The Divya Desams are the abodes of Vishnu praised in the songs of the Alvars, the poet-saints of the Sri Vaishnava tradition, whose four thousand Tamil verses are gathered as the Nalayira Divya Prabandham. One hundred and eight in all, these are the shrines the Alvars sang as places where the Lord makes himself present and near — most across the Tamil country, others reaching to Kerala, Andhra, Gujarat, and the Himalayas, and two held to lie beyond the earth, in the ocean of milk and in Vaikuntha itself. Their sanctity rests not on age or grandeur but on this song of love: to be named by the Alvars is what raises a shrine among the Divya Desams.
At each, Vishnu bears his own form and name — reclining as Ranganatha at Srirangam, standing as Venkateswara at Tirumala, resting as Padmanabha at Thiruvananthapuram, and at Srivilliputhur, revered as the home of the woman-saint Andal, whose verses are sung among the Alvars' own. Of these one hundred and eight, this collection carries the abodes present within it. To seek darshan across the Divya Desams is to follow the Alvars' path, letting their songs of longing become the devotee's own.
