Appar (600 - 681 C.E.) was the seniormost. He was left an orphan at an early age. He was brought up by a loving elder sister who was a devotee of Siva. Great was the sister’s grief when he forsook the faith of his ancestors and took to Jainism. His sister prayed to Lord Siva for his reconversion to Saivism and thereupon he was afflicted by an unbearable stomach-ache, which none of the Jains could alleviate, but of which he was cured when his sister applied the sacred ashes to him. This led to his reconversion. He wandered throughout the Tamil land, sometimes alone and sometimes with Sambandar, his junior contemporary, singing his way from shrine to shrine. Pictures show him holding in his hand a little tool for scraping grass, with which he used to scrape the stones of the temple courts. The Jains persecuted him and there are many stories of his miraculous escapes. The tone, texture, content and imagery of his songs captivated the hearts of one and all. His soul-stirring songs are clear and emphatic and show him as an exemplary devotee of the Lord. His miracles have been chronicled everywhere in Saiva literature and history.

Sambandar ( 644 - 660 C.E.) He was a genius-cum-saint-cum-poet who lived only for sixteen years, but is said to have composed 10000 devotional hymns on Siva in Tamil. He had the genius of singing hymns to the Lord for a miracle to happen and lo, it happened every time he asked for it! The wonders of his life-history begin with his third year. The earliest hymn he sang was when he was a boy of three. It seems he was left alone by his father on the banks of a temple tank while the father was bathing in the tank having his series of ritual dips. The young child missed his parents and cried 'Amma' 'Amma' and asked for milk. 'Amma' in Tamil means 'Mother'. The Mother-Goddess probably presented Herself before him and breast-fed him. The boy tasted the milk, as it were, of true knowledge from the very fountain-source of all Knowledge. At once he became an inspired Saint. When the father saw him in that state and was confused by his answers, the boy reeled off in chaste poetry one of the most famous of all Tamil hymns. The stanza contains no allusion to the story however, but that the boy had an unusual vision of the Lord and the Goddess, is obvious from the description he gives of Them in his maiden-recital. He grew up to be a pilgrim poet and a wandering minstrel. He visited most of the Saivite shrines of Tamilnad and in each place sang the praise of Lord Siva worshipped in that place. He sang poems after poems in his very short life and triumphantly re-established the Saiva branch of Hinduism in opposition to religions like Buddhism and Jainism.

Sundarar ( 710 - 735 C.E.) was born of a family of Saiva devotees. His hymns and several miracles divinely engineered in favour of this most-favourite friend of God, captivated the entire country of the Tamils. He was in such great friendly intimacy with the Lord without ever being oblivious of His Divinity, that he made use of His services even for settling domestic quarrels. He was the first to sing the praise of the 63 Nayanmars and so, must have been the last, in chronology, of the Nayanmars.. A 10t^h century devotee elaborated these eleven songs of Sundarar into 89 quatrains. Later in the 11^th century the great poet Sekkizhar composed 4286 verses as an elaboration of the lives of these 63 saints. This work is known as Peria-puranam and is included as a canonised scripture in the Saiva fold.

'Few of the world's biographies are more interesting than that of this man of rare genius.' says G.U. Pope, of Manicka-vachagar, (660 - 692 C.E.) the fourth of the four grandmasters. In his early youth he was the favourite chief minister of a great Pandya king of Madura. He met a Saiva guru - whom he then and always believed to be Lord Siva Himself - and was converted by him to become an utterly self-renouncing ascetic and Siva mendicant. When the King perceived that his minister had become a man of God he relieved him of his duties. The saint visited several places, all the while giving out in song his spiritual experiences. Finally while in retirement, the call came to him from his king to meet the aggressive disputations of the Buddhist emissaries from Ceylon. He answered their arguments but they were not convinced. Finally he turned to His Lord Siva for help. The King pleaded that his dumb daughter should be made to speak. Acting on the suggestion and to the wonder of the audience, the daughter spoke. The Buddhists were convinced. Manickavachagar's unique bridal mysticism, undivided loyalty and exclusive devotion to the Lord, find immortal expression in his exquisite poems like Tiruvachagam which is a work of devotion-cum-wisdom par excellence, known to melt even the hardest of hearts.