Belief and Beyond: Adventures in Consciousness from the Upanishads to Modern Times by Mukunda Rao

Author:Mukunda Rao [Rao, Mukunda]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2019-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

Seven

Beyond Gender

Akka Mahadevi

Akka Mahadevi (c. 1130–60 CE) the poet saint, like others of her time, did not keep any record of her work. The main sources of her vachanas, as well as biographical information on her and on the other saranas (devotees) that we have today, come from hagiographies composed later—such as Mahadeviyakkagala Ragale and Prabhudevara Ragale by Harihara in the twelfth century CE, Basava Purana by Bhimakavi in 1369 CE; fifteenth-century texts such as Chamarasa’s Prabhulinga Lile and four different versions of Sunya Sampadane. All the same, Harihara’s Prabhudevara Ragale and Mahadeviyakkagala Ragale are considered by many scholars as relatively reliable sources of information on both Allama Prabhu and Akka Mahadevi.

Wading through these different texts where ‘traditional forces’ were already at work, fitting Akka Mahadevi and other saranas into a traditional framework, it is difficult to pinpoint and assert that this is exactly how Akka Mahadevi lived, moved and composed her vachanas. However, reading between the lines of these texts, and in light of her vachanas and the observations made by the likes of Allama and Basavanna and other saranas on Mahadevi, we should yet be able to arrive at a fairly balanced and credible view of this extraordinary, awe-inspiring being who walked this land more than eight hundred years ago.

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