Meena, a history student from Madurai, visits a large temple where priests sing old Tamil hymns during the daily worship, and the image of a poet-saint stands near the main deity. Her guide tells her that the poet-saint once walked from place to place, singing in praise of his god. In the temple library she finds a large anthology of poems by the Alvars and the verses of a Tamil woman poet who calls herself the beloved of her god. She also reads a scholar's note on quarrels between groups who followed different paths of worship in early medieval India.
Meena wonders why a poet-saint's image stands in a large temple and why his hymns are sung there. Which of the following best explains this?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → The saints had marked such shrines as abodes of their deities; temples later built there took in their compositions and images.
Option (1) The Chola kings had made the saints their court poets, and the temples they built honoured these poets with images and hymns. — Incorrect. The Chola rulers did support bhakti and build temples for Vishnu and Shiva, but they came later. The saints were not their court poets, and the honour came from the saints' own sacred sites.
Option (2) The saints had served as temple priests before they began to travel, so the temples honoured them as their own Brahmanas. — Incorrect. The saints came from many backgrounds, from Brahmanas to artisans and cultivators. They were travelling devotees who sang in praise of their gods.
Option (3) Pallava and Pandya kings built temples at the saints' birthplaces and placed their images there to honour them as local heroes. — Incorrect. The Pallavas and Pandyas ruled the region in this period, but temples did not rise at the saints' birthplaces. They rose at the shrines the saints had marked as homes of their gods.
Option (4) The saints had marked such shrines as abodes of their deities; temples later built there took in their compositions and images. — Correct. On their travels the Alvars and Nayanars picked out certain shrines as abodes of their chosen deities. Large temples were later built at these places, and singing the saints' songs and worshipping their images became part of temple ritual.
NCERT (2026-27): “2.1 The Alvars and Nayanars of Tamil Nadu … |