The eighth of the twelve sections of the Saiva canonical collection consists of Manikkavasakar's Tiruvasakam and Tirukkovaiyar. Manikkavasakar was, like Sambandar and Sundaramurti before, a Brahman by birth, and enjoyed the title and the responsibility of the ministry to a Pandya king, apparently the Pandya king Varaguna referred to in the Tirukkovaiyar. The story of his life briefly is that he was deputed by his sovereign to go and make large purchases of horses for his cavalry. Going on this mission with the requisite amount of treasure, he came on the way to a place called Perumturai where under the shade of a kurunda tree he saw a priest at the head of a body of Saiva disciples. Peeling the call and seeing the opportunity presenting itself in this fashion, he stopped there, received the teaching and diksa (ordination) from this devoted preceptor, and spent away the money that he carried with him for purchasing horses in devotional works and charity. For this act of sheer neglect of his duty to his sovereign and state, he was subjected to various acts of bodily punishment from which Siva saved him by the performance of miracles. Of these one took the form of converting the jackals of the forests into horses and leading them into the Pandyan stables. He obtained the release of Manikkavasakar by working as a labourer in Madura and showing himself to the Pandyan king. Manikkavasakar thereafter was allowed to follow the bent of his mind, and having visited various Saiva shrines of importance, he stayed for some considerable time in Chidambaram having overcome a large body of Buddhists from Ceylon in controversy, and attained to Sivahood. He has been ascribed by various scholars to a very early period, but the weight of scholarly opinion seems to support the order in the arrangement of Saiva canonical literature which groups his works in the eighth of the twelve canonical sections.

Manikkavasakar's works partake of the character of the Tevaram hymners before him. They exhibit however a more intense kind of devotion, if that were possible, and a literary form which is perhaps more directly in accordance with the canons of criticism. His second work in particular is supposed to provide the model, for that special section of rhetoric which we have labelled for convenience, erotic. We have stated before that the modes of expression characteristic of Tamil literature gave that peculiar character to bhakti in the Tamil country which raises it from the region of mere abstraction to that of actual realisation in life even by the imperfect human being. While all considerable writers of this school have more or less contributed towards this end by their mode of composition, the matter itself appeals straight to the heart. Manikavasakar excels all of them both in form and in feeling.

The ninth section of this canonical literature is composed of the works of nine others including in it the Tirupallandu of Sendan. The tenth is composed entirely of the Tirumandiram of Tirumular. The eleventh is composed of a miscellaneous collection including in it the works of Pattinattadikal, a devotee of considerable influence, and those of Nambi Andar Nambi who is given the credit of having compiled the whole collection. This collection is composed of about 10 poems of these various authors. Nambi Andar Nambi lived in the eleventh century and is regarded by the Saiva Tamils to have done for Saivism what Vyasa is believed to have done for Vedic Brahmanism. These eleven sections of what the Tamils call Tirumurai, together with the lives of these saints written by Sekkilar constitute the complete set of Saiva canonical literature which in the estimation of the Saivas corresponds to the Vedic literature of the Brahmans. Sekkilar lived in the twelfth century, and by his time the whole body of Saiva canonical works were collected and thrown in form so that he could take upon himself to write a classical poem on the lives of these saints. The whole body of these works including the Periyapuranam of Sekkilar have this character in common. They are all works of devotion, and each work or each set of verses could be regarded as some form of prayer addressed to Siva in various modes as occasion demanded. Hence the whole set is compared to the mantras of the Veda. This comparison acquires a certain degree of validity when there grew up in the age immediately following an outcrop of literature, the purpose of which was designedly to give logical form and philosophical shape to Saiva Siddhanta as a religious system.