Songs for Siva: Vacanas of Akka Mahadevi

by Vinaya Chaitanya

Overview

'[Vinaya Chaitanya shows] an acute awareness of textual issues that never bothered earlier translators.' - From the foreword by H.S. Shivaprakash

Hailed as an early feminist literary voice, Akka Mahadevi was born in twelfth-century Karnataka. As a child she was initiated into the worship of Channamallikarjuna, her village's version of Siva. She was forced to marry her region's ruler, but because she had become so ardently devoted to the god, Akka abandoned her husband and all her possessions and wandered alone - a naked poet-saint covered only by her long hair. Her vacanas, a new populist literary form meaning literally 'to give one's word' - demonstrate both her radical devotion to Siva and the commitment to equality her Virasaiva poetry embodied.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789352644117
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/24/2017
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Vinaya Chaitanya was born in Muvattupuzha - the place of the three rivers - in the foothills of the Western Ghats, before the invasion of rubber plantations, in 1952. He was accepted as a disciple by Nataraja Guru, disciple and successor of Narayana Guru, the philosopher-poet of Kerala. Vinaya has published books in Malayalam, Kannada and English, including a translation of Akka Mahadevi's vacanas, Songs for Siva.