Thirumoolar
Encyclopedia
Tirumular was a Tamil
Tamil people
Tamil people , also called Tamils or Tamilians, are an ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, India and the north-eastern region of Sri Lanka. Historic and post 15th century emigrant communities are also found across the world, notably Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, Australia, Canada,...

 Shaivite mystic and writer, considered one of the sixty-three Nayanars
Nayanars
The Nayanars or Nayanmars were Shaivite devotional poets of Tamil Nadu, active between the fifth and the tenth centuries CE...

 and one of the 18 Siddhar
Siddhar
Siddhars are saints in India, mostly of the Saivaite denomination in Tamil Nadu, who professed and practised an unorthodox type of Sadhana, or spiritual practice, to attain liberation. Yogic powers called Siddhis are acquired by constant practice of certain yogic disciplines. Those who acquire...

s. His main work, the Tirumantiram (also sometimes written Tirumanthiram, Tirumandhiram, etc.), which consists of over 3000 verses, forms a part of the key text of the Tamil Shaiva Siddhanta
Shaiva Siddhanta
Considered normative tantric Saivism, Shaiva Siddhanta provides the normative rites, cosmology and theological categories of tantric Saivism. Being a dualistic philosophy, the goal of Shaiva Siddhanta is to become an ontologically distinct Shiva . This tradition was once practiced all over India...

, the Tirumurai
Tirumurai
The word Thirumurai literally means the sacred book. It is a compendium of songs or hymns in the praise of Shiva in the Tamil language...

.

Life

Legend has it that Tirumular was a travelling Shaiva saint and scholar from Kailash who used his yoga powers to transmigrate into the body of a southern cowherd, Mulan. He woke up from his yogic trance once a year and composed one verse until he attained salvation.

The dates of Tirumūlar's life are hotly contested and, because his work makes reference to so many currents of religious thought, the dates that different scholars assign are often appealed to for anchoring the relative chronology of other religious literature in Tamil and Sanskrit. Verse 74 of the Tirumantiram makes the claim that Tirumūlar lived for 7 aeons (yuga) before composing the Tirumantiram.Tirumantiram A Tamil scriptural Classic. By Tirumular. Tamil Text with English Translation and Notes, B. Natarajan. Madras, Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1991, p.12.
Some are therefore inclined to place his composition well before the Common Era. The scholar and lexicographer S. Vaiyapuripillai, however, suggested that he probably belonged to the beginning of the eighth-century AD, pointing out that Tirumūlar could not very well be placed earlier given that he appears to refer to the Tevaram
Tevaram
The Tevaram denotes the first seven volumes of the Tirumurai, the twelve-volume collection of Tamil Saivite devotional poetry. All seven volumes are dedicated to the works of the three most prominent Tamil poets - Campantar , Appar and Cuntarar...

hymns of Sambandar, Appar and Sundarar, that he used `very late words' and that he made mention of the weekdays.Vaiyapuripillai's History of Tamil Language and Literature (From the Beginning to 1000 A.D.), Madras, New Century Book House, 1988 (after the first edition of 1956), particularly footnote 1 on p.78.

Others wish to push the date still later: Dominic Goodall, for instance, appears to suggest, on the grounds of religious notions that appear in the work with Sanskrit labels for which a certain historical development can be traced in other datable works, that the Tirumantiram cannot be placed before the eleventh or twelfth century AD.See pp.xxix-xxx in a Preface (entitled Explanatory remarks about the Śaiva Siddhānta and its treatment in modern secondary literature) to The Parākhyatantra. A Scripture of the Śaiva Siddhānta, Dominic Goodall, Pondicherry, French Institute of Pondicherry and Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient, 2004. Yet another view, alluded to for instance by Vaiyapuripillai (ibid.), is that the text may contain an ancient core, but with "a good number of interpolated stanzas" of later date. Whatever the case, allusions to works and ideas in the Tirumantiram cannot, at least for the moment, be used as useful indicators of their chronology.

See also

  • Agastyar
  • Bogar
  • Thirumandhiram
    Thirumandhiram
    The Tirumantiram , is a Tamil poetic work written in the 5th CE by Tirumular and is the tenth of the twelve volumes of the Tirumurai, the key texts of Tamil Saivism. It is the first known Tamil work to use the term Shaiva Siddhanta and the earliest known exposition of the Saiva Agamas in Tamil...

  • Abithana Chintamani
    Abithana Chintamani
    Abithana Chitamani is an encyclopedia on Tamil Literature written by A. Singaravelu Mudaliar . It is said that this is the first encyclopedia on Tamil Literature. The first edition, which contains a recommendation dated 1899 by V. Kanakasabai Pillai, appeared in 1910 and contained 1050 pages...

  • Patanjali
    Patañjali
    Patañjali is the compiler of the Yoga Sūtras, an important collection of aphorisms on Yoga practice. According to tradition, the same Patañjali was also the author of the Mahābhāṣya, a commentary on Kātyāyana's vārttikas on Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī as well as an unspecified work of medicine .In...


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