13/02/2026
This vachana in Kannada is attributed to the 12th-century poet-saint Akka Mahadevi.
Translator Manu Devadevan writes, “The vachanas were poems composed in the 11th and the 12th century by Shaiva saints, whom tradition identifies as sharanas, proteges of Shiva … The surviving poems are over 20,000 in number, but close to 90 percent of them are attributed to the 130-odd pioneers of the 11th and the 12th century. Among the pioneers, about half a dozen lived between c. 1050 and 1150 CE. The rest were active in the later half of the 12th century.”
“The Lingayats regard the vachanas as their sacred literature. Within the extant corpus, the poems of Basava, Allama Prabhu and Akka Mahadevi are conferred a pride of place and held in special esteem.”
“Historians regard the work of the sharanas as an ingenious regional expression of the larger South Asian bhakti devotionalism. This assessment, however, is placed within a narrative that is the stuff of romances. The 12th century is represented as one of intense religious ferment, characterized by widespread dissent and protest from a section of the Shaivites against oppressive orthodox beliefs and conventions … But as it turns out, the narrative is a fine blend of fact and fiction, drawing extensively upon hagiographic accounts from later times.”
“Sources from the 12th century point to many an instance of dissent against the orthodoxy, but there is no evidence for large-scale unrest across the region … What cannot be called into question, though, is the revolutionary attitude towards religion that the sharanas brought into effect. Their work changed the religious narrative of Karnataka in irreversible ways.”
“It is neither uncommon today for Lingayats to go on pilgrimage, nor hard to find sharanas travelling to pilgrim centres like Srisailam in the hagiographies. But the sharanas developed an attitude of reticence towards pilgrimage.”
