Thirumandiram - English 5 Vol Set Text, Transliteration, Translation and Detailed Commentary

Book Description - 

The Tirumandiram, by Siddha Tirumular is a sacred encyclopedia of philosophical and spiritual wisdom rendered in verse form. It is one of India's greatest texts, a spiritual treasure-trove, a Sastra containing astonishing insight. It is a seminal work and is the first treatise in Tamil that deals with different aspects of Yoga, Tantra and Saiva Siddhantha.

"The poems of Tirumular abound in technical terms conveying mystical experience. The symbolic, twilight language of the Siddhas has the advantage of precision, concentration, secrecy, mystery and esoteric significance in that the symbols, at the hands of the Siddhas become a form of artistic expression of the inexpressible. In short, the twilight language of the Siddhas is, in essence, profoundly mystical in nature and contains a "numinous aura" and existential revelations for the man who deciphers their message. The essential difficulty is that to understand the twilight language requires a total hermeneutic of reading, an awareness, in fact, of the total religious and philosophical structures that infuse it. It also requires one to enter deep states of meditation wherein the verse serves as a key that reveals a higher meaning to the initiate." (T.N. Ganapathy)

It took five years and a team of scholars to translate each of the 3000 verses and to write extensive commentaries about them, in nine volumes. The tenth volume contains presentations from two philosophical schools of Saiva Siddhanta and a glossary, select bibliography and index.