Their pilgrimages, their legends, and their hymns (which they sang by the thousand) literally mapped a sacred geography of the Tamil regions and fashioned a communal self-image that cut across class and caste. The saint-poets wandered all over the Tamil countryside, inspiring and converting kings, brahmans, and peasants, affirming in poetry the holiness of hundreds of Tamil places dedicated to Visnu or Siva. Between the sixth and the ninth century, in the Tamil-speaking region of South India, these devotees of Visnu and their counterparts, the devotees of Siva (nayanmar), changed and revitalized Hinduism, and checked the spread of Buddhism and Jainism while absorbing some of the features of these rivals. Tradition recognizes twelve alvars, saints-poets devoted to Visnu. The author is an alvar, ' immersed in god' the root verb al means 'to immerse, to dive to sink, to be lowered, to be deep.' The title Hymns for the Drawing plays on the meanings of such an immersion for poet and reader. The poems in this book are some of the earliest religious poems about Visnu, or Tirumal, the Dark One. Ramanujan died in 1993 at the age of sixty-four. His works included: Speaking of Siva, The Interior Landscape and Folktales From India.Ī. Colvin Professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Linguistics, and a member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Ramanujan was an award-winning translator and poet whose translations, poetry, and essays have been widely published and anthologized. The fame and importance of Nammalvar was such that soon after his death his images were installed in South Indian Visnu temples and revered as the very feet of God.Ī. He composed four works, of which the 1, 102 verses of Tiruvaymoli and the most important. Tradition recognizes twelve alvars (saint-poets devoted to Visnu) between the sixth and the ninth centuries in South India, of whom Nammalvar is the best known. Although his dates have not been conclusively established, legend has it that he was born in Tirukurukur (today's Alvartirunakari in Tamil Nadu) into a princely family and lived for only thirty-five years. Nammalvar, also known as Maran and Catakopan, was born into a peasant caste (vellala) and lived from AD 880 to 930.

Hymns for the Drowning by Nammalvar