The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (160 page)

 
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(Tamil, ‘saintly masters’). A group of (allegedly) twelve Hindu poets of the 6th to 9th cent. CE from South India. They wrote in the vernacular
Tamil
on
Vi
u
/
K
a
religion, and their works were collected in the
N
l-
yira-divya-prabandham
. Like their
aivite
contemporaries (the
N
ya
m
r
), they promulgated a new,
bhakti
-oriented form of religion in the South which soon gained enormous popularity. No external historical document about them is known. The traditional number is twelve, but because not all poems are ‘signed’ (in the concluding stanza), this cannot be verified from the
Divya-Prabandham
itself. Many of the traditional names by which they are referred to are honorific titles and differ from the names actually mentioned. The most important
lv
rs are:
Namm
lv
r