01Kudalasangama and Kalyana
He was born at Bagewadi in the Bijapur country and studied at Kudalasangama, where the Krishna and the Malaprabha meet. At Kalyana he rose to be Bijjala’s minister. His house became the Anubhava Mantapa, a hall where sharanas of every birth and calling, potters, washermen, cobblers and Brahmins, men and women such as Akka Mahadevi and Allama Prabhu, met to speak of Shiva in plain Kannada. Every sharana wore the ishtalinga, a small linga on the body, and worshipped it daily.
02Work as worship
Basava asked that every sharana live by honest work, kayaka, and share what it earned, dasoha. The saying “kayakave Kailasa”, work is Kailasa, comes from this circle. A marriage across birth lines in the community brought trouble in Kalyana, and Basava left the city and returned to Kudalasangama, where he left the body. His shrine stands there at the meeting of the rivers. Basava Jayanti is kept on Vaishakha Shukla Tritiya, Akshaya Tritiya.
“The rich will make temples for Shiva. What shall I, a poor man, do? My legs are pillars, the body the shrine, the head a cupola of gold. Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers: things standing shall fall, but the moving ever shall stay.”
Vachana of Basavanna, tr. A. K. Ramanujan, Speaking of Siva (1973)
