Akka Mahadevi

Akka Mahadevi was a mystic poet from medieval Karnataka who wrote in Kannada and is one of the best-known women of the Lingayat movement, a devotional strand of Hinduism that emerged in the twelfth century. Her work, composed as vachanas, short and spontaneous poems, is central to the Kannada literary canon.

Very little about her life can be stated with confidence. She is usually placed in Udutadi, near Shivamogga, around 1130, and her activity is generally dated to roughly 1130 to 1160. The death year given in some records, 1101, does not fit that chronology, so it should be treated with caution. The later biographies blend history with legend and rely heavily on oral tradition and on her own verses.

According to these accounts, she turned down a marriage proposal from a Jain king, Kaushika, by setting conditions that would leave her free to devote her time to devotion and to debate with learned people. Sources disagree on whether the marriage ever took place. What seems clear is that she left the palace and began a wandering life.

In Kalyana, today Basava Kalyana, she moved in the circle of Basavanna and Allama Prabhu, who held discussions at the Anubhava Mantapa. There she was given the title Akka, meaning elder sister, a sign of the esteem in which she was held. Her poetry expresses an exclusive love for Chennamallikarjuna, the name she uses for Shiva, and at times draws on erotic imagery to describe union with the divine. She questions worldly ties and attachment to family, proposing a path of renunciation and the dissolving of the self.

She spent her last years in the forests of Srisailam, where tradition places her final union with the divine. Today she is regarded as an important reference in discussions of women's emancipation in India, and her name appears on streets and universities in Karnataka.