Tamil Shaiva Bhakti literature (Tirumurai) in translation

Jataayu
3 min readDec 20, 2024

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Tirumurai (திருமுறை) refers to the collection of the sacred Tamil Shaiva hymns in Twelve Books which includes Thevaram, Thiruvasagam, Tirumantiram and Periya Puranam among others. There were requests from many friends asking for good translations of this great piece of sacred literature. Hence this post, as it may be helpful to other interested readers too.

1. Poems to Siva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints (tr. by Indira Viswanathan Peterson), 1991. This is a nice book with a detailed introduction to the tradition and it’s philosophy. Gives a good anthology of Thevaram hymns in translation. Online version here.

2. Representative verses from each Tirumurai Book, giving a glimpse: https://www.himalayanacademy.com/saivite-scriptures/tirumurai/

3. Tirumurai The Sixth: St Appars Thaandaka Hymns (tr. by TN Ramachandran), 1995. Along with the translation, also contains a detailed scholaraly introduction to Appar and his hymnal literature. Online version here.

4. Tiruvachakam — The Hindu Testament of Love, by Ratna Navaratnam, 1966. Part of Bhavan’s Series, this book gives the complete translation, with a beautiful introduction and explanatory notes for each section. Online version here.

5. Tirumanthiram of Tirumular, tr. by Dr B Natarajan, 1991. Online version here.

6. Periya Puranam: A Tamil Classic On the Great Saiva Saints of South India, By Sekkizhaar, English translation by Vanmikanathan, 2000. Online version here.

7. Thirumurai : Glimpses into Tamil Saiva Poetry, by Sharada Narayanan and Madhangi Rathnavel, 2021. Info about the print book here.

8. The website https://thevaaram.org/ by Dharmapuram Adhinam contains the translations of the entire collection (all the tweleve Books) in multiple languages. English translation is complete, others may be partially complete or in the state of work in progress. But due to a silly bug in the website, if you click the buttons for any language other than Tamil in the opening page, further links don’t work and they all give a nasty message “Error !! Unable to connect to database”. The bug has been reported to the website admin already.

The Tamil link button பன்னிரு திருமுறை is operational. There one can select the Book (1–12), and then in the subsequent pull-down menu, select the hymn no. which leads to the page for the hymn, displaying the first verse. Once there, scroll down, expand the button “பிற மொழிகளில் பாடலைப் புரிந்து கொள்ள / Translations”. Then tabs for multiple language translations open. One can select the language and see the translation, if its available.

With this, one needs to navigate verse by verse. There is no method to read the translation of all the verses in one hymn at one go.

For those who are proficient in an Indian language like Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu or Sanskrit, it is recommended that they refer to the translation in that language from the above website, instead of English, because the Indian language translations attempt to bring out the feel of the original poetry better.

9. The website https://www.shaivam.org/ contains essays on Saiva philosophy and also translations of some Tirumurai texts.

Hope these resources will be helpful for researchers, enthusiasts and anyone interested in delving into this nectar-ocean of Shiva Bhakti.

Hara Hara Mahadeva.

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Jataayu
Jataayu

Written by Jataayu

Writes on Hindu Dharma, Hindutva, Tamil literature, Indian society, culture, history and arts. Technology Professional.

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