About

On the count

The collection is called நாலாயிரம், four thousand, and is named for that figure. What survives and is indexed here is 3,884 pasurams — the number the reader actually navigates. Both are true; the first is the name, the second is the contents.

Text and sources

Pasuram text was extracted from public-domain sources through an OCR pipeline and corrected against printed editions. The Desika Prabandham corpus comes from the Aandavan Ashram ‘with Breaks’ edition. Breath marks (* and **) are the source’s own recitation pauses and are rendered as marks rather than dropped. The verses themselves are in the public domain; the sources and compilations that made this edition legible are named below.

Script and transliteration

Verses can be read in Tamil, in a reciter-friendly romanisation, or in scholarly ISO-15919. The romanisation is generated, not hand-set, and a known defect list is tracked upstream — 113 lines still carry stray Tamil marks in the readable field, which affects all three clients equally.

Essences

The pasuram and decad essences are original thematic summaries written for this project. They are not translations of any copyrighted commentary.

Recitations

Recitations are not hosted here. Signing in with Apple opens them in Apple Music, using the catalogue ids the iOS client streams through MusicKit; signing in with Google opens a YouTube Music search, because no YouTube ids have been collected yet. Where an exact id is missing the link says so rather than guessing.

Privacy

Reading preferences — text size, spacing, theme — stay in this browser and are never sent anywhere. Signing in is optional and exists only to choose a music service; reading needs no account.This website carries no advertising, no analytics and no tracking. The iPhone and Android apps are paid for by advertising and do not, and the difference is set out in full — including what that advertising collects and how to turn its tracking off — in the privacy policy, which covers all three clients.

Fonts

Tamil is set in Noto Serif Tamil, self-hosted and subset so that offline reading never depends on a font CDN. Latin text uses the platform’s own interface face.

Recitation

• கே. மாலோல கண்ணன் · K. Malola Kannan

  பாராயணம் · Recitation

• என். எஸ். ரங்கநாதன் · N. S. Ranganathan

  பாராயணம் · Recitation

Sources & compilations

• பி. ஆர். ஜி. ஐயங்கார் · B. R. G. Iyengar

  108 திவ்ய தேசங்களின் மங்களாசாசனப் பாசுரப் பட்டியல் · Compiled the 108 Divya Desam mangalasasanam index

• திரு. டி. ஆர். எஸ். ஐயங்கார் · TRS Iyengar

  ஸ்ரீவைஷ்ணவ மரபுத் தளம் · Srivaishnavam Practices, for publishing that index

• சுந்தர் கிடாம்பி · Sunder Kidambi

  ஸ்ரீ தேசிகப் பிரபந்த பதிப்பு · Sri Desika Prabandham edition

• மதுரைத் திட்டம் · Project Madurai

  தமிழ் மின்னூல் பாடங்கள் · Tamil e-text of the Prabandham

• (திவ்ய கவி) நாட்டேரி கிடாம்பி விஜயராகவாச்சாரியார் · (Late) Naateri Kidambi Vijayaraaghavaachariyar

  “சந்தமிகு தமிழ்மறை” பதிப்பாசிரியர் · Editor, “Santhamigu Tamizhmarai” edition

With gratitude

• மாங்குடி பார்த்தசாரதி ரங்கராஜன் · Mangudi Parthasarathy Rangarajan

  மாமா · பாராயணம் · Uncle · Recitation

• கண்ணன் தேசிகர் · Kannan Desikar

  தந்தை · Father

• மைதிலி கண்ணன் · Mythili Kannan

  தாய் · Mother

• வாசுதேவன் சந்தானம் · Vasudevan Santhanam

  மாமனார் · Father-in-law

• சுபா வாசுதேவன் · Subha Vasudevan

  மாமியார் · Mother-in-law

• அபர்ணா வாசுதேவன் · Aparna Vasudevan

  மனைவி · Wife

Testers

Thank you to the friends and family who tested early builds and pointed out what needed fixing.