Tiruvaymoli ("Words of God") Nammalvar, a poet-saint
from the eleventh century, composed a collection of 1,102 stanzas.
Nammalvar was a poet-saint who lived in southern India
during the seventh and tenth centuries and was one of the Alvars, a group of
twelve poet-saints.
The Alvars were all followers (bhakta) of the deity Vishnu,
and their emphasis on ardent devotion (bhakti) to a particular god, expressed
via hymns sung in Tamil, revolutionized Hindu religious life.
The culminating piece of the Nalayira Divya prabandham, the
collected compositions of the Alvars, is Nammalvar's Tiruvaymoli, an outpouring
of exuberant Vaishnava devotionalism.
More information may be found in Kamil Zvelebil's Tamil
Literature (1975); John Stirling Morley Hooper's Hymns of the Alvars (1929); A.
Shrinivasa Raghavan's Nammalvar (1975); and A. K. Ramanujan's
Hymns for the Drowning (1981).
