Thirugnana Sambandar: The Three Year Old Who Sang First

What he wrote. Books one, two and three of the Tirumurai.

• 384 pathigams survive, around 4000 verses
• Tradition holds he composed over ten thousand and that most is lost
• All composed between the ages of three and sixteen

His style. Distinct from Appar's, and the contrast is the standard way the tradition describes them.

• Formally brilliant. He uses very demanding metres, internal rhyme schemes, and structural constraints
• Learned. The hymns show command of the Vedic material, the Puranic stories and the Tamil poetic tradition
• Confident. Where Appar dwells on unworthiness, Sambandar is assured
• Musical. His pathigams are set in the panns and were composed to be sung with the cymbals

The formal experiments. He composed several kinds of pathigam that are technical showpieces.

• The Thiruvirukkukkural, in which each verse is a Tamil kural couplet followed by a Vedic mantra reference
• Yamaka pathigams, using elaborate sound repetition
• Malai maatru, verses that read the same forward and backward
• Ezhu koorrirukkai, the chariot shaped pattern poem, in which the verse laid out in a grid forms the figure of a chariot

The chariot poem. Worth noting because Vedanta Desika did the same thing centuries later in Sanskrit, described in an earlier entry.

The chitra kavya tradition, poems constructed to form pictures or to read in multiple directions, runs through both Tamil and Sanskrit literature, and Sambandar is one of its earliest accomplished practitioners.

A boy doing this. The tradition is entirely aware of the oddity.

These are technically demanding compositions in classical Tamil, on doctrinal subjects, by somebody the tradition insists was a child throughout.

That claim is what the milk story exists to establish: the knowledge did not come from study, so age is not an objection.

A note for a modern reader. What can and cannot be said.

• The hymns exist and their technical quality is verifiable
• That they were composed by a child between three and sixteen is what the tradition holds, and it is not the kind of claim history can confirm
• Historians generally place him in the seventh century and treat the biography as hagiography over a historical core
• None of that affects the verses

The temples. Sambandar sang a very large number of the Paadal Petra Sthalams.

He travelled widely across the Tamil country, and by tradition was carried in a palanquin or on shoulders for much of it, being a child.

His pathigams name the temples, describe their setting, and are frequently the earliest surviving reference to them, which makes the Tevaram a source for the history of these sites.

The healing hymns. Several of his pathigams are traditionally recited for specific purposes.

• The Kolaru Pathigam, which is recited for protection and relief from difficulty, and is one of the most widely used hymns in Tamil Shaivism
• Hymns associated with relief from fever and from snakebite
• The Thiruneelakanta pathigam

On healing hymns. The same caution as with Appar's illness, and it is worth repeating.

Reciting a hymn during illness is a reasonable practice and it comforts people. It is not treatment, and no responsible reading of the tradition suggests it is.

If somebody is ill, they need a doctor. If somebody has been bitten by a snake, they need to get to a hospital immediately, because antivenom exists and delay kills. Recite whatever you like in the vehicle on the way.

The most consequential episode of Sambandar's life is also the most difficult, and it must be described accurately.

The setting:

• The Pandya king at Madurai, called Koon Pandiyan or Nedumaran, was a Jain
• His queen, Mangayarkkarasiyar, was a Shaiva
• His minister, Kulachirai, was also a Shaiva
• Both the queen and the minister are themselves counted among the sixty three Nayanars
• The queen sent for Sambandar

What is recorded:

• Sambandar came to Madurai as a boy
• The Jain community opposed his presence
• A series of contests followed, culminating in two ordeals
• The fire ordeal: each side's palm leaf was placed in fire, and the leaf bearing Sambandar's verse did not burn
• The water ordeal: leaves were placed in the Vaigai river, and Sambandar's went upstream while the others were carried away
• The king converted to Shaivism
• The king's hunched back, from which he was called Koon Pandiyan, was straightened, and he was thereafter called Ninra Seer Nedumaran

And then the part that must be stated.

The Periya Puranam and the later tradition record that the defeated Jains, by the terms of the contest, were impaled, and the number is given as eight thousand.

How to handle this. Directly.

What can be said about the historicity:

• The episode appears in the Periya Puranam, a twelfth century text, about seventh century events
• The number eight thousand is the kind of figure that is conventional rather than counted
• Many scholars regard the impalement as a later elaboration rather than a record of an event
• Sambandar's own hymns do not describe it
• There is no independent corroboration
• The decline of Jainism in the Tamil country was a long process with many causes, principally the loss of royal patronage and the appeal of the bhakti movements, rather than a single massacre

What must be said regardless of historicity:

• It is in the tradition's own text
• It is depicted in sculpture and painting at some temples, including at Madurai
• It is, in some places, commemorated
• Tamil Jain communities regard it as a record of the persecution of their community, and that is a reasonable position for them to hold

The plain statement. Celebrating the killing of eight thousand people is not devotion, in the seventh century or the twelfth or now.

A person who loves the Tevaram, which is one of the great bodies of religious poetry in any language, can say that clearly.

The hymns themselves are about Shiva, about the temples, about the poet's state and about the five syllables. The polemical verses against Jains and Buddhists exist and are a small part of the corpus, and the impalement is not in them; it is in the hagiography.

What a devotee should do:

• Know the episode and what is and is not established about it
• Do not repeat it as a triumph
• Do not use it in relation to living communities
• If you see it depicted, understand what you are looking at

Tamil Jainism now. Worth ending on, since it is the community concerned.

• A continuing community, the Samanar, small in number
• Ancient sites including Sittanavasal with its cave paintings, the Samanar hills near Madurai with rock beds and Tamil Brahmi inscriptions, Kazhugumalai, and Thirumalai in Tiruvannamalai district
• Some of the earliest Tamil Brahmi inscriptions anywhere are Jain, at these sites
• The Jain contribution to Tamil literature is substantial and includes the Silappadikaram's companion Jivaka Chintamani and, by many accounts, works of the Sangam and post Sangam period

Those sites are worth visiting. They are older than most of the temples in this series, they are quiet, and they are part of the same landscape.

Two of the sixty three Nayanars are the people who brought Sambandar to Madurai, and both deserve their own account.

Mangayarkkarasiyar:

• A Chola princess, married to the Pandya king at Madurai
• A Shaiva in a court that had become Jain
• She maintained her practice, alone in that position, for years
• She corresponded with the Shaiva community and eventually sent for Sambandar
• She is counted among the sixty three Nayanars
• Her name means the queen of women

Her position. It is worth thinking about.

She was a queen consort in a court whose religion had changed, holding a practice her husband's establishment did not share, without the ability to change the situation directly.

What she did was maintain the practice, keep contact with others who shared it, and wait for an opportunity.

Kulachirai Nayanar:

• The Pandya minister
• Also a Shaiva
• Counted among the sixty three
• He and the queen acted together in bringing Sambandar

Why they are in the canon. Neither composed hymns. Neither performed austerities. Neither renounced anything.

They are in the list of sixty three saints for maintaining a practice in an unsupportive environment and for arranging things.

That is a category of sanctity worth noticing, and it is unusually practical.

Other Nayanars of the same kind. The sixty three include a considerable number of people whose sanctity is administrative or occupational.

• Kotpuli, a military officer
• Idangazhi, a chieftain
• Pugazh Chola, Kochengat Chola, Ninra Seer Nedumaran, all rulers
• Amaraneedi, a merchant
• Nesa, a weaver
• Athipathar, a fisherman
• Naminandi Adigal, who lit temple lamps
• Chandeshwara, a cowherd boy

What most of them did was their own work, in a way connected to service of Shiva.

Naminandi Adigal. His story is worth one line because it makes the point.

He went to get ghee to light the lamps at the temple at Thiruvarur and was told, in an area where the residents were Jains, that he would not get ghee but there was water in the tank.

So he took water and lit the lamps with it, and they burned.

That is what put him among the sixty three: he lit the lamps with what was available.

The general shape of the sixty three. Worth stating, because it is the list's own argument.

The qualification is not renunciation, learning or miracle working. It is doing the thing you actually do, with Shiva as the reference point, to the point where it costs you something.

A potter made pots. A weaver wove. A fisherman fished. A washerman washed. A king ruled. A queen kept her practice in a hostile court.

And the tradition put all of them in the same list and carries them through the streets of Mylapore on the same day, once a year.

Sambandar's end is unlike any other in the tradition, and it is worth describing.

What happened:

• At around sixteen, his family arranged his marriage
• The bride was the daughter of a devotee at Nallur Perumanam, near Achalpuram in Mayiladuthurai district
• The wedding was performed
• A very large gathering had come: family, the wedding party, the whole community, and those who had followed him
• After the ceremony, Sambandar went to the temple
• He sang the hymn beginning Kallur Perumanam
• A light appeared in the sanctum
• He asked everybody present to enter it with him
• And by the tradition, the entire wedding party, including the bride, entered the light and were not seen again

How to describe this. Carefully, because it is a story about a young man's death on his wedding day and a mass disappearance.

What the tradition holds: that he attained union with Shiva and that he took everybody present with him, because he would not go alone.

The detail that matters: he did not go by himself. The tradition is specific that he called everyone, and that the reason he did so was that he did not want to leave anybody behind.

What it is not. It should be said, because the story has a shape that can be misread.

This is a hagiographic account of a saint's attainment. It is not a model, it does not endorse anything, and no tradition anywhere reads it as an instruction.

If reading it produces any thought about your own life ending, that is a signal to talk to somebody. Tele MANAS is 14416 in India, free, in many languages, and it is answered by people trained for exactly that conversation. Nothing in any devotional tradition asks a person to leave.

Where it is placed:

• Nallur Perumanam, near Achalpuram, in Mayiladuthurai district
• The temple is Sivalokanathar
• It is one of the Paadal Petra Sthalams
• The site is visited and the event is commemorated there

His age. Sixteen, by the traditional account. He had composed for thirteen years.

The four samayacharyas together. Since this batch covers all of them, the contrast is worth setting out once.

• Sambandar: a child, learned, confident, formally brilliant, dead at sixteen
• Appar: an older convert, personal, self accusing, a lifetime of manual service, dead at eighty one
• Sundarar: a householder, familiar, quarrelsome, on intimate and argumentative terms with Shiva
• Manikkavachakar: a minister who left everything, and the most interior of the four

They met. Sambandar and Appar met and travelled together, and it is Sambandar who called the older man Appar, father.

That detail, a boy of eight or so addressing a man of seventy as father and the name sticking for fourteen hundred years, is one of the better things in the tradition.

And the reverse. Appar, the older man, is recorded as having carried Sambandar's palanquin, or as having wanted to, out of regard.

So the tradition has the seventy year old ex Jain monk who survived a lime kiln wanting to carry the eight year old, and the eight year old calling him father.

Places

Sirkazhi:

• In Mayiladuthurai district, his birthplace
• The Sattainathar or Brahmapureeswarar temple
• The tank where the milk story is placed
• The temple has three levels with three principal forms, which is unusual
• The Thoniappar shrine

Madurai:

• The Meenakshi Amman temple
• The Vaigai river, where the water ordeal is placed
• The Golden Lotus tank
• The Nayanar shrines

Nallur Perumanam, Achalpuram:

• Near Sirkazhi in Mayiladuthurai district
• The Sivalokanathar temple, where his end is placed

Chidambaram:

• Where the Tevaram was recovered
• The four samayacharyas have shrines

Mylapore, Chennai:

• The Arupathimoovar festival in Panguni, March or April, when all sixty three Nayanars are taken in procession
• The best single occasion to see the whole group

Practice

The Kolaru Pathigam:

• Sambandar's hymn recited for protection and relief from difficulty
• One of the most widely used Shaiva hymns in Tamil Nadu
• Eleven verses
• Available with text, translation and recordings

Namah Shivaya:

• The five syllables, the constant subject of the Tevaram
• No initiation needed for the basic form
• Any time

The first Tevaram verse:

• Thodudaiya Seviyan, the hymn the child sang
• It is the first item of the entire Tamil Shaiva canon
• It is short and is the natural place to begin with the Tevaram

Listening:

• Oduvar recordings, which give the panns
• Tevaram recitation at any major Tamil Shiva temple
• The Tirumurai is available in full in Tamil with translation, in print and online

On the panns. Since they keep coming up.

The Tevaram hymns each carry a pann designation, the old Tamil melodic mode. Several panns are identified with modern Carnatic ragas, several are lost, and reconstruction work continues.

The Oduvar tradition is the living link. If you hear Tevaram sung by an Oduvar rather than played from a recording, you are hearing a transmission that goes back to the recovery under the Cholas.

A closing thought. A three year old was left by a temple tank while his father bathed, got frightened, cried for his mother, and was fed.

When his father came back and demanded to know who had given a small child food from an unknown hand, the child could not explain in ordinary words.

So he pointed at the sky and sang eleven verses, and that is the first thing in a canon of twelve books that has been recited daily for fourteen hundred years.

He was given cymbals afterward because he could not keep time on his own.