A Critical Exploration of Vachana Literature in the Select Texts of Allama Prabhu Basaveshwara and Akka Mahadevi

Abstract

Good and evil impulses exist in human nature. Kindness, nonviolence, and peace are newlineexamples of compassionate qualities that are reflective of universal ethics. All religions share these essential ideas, which are consistently trustworthy. Under the guise of social sanction, varna, class, and gender-based discrimination was practiced in medieval India. Divisions between the rich and the poor, the king and the subjects, the priest and the devotee, the touchable and untouchable, and men and women had become much more pronounced by the 12th century, which allowed for their exploitation. At the expense of the community, the individual was the main focus. The rigidity of the caste system and the complex religious rituals newlinecreated an inbuilt desire to change to a more fulfilling kind of worship and salvation. People were searching for answers to their emotional and spiritual needs. These factors aided in the development and spread of the Bhakti tradition within Hinduism. The Bhakti saints rejected the austerities of Buddhism and Jainism and promoted service to God (through service to humanity) as a path to salvation. The poet saints wrote poetry in the commonly spoken vernacular languages to reiterate the teachings and their spiritual experiences along the path of Bhakti. Such free verse poetry in Kannada, known as vachanas, affirms the tenets of the Bhakti newlineMovement. The movement in Karnataka in the 12th century, which is recorded in Vachana newlineliterature, threatened the caste structure and weakened social ties. Vachanas are devotional poetry. The purpose of this poetry was to educate and persuade the general public to campaign for social change, by reaching a larger audience. newlineA unique literary genre in Kannada, known as Vachana Literature, is credited to the newline12th-century Shiva devotees of Karnataka. They are acclaimed to have ushered in a newlinereformative socio-religious-philosophical and economic revolution, to put at naught all forms of divisive elements in society.