Sambandar

Sambandar, also referred to as Thirugnana Sambandar, 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 merged with the divine effulgence when he was sixteen years of age. The surviving compositions of the poet-saint are preserved in the first three volumes of the Tirumurai called Thirukkadik kaappu, and provide a part of the philosophical foundation of Shaiva Siddhanta.