Saints of Arunachala · The key text

The Tirumantiram: the key text of Tamil Shaivism

One work holds the whole of Tamil Shaiva mysticism ~ the Tirumantiram of Thirumular, a poem of over 3,000 verses that is scripture, yoga manual and the fountainhead of Shaiva Siddhanta, by the saint who was both Nayanmar and Siddhar.

Add hero image ~ /images/articles/tirumantiram-thirumular-hero.jpg

← Part of Saints of Arunachala

There is a single work that stands at the meeting-point of the two great streams we have followed ~ the devotional saints and the yogic Siddhars ~ and holds within it the whole of Tamil Shaiva mysticism. It is the Tirumantiram of Thirumular: a vast poem of over three thousand verses that is at once scripture, yoga manual, and the fountainhead of the philosophy of Shaiva Siddhanta. To know it is to hold the key text of the tradition of which Arunachala is a living heart.

Thirumular, saint and siddha

Its author, Thirumular, is a figure unique in the tradition: he is counted among both the sixty-three Nayanmars (the devotional saints of Tamil Shaivism) and the eighteen Siddhars (the yogic adepts) ~ a bridge between devotion and yoga, love and realisation. A famous legend surrounds him: a great yogi from the north (some say a disciple of Nandi, the bull of Shiva), he came south and, finding a dead cowherd named Mulan whose cattle grieved for him, entered the dead man’s body by his yogic power to tend the herd ~ and, unable to return to his own body, lived out his life as Mulan, and so became “Thiru-mular.” In that borrowed Tamil body he composed the Tirumantiram, pouring the highest yoga and philosophy into plain, powerful Tamil verse. Tradition famously holds that he wrote one verse a year, spending each year in deep samadhi between ~ so that the poem’s three thousand verses represent three thousand years of a yogi’s absorption.

Counted among both the devotional saints and the yogic Siddhars ~ Thirumular is the bridge where love and realisation meet.

What the Tirumantiram is

The Tirumantiram forms the tenth Tirumurai ~ the tenth book of the great twelve-book canon of Tamil Shaiva scripture, taking its place alongside the Tevaram and Tiruvasagam. But where those are songs of devotion, the Tirumantiram is something broader and deeper: a complete compendium of Shaiva mysticism, running to over 3,000 verses arranged in nine sections (tantras). It is, all at once:

• A work of philosophy ~ it is the earliest and foundational text of Shaiva Siddhanta, the great school of Tamil Shaiva thought, and the source of some of its most famous formulations.
• A manual of yoga ~ it expounds ashtanga yoga, kundalini, the chakras, the subtle body, and the practices by which the yogi ascends to union with Shiva.
• A treatise on mantra and tantra ~ including deep teaching on the five-syllable mantra Namah Shivaya (the Panchakshara).
• A book of ethics and devotion ~ with teachings on conduct, love, and the presence of God in all.

“Love is Shiva”

For all its yogic and philosophical depth, the Tirumantiram is remembered above all for a handful of luminous, world-changing lines ~ among them its most famous teaching, that anbe Sivam: “love is Shiva,” God and love are not two. It teaches that the divine is not distant but is the very Self within (“the ignorant think God and the Self are different; the wise know they are one”), and that the body, far from being an obstacle, is the temple in which the divine is realised (“the body is the temple; the jiva is the Lord within”). These are the deep roots of the whole non-dual, body-affirming, love-centred mysticism that flowers across the Tamil tradition ~ and that one meets again, in a different key, in Ramana’s teaching of the Self and the Heart at Arunachala.

Last updated 16 February 2026. Following the documented record preserved by Sri Ramanasramam and his devotees; where an account is traditional, it is told as such.