History of Tevaram

The history of Tevaram, the initial seven volumes of the Tirumurai, dates back to the 10th Century AD. During the reign of Rajaraja Chola I, a collection of devotional Tamil songs was discarded and were later found in the Chidambaram temple. These were located with other Tamil religious literary works which were accumulated by Nambi Andar Nambi. Tamil Shaivism developed during the Chola period and Tevaram was canonized along with its corpus of texts on theology, rituals and philosophy.

Rajaraja Chola I went on an assignment to recover the verses of Tevaram after listening to concise excerpts from it in his court. He asked for the support and help of a priest in a temple named Nambi Andar Nambi. It is widely believed that by divine intervention, the priest located the scripts, present in the form of cadijam leaves. But the leaves where almost half destroyed by white ants and were situated inside a chamber in the 2nd division in Thillai Nataraja Temple, Chidambaram. The Dikshitars or Brahmins of the temple countered and disparate the king`s mission, but Rajaraja Chola I interfered by sanctifying the images of the saint poets through Chidambaram.

Thus the Chola king became renowned as Tirumurai Kanda Cholan which meant the one who saved Tirumurai. Till now, the temples of Lord Shiva contained images of gods and deities only. But after the emergence of Rajaraja Chola I, the images of the Nayanar saint poets were also installed in the temples. Nambi Andar Nambi arranged the verses of the 3 saint poets namely Nanacampantar (Campantar), Tirunavukkaracar (Appar) and Cuntarar (Sundarar) as the initial 7 books; Tirukovayar and Tiruvacakam by Manickavasagar as the eigth book; the 28 hymns of 9 other saints as the ninth book; Tirumular`s Tirumandiram as the tenth book; 40 verses by 12 poets were also included and; Tirutotanar Tiruvanthathi, the holy anthathi of the efforts of the 63 Nayanar saints and included his own hymns in the 11th book.

Later the first 7 books came to be known as Tevaram. The entire Shaiva canon was added as the 12th book and Periya Puranam was known as Tirumurai, the sacred book. Therefore Shaiva literary works cover almost 600 years of philosophical, religious and literary development. Nambi Andar Nambi was also engaged in establishing musical modes for Tevaram. He achieved it by going to his local village in Tirunilakanta Yalpanar. There Nambi met a lady who belonged to the Panar caste and studied the mode of godly revelation. She went back to Chidambaram with him and sang and danced for Lord Shiva.

In the year 1918, 11 more hymns were discovered imprinted in stone temple in Tiruvidavayil, which was situated in a village near Nannillam. This was the first example of Tevaram verses being located in inscriptions.