness is part of the historical value of the collection. Tirumurai 9 is not a court anthology with biographies neatly recorded. It is a sacred anthology in which some names touch inscriptions and royal chronology while others survive mainly because their songs continued to be sung.

Senthanar · All the poets and teachers ›

The Ninth Tirumurai moves through twenty-eight Tiruvisaippa pathigams arranged by nine poets, then ends with Senthanar's thirteen-verse Tiruppallandu as 9.029.

✦The twenty-nine pathigams

The numbering below uses one continuous sequence, 9.001–9.029. The first twenty-eight are Tiruvisaippa. The last is Tiruppallandu.

The pathigam count is therefore 4 + 3 + 10 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 28 for Tiruvisaippa. Senthanar's Tiruppallandu makes the twenty-ninth pathigam of the volume.

✦Tillai and the wider shrine map

The concentration on Tillai is strong: sixteen of the twenty-nine pathigams are for Koyil when Tiruppallandu is included. But the other thirteen matter historically. They carry the Ninth Tirumurai through the Kaveri region and into temples that entered Tamil sacred song later than the classic Tevaram shrine map.

One pathigam is also unusual in its deity. Senthanar's 9.007 at Tiruvidaikkazhi is sung to Murugan, the son of Siva and Uma. The remaining structure is overwhelmingly Siva-centred.

✦Music carried forward

The poems remain tied to pann, as the Tevaram hymns are. Six panns are represented in the volume. Calarapani in Poonthuruthi Nambi Kadanambi's 9.019 at Koyil is particularly noteworthy because that pann name does not occur in the Tevaram corpus.

Tiruvisaippa continues the shrine-centred song of the Tevaram into the Chola centuries, where old sacred centres and newly monumental temples are heard in the same canon.

✦The Lord beyond thought, tasted within

Tirumaligai Thevar opens the entire work at Tillai by moving between what cannot be contained by thought and what is intimately tasted in the heart.

The two directions belong together. Siva is not reduced to something the mind can hold as an object, yet He is not remote. The same verse calls Him honey tasted in the mind and fruit ripening in a loving heart. Later Saiva Siddhanta will state the relation of Pati and Pasu in technical language. Tiruvisaippa gives the relation a singer's language: beyond ordinary knowing, yet present enough to transform the one who sings.

✦A temple newly built, a devotion already inward

Karuvur Thevar's 9.013 at Gangaikondacholesvaram stands before a temple completed under Rajendra I in 1035. Yet the first verse does not stop at the building. It turns immediately to the wonder that the immeasurable Lord enters one human mind.

The new imperial temple and the intimate heart are not rivals. The larger the sacred building becomes, the sharper the poem makes the contrast: the One whom Brahma and Vishnu cannot reach chooses to enter the singer's mind. Grace is heard as initiative from Siva, not as an achievement by the devotee.

✦Thanjavur enters Tirumurai song

Karuvur's 9.016 at Tanjai Rajarajesvaram names the temple built by Rajaraja I and consecrated in 1009–1010. The opening verse lets the scale of the place enter the poetry.

This is one reason the Ninth Tirumurai matters historically. The Tevaram had already made the Tamil temple landscape singable. Tiruvisaippa carries that practice into a period when Chola builders were changing the physical scale of temples. Karuvur does not replace devotion with architecture. He lets the new architecture become another way the devotee encounters the Lord.

✦Continuity without sameness

Tiruvisaippa therefore continues Tevaram song without pretending to be another Tevaram. The scale is smaller: twenty-eight pathigams rather than hundreds. The authorship is scattered across nine poets. Some poets are known only faintly. Yet shrine, pann, service, inward grace and Tillai's dance remain recognisable.

At the same time, the book records a different Tamil Saiva moment: a Chola king among the poets, new temple foundations, new combinations of literary voice, and a corpus in which a Murugan pathigam, 9.007 at Tiruvidaikkazhi, can stand within the same Tirumurai.

Senthanar's Tiruppallandu blesses Tillai, Siva and His devotees with pallandu, not because the eternal Lord needs protection, but because devotion overflows into blessing.

✦“Many years, many years”

Pallandu means “many years”, an utterance of enduring well-being. Repeated in worship, it has the feeling of pallandu, pallandu: may this endure, may this flourish. Senthanar's own first line in 9.029.1 at Koyil begins not with that repeated phrase but with “மன்னுக தில்லை”, “may Tillai endure”. Every verse then comes to rest in the act of saying pallandu.

The first blessing spreads in circles: Tillai, the devotees, the world, the servants who receive grace, and finally the Lord Himself. It also states what grace does: Siva gives a path by which repeated birth is cut.

✦Blessing the One who already is

The second verse calls the devotees to gather and serve Siva generation after generation, then describes Him as the reality beyond the cosmos, the flood of boundless bliss, the One who was, is and always will be.

There is no doctrinal suggestion that Siva's life is fragile. The verse says the opposite: He was, is and always will be. The blessing belongs to the devotee's relation to Him.

Senthanar makes the paradox explicit a little later.

The last two lines are the key. Siva has passed beyond the very measure implied by “many years”, and still the devotee says “many years”. The blessing does not add time to the timeless Lord. It reveals love that cannot remain merely descriptive.

✦Why a blessing belongs at a threshold

A mangala blessing suits both beginning and completion. At the beginning, 9.029.1 at Koyil asks Tillai and the devotees to flourish and gathers the community before Siva. At the end, the repeated pallandu lets worship close not with the self but with blessing: for the sacred place, the Lord and those who serve Him.

In some Tirumurai gatherings, Tiruppallandu is used as a mangala song at the opening or the close. The more widely documented temple pattern is Panchapuranam, where one selection each from Tevaram, Tiruvasagam, Tiruvisaippa, Tiruppallandu and Periya Puranam is sung in that order.

Tirumurai 9 remains sung scripture: Tiruvisaippa and Tiruppallandu each have their own place in Panchapuranam, and Senthanar's “Mannuga Tillai” continues to be taught in pannisai and temple recitation.

✦Two places inside Panchapuranam

A common shortened form of Tirumurai recitation is Panchapuranam. When there is not time to sing a larger body of hymns, the sequence takes one song from each of five parts of the canon:

1. 1

   Tevaram

   one song from Tirumurai 1–7

2. 2

   Tiruvasagam

   one song from Tirumurai 8

3. 3

   Tiruvisaippa

   one song from the first work of Tirumurai 9

4. 4

   Tiruppallandu

   one song from Senthanar's 9.029 at Koyil

5. 5

   Periya Puranam

   one verse from Tirumurai 12

This arrangement gives the Ninth Tirumurai two distinct places, not one. Tiruvisaippa is heard as Tiruvisaippa; Tiruppallandu follows in its own right. That separation in living recitation mirrors the two-work shape of the book itself.

✦The Oduvar's voice

The Ninth Tirumurai belongs to the repertoire of the Oduvar, the temple singer who carries Tirumurai in pann. Modern pannisai teaching continues to include Tiruvisaippa and Tiruppallandu, and 9.029 at Koyil, beginning “Mannuga Tillai”, remains a standard choice for the Tiruppallandu portion of Panchapuranam.

The practice also preserves something that silent reading can hide. A poem marked with a pann is not merely a paragraph with line breaks. It has been received as something to be voiced before a deity, in a temple, among other acts of worship.

✦At festivals and in the temple street

Tirumurai recitation also accompanies temple processions. In the inherited order, Tamil sacred song can go before the deity in procession while Vedic recitation follows. Tiruppallandu's remembered temple-car setting at Tillai therefore belongs to a world that is still intelligible: sacred text is not only read in a room; it moves with festival, street, vehicle, music and gathered devotees.

The chariot story remains a sacred memory, not a mechanical promise that a particular song will alter a physical event. What continues without difficulty is the act Senthanar's poem itself asks for: devotees gather, serve and utter blessing.

✦Beginning and ending with blessing

Where local custom uses Tiruppallandu at the beginning or completion of a Tirumurai service, its place is mangala rather than explanatory. It does not summarise all twelve Tirumurais. It gives the gathering a final orientation: may the sacred place endure, may devotees flourish, and may the timeless Lord be blessed with the words that love knows how to speak.

Read the Ninth Tirumurai with its Tamil text, the remembered lives of the nine poets and the dated Chola temples that give parts of the anthology a firm historical setting.

✦The Tamil text

Project Madurai's Ninth Tirumurai e-text gives the continuous 301-verse sequence and the numbering followed above, with Tiruvisaippa followed by Senthanar's thirteen-verse Tiruppallandu.

Shaivam.org's Ninth Tirumurai pages provide individual pathigam pages with poet, pann and shrine information. The pages for Tirumaligai Thevar's 9.001 at Koyil, Karuvur Thevar's 9.013 at Gangaikondacholesvaram, 9.016 at Tanjai Rajarajesvaram and Senthanar's 9.029 at Koyil are useful companions to the verses quoted above.

✦The poets and the shape of the book

Tamil Virtual Academy's course material on the Ninth Tirumurai gives the nine-poet list, the 28 plus 1 pathigam structure, the distribution of Tiruvisaippa pathigams by poet and shrine, and its note on the six panns.

The individual author histories on Shaivam.org preserve later accounts of Tirumaligai Thevar, Senthanar, Karuvur Thevar, Poonthuruthi Nambi Kadanambi, Kandaradittar, Venattadigal, Tiruvaliyamudanar, Purushottama Nambi and Sethirayar. These are most useful when read with a distinction between sacred biography and independently datable history.

For Senthanar's place in the remembered history of Tillai, Project Madurai's e-text of Tillai Perunkoyil Varalaru includes the feeding story and the temple-car account connected with Tiruppallandu.

✦Chola history in stone and song

The UNESCO account of the Great Living Chola Temples dates Rajaraja I's consecration of the Thanjavur Brihadisvara temple to 1009–1010 and the completion of Rajendra I's Gangaikondacholapuram temple to 1035. Those dates provide firm historical boundaries for Karuvur Thevar's 9.016 at Tanjai Rajarajesvaram and 9.013 at Gangaikondacholesvaram.

The DHARMA South Indian Inscriptions record for Konerirajapuram identifies Sembiyan Mahadevi as the dowager queen of Gandaradittan and records a stone temple established in his name, giving inscriptional support to the royal setting around Kandaradittar.

✦Tirumurai in worship

Tamil Virtual Academy's account of Tirumurai practice describes Panchapuranam as a five-part recitation containing Tevaram, Tiruvasagam, Tiruvisaippa, Tiruppallandu and Periya Puranam, and also notes the place of Tirumurai recitation in temple processions.

Continue backward to Tirumurai 8 for Manikkavasagar's Tiruvasagam and Tirukkovaiyar. Continue forward to Tirumurai 10 for Tirumular's Tirumantiram, where devotional song gives way to a long work of yoga, mantra, ethics and Siddhanta teaching.