Tiru Nilakanta Yazhpanar

Tiru Nilakanta Yazhpanar is one of the sixty-three Nayanar saints of Tamil Shaivism, remembered as the musician who accompanied the hymns of Sambandar on the yal, the ancient Tamil lute. He came of the Panar community of hereditary bards — a low rank in the social order of the day — and his place in the canon is one of the tradition’s pointed statements that devotion outweighs birth.

The story

Tradition places his origins at Erukkattampuliyur, where he sang Shiva’s praise at shrine after shrine with his lute. His life turned when he came to Sirkazhi and met the child hymnist Sambandar; the saint took the bard as his companion, and thereafter Yazhpanar travelled with him across the Tamil country, setting the new hymns to strings as they were sung. The Periya Puranam preserves the famous episode of the Yalmuri — the lute-breaker: Sambandar sang a hymn whose divine measure the yal could not follow, and the despairing musician moved to smash his instrument, until the saint restrained him — no fault lay in the strings, only a song beyond them. Tradition holds that his end came with his master’s: at Sambandar’s wedding at Nallur Perumanam, the whole company passed into a blaze of divine light, the lute-player among them.

Legacy

Yazhpanar fixed in Shaiva memory the union of hymn and instrument at the very founding of the Tevaram tradition, and the honoured place of the bard — whatever his caste — beside the saint whose words he carried.