- Lived:
- c. 8th–9th century CE · Śrīvilliputtūr (Srivilliputhur, Tamil Nadu) → and, tradition says, into the sanctum at Śrīraṅgam (Srirangam), where the god took her as his bride
- Field:
- bhakti poetry — the only woman among the twelve Āḻvārs, the Tamil Vaiṣṇava saint-poets; author of the Tiruppāvai and the Nācciyār Tirumoḻi
- The Big Idea:
- She refused every mortal groom and courted God directly — wearing his garland to see herself as his bride — and wrote thirty dawn-songs so beloved that, twelve centuries later, an entire state still wakes before sunrise for a month every winter to sing them.
- In their words:
- "It is not for today's drum that we have come, Govinda. For all time, for seven births and seven more, we will be kin to you; we will serve you and you alone. Change our every other desire." (Tiruppāvai 29, our close rendering)
- If you remember one thing:
- A gardener's foster-daughter secretly wore the flowers meant for the god — and the god refused, ever after, to accept any garland she had not worn first. Then she married him. Tamil Nadu has been singing her wedding songs at its own weddings ever since.