Songs for Siva

Hailed as early feminist literary voice, Akka Mahadevi was born in the twelfth century in the southwest Indian province of Karnatka. As a child she was initiated into the worship of Channamallikarjuna (translated here as jasmine-tender), her village's version of Siva. She was forced to marry her region's ruler. But because she was devoted only to Siva, she left her husband and all her possessions, including her clothes, and wandered a naked poet-saint covered only by her long hair. Her vacanas--a new populist literary form meaning literally to give one's word--collected here demonstrate both her radical devotion to Siva and the radical commitment to equality, for her the vira-saiva movement, she joined.