Person · Virashaiva poet-saint · India
Akka Mahādevi
Also known as Akka Mahadevi — Kalyana tradition
The 12-century Kannada vachana poet-saint Akka Mahadevi (c.1130-1160), one of the most important women poets of the Virashaiva (Lingayat) movement at Kalyana under Basava's leadership. Mahadevi left her Jain merchant husband Kaushika (a king who had forced marriage on her under the condition that she would be free to leave if he violated certain rules) and travelled naked across Karnataka, worshipping Shiva as Chennamallikarjuna ('beautiful lord as white as jasmine'). Her 430+ surviving vachanas (Kannada free-verse devotional poems) are among the finest Virashaiva literature and are foundational to the Kannada bhakti tradition. She joined Basava's Anubhava Mantapa (Experience Hall) at Kalyana as its only major woman member, debating with Allama Prabhu and other Virashaiva saints. She died at Shrishaila (Srisailam) around age 30. The 2003 'Akkana Vachanagalu' Kannada edition remains the standard.
- Date
- 1130–1170
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Condition
- historical person + living tradition
- Confidence
- Not assessed — historical-literary tradition
- Location
- 17.870, 76.950
About the place
Placed at Kalyana, the Virashaiva centre where the anubhava mantapa met and where her vachanas belong. Her own account has her walking from Udutadi to Srisailam, and tradition ends her life there.
Connections (2)
- Script and cultureBasavanna
Akka Mahadevi and Basavanna both belong to the 12th century vachana movement centred at Kalyana under the Kalachuri king Bijjala II. She joined the Anubhava Mantapa as a young woman renunciate wholly devoted to Chennamallikarjuna, and her radical unclothed asceticism marks the movement's most striking gender-crossing figure. Their linked biographies are partly hagiographic.
- Canonised by textVachana sāhitya
Akka Mahādevi's vachanas are signed Chennamallikārjuna and are the most direct of the corpus: she writes about the body she has renounced, about hunger, and about being questioned by men who assume her right to speak is in doubt. About thirty of the three hundred known sharanas were women. She left a royal marriage in her teens, gave up clothing, and walked to Kalyāna to be interrogated by the assembly about both, which the corpus records from her side.
On these journeys
Sources
Akka Mahadevi vachanas; A.K. Ramanujan, Speaking of Siva; Kannada literary scholarship.
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