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4:45 PM - 6:00 PM (UTC+5.5)
Important Shaiva Concepts On The 9th Tirumurai
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Centre for Shaiva studies
24A, Aurobindo Street. 1st Floor. Heritage Town. Puducherry,
605001
India
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The classical Tamil Saiva Devotional corpus is known as Tirumurai which consists of 12 books. The first seven are generally known as the Tevaram which were sung by Tirujnanacampantar, Tirunavukkaracar and Sundaramurti who were collectively known as the Nayanmar-s. The 8th Tirumurai comprises the Tiruvacakam and Tiruccirrampalakkovaiyar sung by Manikkavacakar.
The 9th Tirumurai comprises the devotional poems sung by nine great Sivabhakta-s most of whom came after the Nayanmar-s. Of these nine great Bhakta-s, Karuvur Tevar was well known as the spiritual teacher of Rajaraja Chola and Kantaradittar was the paternal uncle of Rajaraja Chola.
A large part of the 9th Tirumarai comprises devotional poems addressed to God Nataraja and sung at the greatest Saiva holy town Tillai (Chidambaram).
These devotional poems bring out the highest Sivabhakti and complete surrender at Siva’s holy feet and they are in no way inferior to the Tevaram songs. One of these known as Tiruppallantu, sung by the great Sivabhakta Centanar, after singing the glory of Siva-Nataraja prays and wishes for the ‘eternality for Siva’ (pallāṇṭu).
Speakers
Dr.T. Ganesan
Director, Centre for Shaiva Studies
T. Ganesan, with Ph.D. in Sanskrit worked as Director of Research at the prestigious French Institute, Pondicherry (IFP) since 1985 and now he is a Research Associate there. He is now working on the projects A Comprehensive History of Śaivasiddhānta in Tamilnadu surveying the contents of the entire gamut of Śaivasiddhānta literature (published and unpublished) that spans more than a millennium as well as on the project Critical Edition of the Śaivāgama-s. He is one of the editors the Sukshmagama (3 volumes, 4th volume under preparation) published by the French Institute of Pondicherry. The first two volumes of the Paushkaragama along with the two unpublished commentaries of Umapati and Jnanaprakasa critically edited by him for the first time has been published by the National Mission for the Manuscripts (NMM), New Delhi in 2014 and 2020. Śivajñānabodhasūtra with the Laghuṭīkā of Śivāgrayogī, Siddhāntaprakāśikā of Sarvātmaśambhu with Tamil and English translations (published by the Saivabharati Shodha Pratishthan, Varanasi in 2009) Śivajñānabodhasūtra with the hitherto unpublished commentary of Nigamajñānadeśika (published by the Rashtriya Samskrit Samsthan, New Delhi, 2009) and a few other Śaivasiddhānta texts are some of the important Saiva texts critically edited by him. His monograph Two Śaiva Teachers of the 16th century: Nigamajñāna I and Nigamajñāna II was published by the French Institute of Pondicherry in 2009. He has presented more than 30 seminar papers and research articles concerning Saivism and Saivasiddhanta many of which have been published. He had delivered special lectures concerning various aspects of Saivasiddhānta at The Tamil University, Thanjavur, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, University of Madras as well as at the Université de Paris III-Nouvelle Sorbonne, Paris and at the University of Marbourg, Germany. T. Ganesan had been honoured with the title Viśvārādhya Viśvabhāratī by the Jangamawadi Matha, Varanasi in the year 2016.