Mahanu🚧 Draft — not final. This page was auto-generated as day-one scaffolding for the project and still needs a human pass before it reads as finished. The blanks and placeholders below are intentional — someone who runs this project should fill them in and delete this notice.
Vachanas — starter ten
The first task on the plan, made concrete. Ten 12th-century vachanas — the sharana poems that say the deepest things in the plainest Kannada — each with text, a translation that keeps the directness, and one good rendition linked. Basavanna first; his ankita (signature) is Kūḍala Saṅgama Dēva.
Fill the text from a trusted edition — the credibility of the shelf is in getting the Kannada right; don't approximate it.
| # | Poet | Ankita / first words | Theme | Text ✓ | Translation ✓ | Rendition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Basavanna | "the rich build temples for Shiva; what shall I, a poor man, do…" (the sthāvara / jaṅgama vachana) | the living body as the true temple | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| 2 | Basavanna | Kūḍala Saṅgama Dēva — | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | |
| 3 | Akka Mahadevi | longing, renunciation | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | |
| 4 | Allama Prabhu | the riddling, mystical ones | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | |
| 5 | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
(Rows 6–10: fill as the reading goes. Balance the three great voices — Basavanna, Akka Mahadevi, Allama Prabhu — before adding others.)
Why vachanas first
They're the sharpest entry to the whole canon: short, spoken, radical, and public domain by eight centuries. Get ten of these into the ear and the dasa sahitya list (its own doc) has a foundation to stand on.