Nammāḻvār

Nammāḻvār ('our own Āḻvār') is revered as the foremost of the twelve Āḻvārs, the Tamil poet-saints whose passionate devotion (bhakti) to Viṣṇu, expressed in Tamil rather than Sanskrit, shaped South Indian Vaiṣṇavism. Traditionally born at Tirukkurukūr (now Āḻvārtirunagari) in the far south of Tamil Nadu, he is credited with four works — chief among them the 'Tiruvāymoḻi,' a thousand-plus verses of intimate longing for the divine — that together form a large part of the Nālāyira Divya Prabandham, the four-thousand-verse Tamil canon that the Śrī Vaiṣṇava tradition reveres as a 'Tamil Veda' alongside the Sanskrit scriptures. His verses were later given a central place in temple worship and in the theology of Nāthamuni, Yāmuna, and Rāmānuja. His dates are uncertain (conventionally 8th–9th c.), and the traditional account of his life — including a lifelong silent meditation under a tamarind tree — is hagiography. The language and register are Tamil, not Sanskrit.