The Colas c33.6

c33.6

Nambi Āṇḍār Nambi, the author who arranged the Śaiva Canon substantially in the form in which we now find it, was most probably a contemporary of Rājarāja I and Rājēndra I. The account of his life and work given in a short Purāṇa attributed to Umāpati Śiva Ācārya of the early fourteenth century seems to conserve, in the midst of much legendary matter, a fairly correct account of the growth of the canon in the hands of Nambi himself and his successors. It has been said that the inclusion, in the canon, of Nambi’s own poems and those of other writers like Karuvūr Dēvar, manifestly later than Rājarāja’s reign, and the title Abhaya and Kulaśēkhara given by Umāpati to the Cōḷa king who was Nambi’s contemporary, imply a later date for the redaction of the canon.⁴ Even in Nambi’s time, difficulty was experienced in making the collection of hymns complete—as may be seen from the hymn on Tiruviḍaivāyil by Ñānasambandar, unknown to the canon, and preserved in an inscription,⁵ and from the legend of the destruction by white ants of the bulk of the palm leaves containing the hymns.