ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the earliest of the fourteen Saiva Siddhanta treatises composed in Tamil that have thus far received relatively little scholarly attention. It considers the profound conceptual and poetic shift between the two texts in ways of speaking about Shiva, arguing that the specific modes of "divinizing" Shiva and the guru or teacher in the Tirukkalirruppatiyar would eventually come to dominate the Tamil Saiva Siddhanta tradition. The poetic form of the Tiruvuntiyar demands a particular understanding of the nature of the divine, Shiva, who here yields "spontaneously" to a perceptible form. In this poetic, song-filled vision of Shiva's cosmic play, the members of the poet's audience are equal partners—team-mates of the lord. The starting-point, then, of the particular Tamil Saiva Siddhanta sastra lies wholly within the realm of human temporal change, with a deeply painful recognition that the "truths"—the ideals, paradigms, and aspirations—of earlier generations have not and simply cannot endure.
