![]() ![]() Combined with national fervour led by Mahatma Gandhi, the Tamil language was also being rediscovered by poets of that generation.ĭuring a Marina Beach meeting led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1918 at the height of the home rule movement, Bharathiyar’s speech in praise of the movement and his famous Gandhi Panchakam garnered headlines for many days following that convention. Other Tamil giants like M Raghava Iyengar, R Raghava Iyengar, Chidambaranatha Muadaliar of Tenkasi, Sathasiva Iyer of Ceylon, P S Subrahmanya Sastry and others were making a big and scholarly impact to popularise and modernise Tamil by attracting and developing students of Tamil. Tamil scholar U Ve Swaminatha Iyer had just published many old manuscripts that were hidden away for centuries. Bharathidasan, who changed his name after being impressed by Bharathiyar’s poetic abilities as ‘his slave’, and others just began emerging. Kambar’s inspiration created roughly 11,000 verses or 45,000 lines - arguably one of the largest bodies of poetic work by any Tamil poet known until Muruganar’s poetry came into existence.įor context, in the early 1900s there was a resurgence of modern Tamil poetry, most popularly led by nationalistic and devotional poems written and published by Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathiyar. To put this in perspective, one of the most prolific poets in Tamil literature, poet Kambar, composed the famous Kamba Ramayana - an epic originally written in Sanskrit by Valmki.Īlthough historians still debate to draw a definitive conclusion to place Kambar’s time period accurately, the general consensus has emerged as around 950 AD to 1,300 AD as his period. The name of this illustrious poet-saint is Mugavapuri Muruganar. He managed to compose nearly 30,000 Tamil verses - or roughly 120,000 lines - a singular feat that is remarkable both for its depth as well as its breadth. However, in our generation - within the last 100 years - a poet saint lived amongst us with relatively low visibility outside of his immediate circle of co-devotees. ![]() In all of this, there is ever so little doubt about the historical accuracy as many of these saint poets have often begged for food, and Lord Shiva or Lord Narayana - as the case maybe -often intervened to help them to navigate some tough situations that they had to face. They have given us copious amounts of Tamil poetry with deeply felt devotion to their chosen deities, and have blessed us with literature of the highest calibre. Throughout history, there have been a number of remarkable poets who did similar feats like Manikavasagar, Thayumanavar, and, more recently, Vallalar. We have read in history books as scanty biographies about Tamil poets, who renounced everything and took a deep devotion to Lord Shiva as in the case of the 63 Saiva saints, or Lord Narayana as in the case of 12 Azhwar saints.
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