Manikka Vasahar

Manikka Vasahar (Manikkavacakar) is one of the Tamil Saivite saints whose hymns are sung in the worship of the god Siva. According to the tradition summarised by his translators, he served as prime minister to a Pandyan king at Madura before turning from worldly life to devotion.

His chief work is the Tiruvasagam ("Holy Utterances"); he is also credited with the Tirukkovaiyar. His translators in this 1921 volume write that scholarly opinion was converging on a date in the latter half of the ninth or the first half of the tenth century. The poems here are the selection of the hundred-odd stanzas in the Kingsbury and Phillips volume, grouped under the titles given there.