Udutadi
Akka Mahadevi, roughly 1130 to 1160, is the greatest woman poet of the Kannada vachana movement and one of the most uncompromising figures in Indian devotional literature.
Akka means elder sister. It is not her birth name; it is what the assembly at Kalyana called her, and it stuck.
Where she was from: Udutadi, now in Shivamogga district, Karnataka. Her parents, Nirmalashetti and Sumati, were devotees, and she was initiated young.
Her chosen form of Shiva: Chennamallikarjuna.
Mallikarjuna is the Shiva of Srisailam, and chenna means beautiful or lovely. Malli is jasmine, and A. K. Ramanujan's famous rendering of the name is the lord white as jasmine, which is how English readers know her.
Every one of her vachanas ends with that name, and she uses it the way a wife uses a husband's name. Her stated position from childhood was that she was already married, to him, and that no other marriage was available.
The king
Kaushika, a local ruler, saw her and wanted to marry her. The accounts describe him as a Jain king, and as somebody with the power to compel her family.
The pressure: her parents were not in a position to refuse a ruler.
What she did: she set conditions.
The accounts give three, in various forms:
- That he never interfere with her worship
- That he never interfere with her being in the company of devotees, the sharanas and jangamas
- That he never touch her against her will or treat her as a possession
And she stated that if any condition was broken, she would leave.
He agreed, and the marriage took place.
He broke them. The accounts differ on which and how, but all agree that he interfered, and in some he interrupted her worship, and in others he grew jealous of the devotees she received.
And she left.
How she left
This is the part everybody knows, and it needs stating carefully and without sensationalism.
She left with nothing. She took no jewellery, no clothing given to her by the palace, and by the accounts nothing at all, and she covered herself with her hair.
What that means, plainly:
- Everything she was wearing had been given to her as a wife and as a queen
- Leaving with it would have been leaving as a person who still had a claim on that household
- She refused the whole transaction, including the clothes
And the second thing it means: she had been valued for how she looked, and had been married for it, and she removed the terms of that valuation entirely.
How the tradition treats it: not as scandal, and not as a spectacle. Her own vachanas address it directly and impatiently, and one of them says roughly that when the whole world is the eye of the lord watching everywhere, what can you cover and how, and what would be the point.
This app's position: her nudity is a fact of her biography, it is the subject of some of her own poems, and it is not the interesting thing about her. Her poems are.
The Questioning at the Door
She walked to Kalyana, where the Anubhava Mantapa was, and asked to be admitted.
And she was examined.
Who examined her: Allama Prabhu, who presided over the assembly and whose method was to ask questions that could not be answered by reciting anything.
This is the most famous exchange in vachana literature, and it is recorded in the Shunya Sampadane, the collected dialogues of the assembly.
How it went, in substance.
Allama asked who her husband was.
She said Chennamallikarjuna.
He pressed: if you are married to the formless, what is this body doing here, and what is this performance of renunciation.
He asked about the hair: if you have given up everything, why are you covering yourself. A person who has genuinely finished with the body does not need to hide it, and a person who is hiding it has not finished.
That is a real question and it is a trap in both directions. Cover, and you are still attached to the body's meaning. Do not cover, and you are making a display.
Her answers, across the recorded exchange, run along these lines:
- That the covering is for others, not for her, because the world cannot see anything else and she is not interested in the argument that would follow
- That she has not renounced the body as a performance; she has simply stopped negotiating about it
- That until the fruit is ripe the skin stays on, and when it is ripe the skin falls, and neither is a decision
And Allama accepted her.
What the assembly did: Basavanna and the others addressed her as Akka, elder sister, and she took her place among them.
Why that examination matters
Because it was a real examination and she could have failed it.
The Anubhava Mantapa did not admit people because they had suffered, or because they were sincere, or because they were famous. Allama's role was to test whether somebody actually understood, and the Shunya Sampadane records him dismantling several people who did not.
She was tested harder than most, and by the accounts she was the only person who consistently held her own with Allama.
And there is an uncomfortable point in it that should be named. She was questioned about her body in a way none of the men were, and the questioning is recorded at length.
The tradition presents it as a philosophical test of her detachment, and it was that. It was also a woman having to account for her body in front of an assembly, which none of her male colleagues had to do.
Both things can be true and the record supports both readings.
The Vachanas
Around 430 vachanas survive under the ankita Chennamallikarjuna, and she is also credited with two short works, the Yogangatrividhi and the Mantrogopya.
What they are like
They are love poems, and they are not gentle.
Her central relationship is with Chennamallikarjuna, addressed as a husband and a lover, and the register runs from tenderness to accusation to fury. She uses the whole vocabulary of a woman waiting for a man who has not come.
And she uses it against him. Several vachanas accuse him of neglect, of cruelty, of making her wait, and of enjoying her condition.
The characteristic subjects:
One. The forest.
Some of the most loved poems are addressed to trees, plants and animals. She asks the jasmine, the mango, the koel, the bees, the peacocks, whether they have seen him, and asks them to tell him she is looking.
One of the most famous asks the trees of the forest, one by one, and ends by asking the swan on the lake to point the way.
Two. Hunger and thirst as images.
She writes about wanting in physical terms and refuses to make it decorous.
Three. The body.
Several vachanas deal with being looked at, with the difference between what people see and what is there, and with her impatience at having to discuss it.
Four. Rebirth.
One of her hardest poems catalogues the births she has passed through, in blunt physical language, and asks how many more there are to be.
Five. The householder question.
She is direct that she could not do what she wanted inside a marriage arranged for her, and several vachanas describe the impossibility rather than lament it.
Six. Maya.
A famous group treats maya as a person: a mother in law, a rival, a thing that follows you into the forest. In one she says that when you renounce, maya renounces with you and is still there.
Her style
- Short, often eight to fifteen lines
- Almost no technical vocabulary
- Heavy use of the household and the forest
- A turn at the end, almost always
- The ankita Chennamallikarjuna as the last word
Reading her
A. K. Ramanujan's Speaking of Siva carries a substantial selection and is the standard English entry. His renderings, including the lord white as jasmine, are how most non Kannada readers know her.
Other translations exist, and Kannada editions carry the full corpus. She is also sung, and her vachanas are set to music in Karnataka and performed widely.
Which to start with:
- The forest vachanas, asking the trees and birds if they have seen him
- The one on the ripe fruit and the skin
- The maya vachanas
- The ones where she is angry with him
Srisailam and the Plantain Grove
She did not stay at Kalyana.
After her time in the assembly she went south, to Srisailam, in what is now Nandyal district, Andhra Pradesh.
Why Srisailam: because Mallikarjuna is there. It is one of the twelve jyotirlingas and one of the eighteen shakti pithas, with Bhramaramba as the goddess, and it is the physical location of the deity she had addressed her whole life.
Where she went: the Kadali vana, the plantain grove, in the forest beyond the temple.
What happened there: the tradition says she merged, aikya, into Chennamallikarjuna, at around thirty.
Whether that means anything recoverable: no. It is the tradition's account of the end of a life about which we have poems and very little else.
Srisailam today:
- On the Krishna, in the Nallamala hills
- The Mallikarjuna jyotirlinga and the Bhramaramba shakti pitha in one complex, which is unusual
- The Akka Mahadevi caves, reached by boat along the Krishna, are associated with her
- Kadali vana is identified in the forest area
- The Srisailam dam and the tiger reserve surround it
Udutadi, in Shivamogga district, Karnataka, is her birthplace and has a shrine.
Her place among the women of the vachana movement
She is the best known, but she is not alone. Around thirty three women vachanakaras are recorded, including:
- Muktayakka, sister of Ajaganna, whose exchanges with Allama are in the Shunya Sampadane
- Neelambike, Basavanna's wife
- Gangambike, also Basavanna's wife
- Kalavve, whose vachana on caste is one of the sharpest in the corpus
- Satyakka, Remmavve, Lakkamma, Aydakki Lakkamma, Amuge Rayamma, Sule Sankavve, a courtesan
That last name is worth pausing on. Sule Sankavve signs as a sule, a prostitute, and her vachanas are in the canon under that description. The movement did not require her to stop being what she was in order to be heard.
Kalavve's famous vachana asks, roughly: the man who skins the cow and the man who eats the meat are of one kind, and the one who wears the leather sandals is another kind? What sort of distinction is that?
Akka Mahadevi is the greatest of them, and the group she belongs to is one of the largest bodies of women's writing in premodern India.
What to Take From Her
One. She set conditions and enforced them.
This is the concrete thing in her life and it gets less attention than the rest.
Facing a marriage she could not refuse, she named what she required, obtained agreement, and when the agreement was broken she treated it as void and left.
She did not renegotiate, wait to see if it improved, or accept that she had no options.
And in modern terms: a marriage in which the terms a person agreed to are being broken, in which they are prevented from practising their faith, or in which they are treated as property, is a marriage they are entitled to leave.
- The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 covers physical, sexual, verbal, emotional and economic abuse, and provides protection orders and residence orders
- Women's helpline 181, police 112
- One Stop Sakhi Centres in most districts: shelter, medical, legal and counselling together
- Free legal aid, statutory right, national number 15100
- Tele MANAS 14416
Two. She left with nothing rather than take what came with the arrangement.
That is an extreme version of a general principle: if you are leaving something, leave it, and do not keep the parts of it that would give it a claim on you.
Three. She was examined and held up.
At Kalyana she was questioned hard, in public, in a way none of the men were, and she answered. The tradition then made her the elder sister of the whole assembly.
And the useful part of the exchange: her answer about the ripe fruit and the skin. Nothing has to be forced. When the thing is finished, what was covering it falls off on its own, and until then, performing the outcome is not the same as arriving at it.
Four. She addressed the deity as a person and complained.
Her poems accuse, demand, and lose patience. She is not a model of serene devotion and she never claimed to be.
For anybody whose practice feels like waiting for somebody who has not come, she is the poet for that, and she is entirely unembarrassed about it.
Five. And the thing not to take.
Her leaving at around twenty and dying at around thirty, alone in a forest, is her life and not a recommendation. She had no other options available; most readers of this have several.
A daily practice from this entry:
- Om Namah Shivaya
- One vachana, read and left to sit
- Her question, when you are performing something rather than doing it: is this the fruit ripening, or am I taking the skin off early
- At Srisailam, if you go: the jyotirlinga, the Bhramaramba shrine, and the caves along the Krishna
A closing thought
A king wanted her and her family could not refuse him, so she wrote the terms herself: leave my worship alone, leave my company alone, and do not treat me as property.
He agreed and then did not keep to it, so she walked out of the palace with nothing, not even the clothes, and covered herself with her hair, and went to the only place in the country where a woman could turn up and be argued with seriously.
They questioned her at the door about her body, which they did to nobody else, and she answered them, and they called her elder sister for the rest of time.
Then she walked south to the mountain where the god she had been writing to actually lived, went into the plantain grove behind it, and did not come back.
And four hundred and thirty of her poems survive, most of which are addressed to somebody who is late.
The Short Version
Who: Akka Mahadevi, roughly 1130 to 1160, of Udutadi in Shivamogga district, Karnataka, the greatest woman poet of the Kannada vachana movement. Akka means elder sister and is what the Anubhava Mantapa called her.
Her ankita: Chennamallikarjuna, the Shiva of Srisailam, rendered by A. K. Ramanujan as the lord white as jasmine. Every one of her vachanas ends with it.
The marriage: King Kaushika wanted her and her family could not refuse. She set conditions: no interference with her worship, none with her company of devotees, and no treating her as property. He agreed, broke them, and she left the palace with nothing, covering herself with her hair.
Kalyana: she walked to the Anubhava Mantapa and was examined at the door by Allama Prabhu, who pressed her on the body and the covering. Her answer was that until the fruit is ripe the skin stays on, and when it is ripe it falls, and neither is a decision. She was accepted and called Akka.
Her work: around 430 vachanas, plus the short Yogangatrividhi and Mantrogopya. They are love poems addressed to Chennamallikarjuna as husband, ranging from tenderness to accusation, with famous groups on the forest, on maya as a person, on rebirth, and on being looked at.
Her end: at Srisailam, in the Kadali vana, the plantain grove, at around thirty.
Where to go: Srisailam in Nandyal district, Andhra Pradesh, which holds both the Mallikarjuna jyotirlinga and the Bhramaramba shakti pitha, with the Akka Mahadevi caves reached by boat along the Krishna. Udutadi in Karnataka is her birthplace.
What to keep: she named her conditions, and when they were broken she treated the agreement as void.
What People Ask Most
Who was Akka Mahadevi?+
A twelfth century Kannada poet of Udutadi in Shivamogga district, Karnataka, roughly 1130 to 1160, and the greatest woman poet of the vachana movement. Akka means elder sister and is what the Anubhava Mantapa assembly at Kalyana called her. Around 430 of her vachanas survive under the signature Chennamallikarjuna, the Shiva of Srisailam, rendered in A. K. Ramanujan's translations as the lord white as jasmine.
Why did Akka Mahadevi leave her marriage?+
King Kaushika wanted to marry her and her family was not in a position to refuse a ruler, so she set conditions before agreeing: that he never interfere with her worship, never interfere with her being in the company of devotees, and never treat her as a possession. She stated that if any condition was broken she would leave. He agreed, and then broke them, and she left the palace with nothing at all, including the clothes she had been given as a wife and a queen, covering herself with her hair.
What happened when Akka Mahadevi arrived at the Anubhava Mantapa?+
She was examined at the door by Allama Prabhu, who presided over the assembly and whose method was to ask questions that could not be answered by reciting anything. He pressed her on who her husband was, on what a body was doing there if she was married to the formless, and on why she covered herself if she had renounced everything. Her answers included that the covering was for others rather than for her, and that until the fruit is ripe the skin stays on and when it is ripe it falls, and neither is a decision. He accepted her, and Basavanna and the assembly called her Akka, elder sister.
What are Akka Mahadevi's vachanas about?+
They are love poems addressed to Chennamallikarjuna as husband and lover, and they are not gentle: the register runs from tenderness to accusation to fury, and several accuse him of neglect and of making her wait. The recurring subjects are the forest, where she asks trees, bees and birds whether they have seen him; maya treated as a person who follows you even into renunciation; rebirth, catalogued in blunt physical language; and being looked at, and her impatience at having to discuss it.
Where did Akka Mahadevi die?+
At Srisailam, in the Kadali vana or plantain grove in the forest beyond the temple, at around thirty. Srisailam is in Nandyal district, Andhra Pradesh, on the Krishna in the Nallamala hills, and it holds both the Mallikarjuna jyotirlinga and the Bhramaramba shakti pitha in one complex, which is unusual. The Akka Mahadevi caves, reached by boat along the Krishna, are associated with her.
Which other women wrote vachanas?+
Around thirty three women vachanakaras are recorded, including Muktayakka, whose exchanges with Allama are in the Shunya Sampadane; Neelambike and Gangambike, both wives of Basavanna; Kalavve, whose vachana on caste asks what sort of distinction separates the man who skins the cow from the man who wears the leather sandals; Satyakka, Remmavve, Aydakki Lakkamma, Amuge Rayamma; and Sule Sankavve, who signs as a sule, a prostitute, and whose vachanas are in the canon under that description. It is one of the largest bodies of women's writing in premodern India.
About the author
Pandit Ravindra Sharma · Vedic Rituals & Bhakti, 22+ years
Pandit Ravindra is the Vandnaa editorial team's resident specialist on aarti, chalisa, and daily devotion. He has performed home and temple pujas across Varanasi and Delhi for over two decades and contributes the bhakti-focused articles on this site.
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