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The poetry of the Alvars echoes bhakti to God through love, and in the ecstasy of such devotions, they sang hundreds of songs that embodied both depth of feeling and the felicity of expressions. [103] The collection of their hymns is known as the Naalayira Divya Prabandham.
Originally a god of the Kurinji hillfolk of Tamilakam, this Dravidian deity of Murugan was syncretised with the Vedic god known as Subrahmanya. Archaeological evidence from 1st-century CE and earlier, [10] where he is found with Hindu god Agni (fire), suggest that he was a significant deity in early Hinduism. [6]
Hinduism, in particular Vaishnavism and Shaivism, was the predominant religion in ancient Tamilakam.The Sangam period in Tamilakam (c. 600 BCE–300 CE) was characterized by the coexistence of many denominations and religions: Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Ajivika and later joined by Buddhism and Jainism alongside the folk religion of the Tamil people.
[15] [16] The songs of the Prabandam are regularly sung in various Vishnu temples of South India, daily, and also during festivals. [ 14 ] [ 17 ] The legendary birth of the Alvars is traced to an event in the mid- Dvapara Yuga , due to a heated debate between Vishvakarma (the divine architect of the gods) and Agastya (a sage) about the ...
South India in Sangam Period. In Old Tamil language, the term Tamilakam (Tamiḻakam, Purananuru 168. 18) referred to the whole of the ancient Tamil-speaking area, [web 1] corresponding roughly to the area known as southern India today, consisting of the territories of the present-day Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, parts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
Throughout Tamilakam, a king was considered to be divine by nature and possessed religious significance. [54] The king was "the representative of God on earth" and lived in a koyil, which means "residence of a god". The modern Tamil word for temple is koil (Tamil: கோயில்). Ritual worship was also given to kings.
These gods are primarily worshipped through festivals throughout the year, during important occasions like harvest or sowing time. To propitiate these gods, the villagers make sacrifices of meat (usually goats) and arrack, which is then shared among all the village. In addition, the mantras are not restricted to Sanskrit and are performed in Tamil.
The Sangam age grammatical work Tolkappiyam mentions the various music pertaining to the five landscapes (thinai) of the Sangam literature.The five landscapes are associated with a particular mood of the poem and to give colour to these moods, each had a musical mood (), a melodic instrument and a percussion instrument (parai).