Vanakkam.  This site has selected poems from both Sangam literature and Naalaayira Divya Prabandham, which are Tamil treasures.  The 4000 Divya Prabandham hymns are incredibly sweet poems that praise Thirumal.  Both Saivite and Vaishnavite hymns have drawn from the Sangam poems, the first surviving literature of the Tamils.  Sangam literature is comprised of 18 books dated from 300 B.C. to 250 A.D.  There are a total of 2381 poems, the smallest ones having 3 lines and the largest one having 782 lines.

Many themes found in Sangam literature are repeated in Divya Prabandham.  Children building little sand houses, messenger poems, pearls falling from the elephant tusks, the northern wind hurting the heroine, lament of the heroine’s mother and many others.  There are many other facets which have similar poems.  I will add them in the next couple of months.

The poems in this site are not complete lists.  For some topics, there are too many poems to list.  If anybody is interested in finding all the related Sangam poems, they should go to my site – http://learnsangamtamil.com

In the Sangam Akam poems, love between the hero and heroine are depicted.  In Divya Prabhandam, the devotee’s love for Thirumal is described, and the hymns are about the devotee yearning for him.

If you want to learn the Sangam poems, please go to my site for English translation and word by word meanings.  In due course, this site will have the translation and meanings.  As for learning the Divya Prabandham hymns, there are many good urai noolkal and translations.  Dr. S. Jegatratchakan has written a very good urai in Tamil along with English translations of the 4000 hymns.  Also, the site http://dravidaveda.org has the hymns with explanations and English translations.

Vaidehi Herbert

U.S.A.