Hymn Collections

Books of sung or chanted praise that a tradition holds as scripture and uses in worship. The Tevaram and the Tiruvasagam of the Tamil Shaiva canon, the Divya Prabandham of the Sri Vaishnavas, the Mandaean Qolasta and the Yazidi Qewls are here, and in each case the singing is the point: these are texts a congregation performs rather than reads. Hymn corpora with no such standing, including the Homeric Hymns, the Orphic Hymns and the Sumerian Temple Hymns, sit under Other Writings.