The Tevaram helped structure a devotional tradition with its own authoritative canon, and thereby negated the primacy of Vedic orthodoxy and Smartha tradition, states Champakalakshmi. It differs from the ancient Vedas in that it focuses on intense bhakti for Shiva. This equivalence with the ancient Hindu Vedas has been explained by the Tamil Shaiva scholars in that the Tevaram "resembles the Vedic hymns" by being poetry of the "highest order" that also systematically builds the philosophical foundations of Shaivism. Tevaram text has been called as a Shaiva "Tamil-vētam" (a Tamil Veda) in Volume 4 of the Madras Tamil Lexicon. The above set is one of 230 Tevaram folios currently preserved in the British Library. The ragam (scale) and talam (beat) are included on the manuscript leaves to guide the singers and musicians. The title of the hymns set is in its colophon. The manuscript, like many Hindu texts found in South India, starts with a contents list. Ī palm-leaf folio of Tevaram manuscript copied in a Tamil Shiva temple about 1700 CE. The last stage was assisted by the pontiffs of the mathas (monasteries) who incorporated the hymns into the Shaiva Siddhanta canon in the 13th century. Īccording to Champakalakshmi, there were at least three stages in the evolution of Thevaram: first was the composition of the hymns by the Tevaram trio, then these were adopted in temple rituals and festivals by patikam singers, and thereafter came a conscious 11th-century structuring of these poems into a canonized text. The Tevaram trio themselves credit an older tradition and "speak of saints who lived before them", which states Peterson suggests that parts of the Tevaram poetry may have more ancient roots than the 6th-century. The actual compilation into Tevaram was completed in the 11th-century, starting around 1000 CE. Like the ancient Sanskrit texts of India as well as the Vaishnava bhakti tradition, the early Nayanar poetry was largely an oral tradition through the 10th-century, with some evidence of these poems being written on palm leaf manuscripts. They are among the Nayanars (leaders), and considered the "principal saint-leaders" of Tamil Shaivism. They lived between the 6th and 8th-century CE state Peterson and Prentiss, while Champakalakshmi dates them in the 7th to 9th-century. The Tevaram is attributed to three Tamil Shaiva poet–saints, sometimes referred to as the "Tevaram trio" (Mūvar). Tevaram has also been interpreted as "private ritual worship", with the term varam appearing in temple inscriptions with the sense of "lord's shrine". Second, as "Tē" and "Vāram" which means "create love towards the lord". First, as "Tēva" and "Āram" which means "the garland of the lord ". The word Tēvāram can be interpreted in two ways.
These hymns continue to be devotionally sung in contemporary times in many Shiva temples of Tamil Nadu. Thevaram contains 796 hymns made up of 8,284 stanzas. This marked its coming of age alongside the expansion and consolidation of Chola imperial power in the 11th century CE. Starting with the Thevaram along with the rest of Tirumurai and ending with the Periya Puranam, Tamil Saivism acquired a canonical set of sacred texts on ritual, philosophy, and theology. In the 10th century, during the reign of Rajaraja I of the Chola dynasty, these poets' hymns were collected and arranged by Nambiyandar Nambi. Their work is an important source for understanding the Śaiva Bhakti movement in the early medieval South India. The three poets were not only involved in portraying their personal devotion to Shiva, but also engaged a community of believers through their songs. The Thevaram volumes contain the works of the three most prominent Saiva Tamil poets of the 7th and 8th centuries: Sambandar, Appar, and Sundarar. The Thevaram ( Tamil: தேவாரம், Tēvāram), also spelled Tevaram, denotes the first seven volumes of the twelve-volume collection Tirumurai, a Śaiva narrative of epic and puranic heroes, as well as a hagiographic account of early Saiva saints set in devotional poetry.
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