7-ғасырдағы Тамил Надьянар ақыны Самбандар

Shaiva poet saint of Tamil Nadu

Sambandar (Tamil: சம்பந்தர், romanized: Campantar), also referred to as Tirujnana Sambandar (Tamil: திருஞானசம்பந்தர், romanized: Tirujñāṉacampantar), was a Shaiva poet saint of Tamil Nadu who lived sometime in the 7th century CE. He is one of the most prominent of the sixty three Nayanars, Tamil Shaiva bhakti saints who lived between the sixth and the tenth centuries CE. He was a contemporary of Appar, another Shaiva poet saint.

Information about Sambandar comes mainly from the Periya Puranam, the eleventh century Tamil book on the Nayanars that forms the last volume of the Tirumurai, along with the earlier Tiruttondartokai, poetry by Sundarar and Nambiyandar Nambi's Tiru Tondar Tiruvandadi. A Sanskrit hagiography called Brahmapureesa Charitam is now lost. The first three volumes of the Tirumurai contain three hundred and eighty four poems of Sambandar, all that survive out of a reputed more than 10,000 hymns. According to the Tamil texts, Sambandar was born to Sivapada Hrudiyar and his wife Bhagavathiar who lived in Sirkazhi, Tamil Nadu. They were Shaivite brahmins. When Sambandar was three years old his parents took him to the Shiva temple where Shiva and his consort Parvati appeared before the child. His father saw drops of milk on the child's mouth and asked who had fed him, whereupon the boy pointed to the sky and responded with the song Todudaya Seviyan, the first verse of the Tevaram. At the age of three, he is said to have mastered the Vedas. Sambandar died in the Tamil month of "Vaigasi" at the age of sixteen at his wedding. A few earlier records give details about the gifts rendered to the singers of Tevaram from Parantaka I of the 8th century. A record belonging to Rajendra I mentions Tevaranayakan, the supervisor of Tevaram and shows the institutionalisation of Tevaram with the establishment of a department.

The hymns of Sambandar include criticism and allegations of persecution of the Shaiva community by Jain monks, along with a "bitter anti Jain polemic". Sambandar critiques the duplicity he sees. The early studies of this Jain Hindu interaction, as seen in Sambandar hymns and other early Shaiva literature, is one where Jainism is inferred as the heterodox popular religion followed by a revival and triumph of Shaiva Hinduism. The situation was likely more complicated and driven by historical developments and context. The Buddhists denied the "existence of soul", states Nilakanta Sastri, while the Jains recommended "asceticism and suffering" – a period in Tamil culture where such "pessimism" must have been the ethos.

Francis Kingsbury and Godfrey Phillips selected and translated 24 out of 383 of Sambandar's hymns into English in 1921. These were published with a small collection of Appar and Sundarar hymns in a book titled Hymns of the Tamil Śaivite Saints, released by the Oxford University Press. They stated that these were some of the hymns from Devaram (Tevaram) that they could hear being chanted in South Indian Shiva temples of their times. Indira Peterson has published a more recent translation of many of Sambandar's hymns.