A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s2.9

c19.s2.9

Sundaramūrtti, the last of the three hymnists of *Dēvāram*, contributed the 100 hymns which make the seventh book of the canon. His devotion to God was that of an intimate friend and he was known as the ‘Friend of God’ (*tambirān tōḻan*). Legend credits him with having sent the deity as a messenger to his first love when she was cross with him for his temporary unfaithfulness. His *Tiruṭṭoṇḍattogai* sung at Tiruvālūr in the presence of Aḍiyārs (devotees) is the classic list of Śaiva saints, individual and collective, of whom sixty-two are named, including the author’s father and mother; by adding Sundaramūrtti himself we get the celebrated sixty-three *nāyaṉārs*, the story of whose lives was told briefly by Nambi Āṇḍār Nambi in the tenth century and, with epic elaboration, by Śēkkilār in the twelfth. One of Sundara’s friends, Cheramān Perumāl, was the author of other devotional works of high literary quality: *Tiruvālūr-mummaṇik-kōvai*, a schematic poem of ten groups of three stanzas each in a different metre—an *ahaval* followed by a *veṇbā* and a *kalittuṛai*; *Ponvaṇṇattandādi* in a hundred verses; and the *Tirukkailāya-ñāna-ulā* reputed to be the first poem in this genre and to have been promulgated at Kailāsa after the *nāyaṉār* reached the sacred mountain in the company of Sundaramūrtti.