Akka Mahadevi

01Udutadi and the king Kaushika

She was born around 1130 at Udutadi, near Shivamogga in Karnataka; some accounts name her parents Nirmalashetti and Sumati, both devotees of Shiva. Her own vachanas, short poems in plain Kannada, are the oldest record of her life, and they speak of leaving home to seek Shiva. The later biographies, the earliest by the poet Harihara, add the katha of Kaushika, a local king who wanted her for his wife. Harihara says she set conditions, that her time for worship and for the company of Shiva’s devotees would stay her own, and that when the king broke them she walked out of the palace leaving even her clothes behind. Other accounts say no marriage took place at all. The sources do not agree, and the vachanas themselves are the surest witness.

02At the Anubhava Mantapa

She went north to Kalyana, today’s Basavakalyan, where Basavanna and Allama Prabhu gathered the sharanas in the hall the tradition calls the Anubhava Mantapa. A woman wandering alone, clothed, the accounts say, only in her long hair, was not easily received, and even Allama tested her with hard questions before he accepted her. After that Basavanna, Chennabasavanna, Siddharama and the rest called her Akka. Her vachanas, about 350 to 430 of them carry her signature name Chennamallikarjuna, speak of Shiva as the one true husband and of all others as husbands who die and decay. They are spoken in the voice of a lover, which the tradition calls madhura bhava, and they ask the seeker to kill the ‘I’ and master the senses.

Place · Capital of the Kalyani Chalukyas from the mid-11th centuryBasavakalyan (Kalyani)Kalyana, capital of the later Chalukyas under Someshvara I and Vikramaditya VI, and the city where Basava, minister of the Kalachuri Bijjala, gathered the sharanas in the Anubhava Mantapa. It was renamed Basavakalyan in 1956.Read →

03Kadali in the Srisailam forest

From Kalyana she went south to Srisailam, the hill of Mallikarjuna, one of the twelve Jyotirlingas and the shrine whose name she had sung all her life. In the thick forest the tradition calls Kadali she lived as an ascetic, and there, it is said, she attained aikya, union with Chennamallikarjuna, while still young. A vachana attributed to her says King Kaushika came to the forest at the end and asked her forgiveness. The caves above the Krishna at Srisailam are still shown as the Akkamahadevi caves, and pilgrims go by boat to see them. In Karnataka she is a household name, and her vachanas are taught in schools beside those of Basavanna and Allama.