Appar

Common card · No. 455984

Appar (Tamil: அப்பர்), also referred to as Tirunavukkaracar (Tamil: திருநாவுக்கரசர், romanized: Tirunāvukkaracar) or Navukkarasar, was a seventh-century Tamil Shaiva poet-saint. Born in a peasant Shaiva family, raised as an orphan by his sister, he lived about 80 years and is generally placed sometime between 570 and 650 CE. Appar composed 4,900 devotional hymns to the god Shiva, out of which 313 have survived and are now canonized as the 4th to 6th volumes of Tirumurai. One of the most prominent of the sixty-three revered Nayanars, he was an older contemporary of Sambandar. His images are found and revered in Tamil Shiva temples. His characteristic iconography in temples show him carrying a farmer's small hoe – a gardening tool and weed puller.

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