Thiruvaimozhi, a significant work in the Tamil Vaishnava canon, was composed in the eighth century by Nammaazhwaar, ‘our one who goes deep’, the most prominent of the twelve Vaishnava Aazhwaar saints. The poet ascribes this impressive 1,100-verse work not to himself but to one whom he visualizes as the very spirit of truth, from whose mouth it emerges as ‘holy utterance’. Taken as a whole, Thiruvaimozhi reflects a broad view of what the poet saw as the innate human need to venerate, and his belief that the god of the sky, of all-encompassing space itself—Vishnu—was the ‘original god’, containing in himself all others.