Alwars: The Vaishnavite Saints

The Alwars are a group of twelve ancient Vaishnava saints who lived in Tamil Nadu in the eighth and ninth centuries. They are famous for their poetry in praise of Lord Vishnu. The collection of their 4000 poems is known as the ‘Naalaayira Divya Prabhandam’.

Among the Alwars, the first in the line up is Poigai Alwar, Bhudat Alwar and Pei Alwar. They are collectively called as "Mudhal Alwars" (the first Alwars) and belong to the same period of time. The other Alwars are Perialwar, Andal, Nammalwar, Madhura kavi Alwar, Tirumazhisai Alwar, Thondaridipodi Alwar, Tirumangai Alwar, Tiruppan Alwar and Kulasekara Alwar.

The Nalayira Divya Prabandham is the collective corpus of the passionate hymns of the Alwars. These hymns are known as ‘Paasurams’.

The book gives brief details of these twelve Alwars and their compositions. There is also the recitation of a sample pasuram of each of these Alwars in every chapter. The details of the 4000 pasurams of the Nlayira Divya Prabandam are given in the Appendix.

This book was published in the year 2015 and is available on the Amazon’s Kindle store and Draft2Digital.