Sambandar

Sambandar (Tamil: சம்பந்தர், romanized: Campantar), also referred to as Tirujnana Sambandar (Tamil: திருஞானசம்பந்தர், romanized: Tiruñāṉacampantar) or Gnana Sambanthar, was a Shaiva poet-saint of Tamil Nadu who lived sometime in the 7th century CE. According to the Tamil Shaiva tradition, he composed an oeuvre of 16,000 hymns in complex meters, of which 383 (384) hymns with 4,181 stanzas have survived. These narrate an intense loving devotion (bhakti) to the Hindu god Shiva. Sambandar died when he was sixteen years of age. The surviving compositions of the poet-saint are preserved in the first three volumes of the Tirumurai and provide a part of the philosophical foundation of Shaiva Siddhanta.

He is one of the most prominent of the sixty-three Nayanars, Tamil Shaiva bhakti saints who lived between the sixth and the tenth centuries CE. He was a contemporary of Appar, another Shaiva poet-saint.

Life

Information about Sambandar comes mainly from the Periya Puranam, the eleventh-century Tamil book on the Nayanars that forms the last volume of the Tirumurai, along with the earlier Tiruttondartokai, poetry by Sundarar and Nambiyandar Nambi's Tiru Tondar Tiruvandadi. A Sanskrit hagiography called Brahmapureesa Charitam is now lost. The first three volumes of the Tirumurai contain three hundred and eighty-four poems of Sambandar, all that survive out of a reputed more than 10,000 hymns.

According to the Tamil texts, Sambandar was born to Sivapada Hrudiyar and his wife Bhagavathiar who lived in Sirkazhi, Tamil Nadu. They were Shaivite Brahmins.