Appar Tirunavukkarasar Nayanar ( "King of the Tongue, Lord of Language"), also known as Appar "Father", was a seventh-century Śaiva Tamil poet-saint, one of the most prominent of the sixty-three Nayanars. He was an older contemporary of Thirugnana Sambandar. His birth-name was Marulneekkiyar: he was called "father" by Sambandar, hence the name Appar. Sundarar states in his Tiruttondartokai that Appar composed 4900 hymns of ten or eleven verses each, this is repeated by Nambiyandar Nambi and Sekkizhar, but only 313 hymns are available today. These are collected into the Tirumurai along with the compositions of Sundarar and Thirugnana Sambandar, Appar having his own volumes, called Tevaram.
