#sambandar

Thirugnana Sambandar Murti Returned from Australia

vj @ poetryinstone 🇮🇳 wrote : A thousand years ago he was cast ...he endured half a century in exile in America and Australia ..and now he is home again

A bronze figure of Sambandar Southern India, Tamil Nadu, Chola period, 10th century

Kapoor Galleries Inc. wrote : The child saint Sambandar stands here with his proper-left arm outstretched and leg lifted to represent his devotion to Shiva.

Sambandar, who lived in the seventh century, is traditionally the favorite of sixty-three nayanar or Shaivite saints that were widely venerated in southern India. He came to be a nayanar when he was just three years old while visiting a temple with his brahmin father. The father left Sambandar in a courtyard to take a ritual bath when he heard the boy’s cries. When his father returned to him, the child was smiling and holding a golden cup with milk running from his mouth. When asked where it came from, Sambandar gestured toward the image of Shiva and Parvati in the temple, and burst into song and dance in adoration of the deities.

The right hand of the present image points upwards towards the heavens to show reverence to Shiva and his partner in an expression of bhakti or devotion. Sambandar is known for traveling far and wide praising Shiva, and is credited with writing thousands of hymns which came to form the beginning of the Tamil Shaivite cannon. Despite his prolific piety, he died at a young age and is thus celebrated in that form here.

“Sambandar was a Saiva poet-saint of Tamil Nadu who lived around the 7th century CE.

According to the ancient texts, Sambandar was born to Sivapada Hrudiyar and his wife Bhagavathiar who lived in Sirkazhi in what is now Tamil Nadu. They were Saivite 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 his investiture with the sacred thread, at the age of seven, he is said to have expounded the Vedas with great clarity.

Child Saint Sambandar

Period: Chola period (880–1279)

Date: late 11th century

Culture: India (Tamil Nadu)

Medium: Copper alloy

Thirugnana Sambandar

Chola Bronze, circa 12th Century CE, Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore