Consider the following statements about the Lingayats: 1. They bury their dead 2. They are great believers in the caste system, especially in the theory of purity and pollution 3. They are against child marriage and favour widow remarriage Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Correct — D, 1 and 3. The Lingayats bury their dead rather than cremating them, which follows from what they believe happens at death — the devotee is united with Shiva and does not return, so the rites built around rebirth have no place. That is statement 1. They also set themselves against practices the Dharmashastras approved, opposing child marriage and supporting the remarriage of widows, which is statement 3. Statement 2 inverts the movement's most famous position. Far from believing in caste and in purity and pollution, the Virashaivas rejected caste distinction and the ritual authority that rested on it, and their vachana poets said so in plain Kannada. Note how the codes are printed here — option (a) is 1 and 2 and option (b) is 1 only, which is not the order a candidate expects, so read the letters rather than assuming the usual sequence.

• (a)1 and 2 — Accepts the caste statement. The Virashaiva movement was a challenge to caste hierarchy and to the theory of purity and pollution, which is the single best known thing about it.
• (b)1 only — Correct on burial but drops the social reform. Opposition to child marriage and support for widow remarriage are documented positions of the movement, not later additions to it.
• (c)2 and 3 — Combines the one false statement with a true one, and loses the burial practice that is the movement's most distinctive outward mark.

The Virashaiva or Lingayat movement took shape in the Kannada country in the twelfth century around Basavanna, a Brahmana who served as a minister at the court of the Kalachuri ruler Bijjala at Kalyana. Its followers worship Shiva in the form of a small linga, the ishtalinga, carried on the body, and they express their devotion in vachanas — short, direct prose-poems in Kannada rather than Sanskrit, composed by men and women from a wide range of occupations.

The burial practice is the doctrinal point rather than a custom, and it is worth understanding rather than memorising. Orthodox funerary ritual is organised around the passage of the dead through rebirth; the Virashaivas held that the devotee joins Shiva at death and will not be reborn, so cremation and the rites that follow it lost their purpose and burial took their place. The same logic runs through the social positions. If ritual purity does not determine one's relation to Shiva, then caste cannot, and neither can the marital rules that the Dharmashastras enforce, which is why the movement approved post-puberty marriage and widow remarriage. Akka Mahadevi is the best known of the women vachana poets, and the tradition's readiness to admit women's voices is part of the same rejection of ritual gatekeeping.

• The Virashaiva or Lingayat movement formed in Karnataka in the twelfth century around Basavanna, a minister at the Kalachuri court at Kalyana.
• Lingayats bury their dead, because they hold that the devotee unites with Shiva and is not reborn.
• They rejected caste hierarchy and the theory of purity and pollution.
• They opposed child marriage and approved the remarriage of widows, against the Dharmashastra rule.
• Their vachana literature is composed in Kannada; Akka Mahadevi is the best known of its women poets.

• Assuming a movement inside the Shaiva tradition must have accepted the ritual order around it.
• Reading the codes in the printed order without checking; here option (a) is 1 and 2 and option (b) is 1 only.
• Treating burial as a local custom rather than as a consequence of the doctrine on rebirth.

Reform-movement items reward knowing what each movement was against. One statement is usually the movement's own position stated backwards.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Virashaiva movement in Karnataka was led in the twelfth century by

  • (a)Ramanuja
  • (b)Basavanna
  • (c)Madhva
  • (d)Nimbarka

  Answer(b) Basavanna — a minister at the court of the Kalachuri ruler Bijjala at Kalyana.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The vachanas associated with the Lingayat tradition were composed in which language?

  • (a)Sanskrit
  • (b)Tamil
  • (c)Kannada
  • (d)Marathi

  Answer(c) Kannada — the choice of the spoken language over Sanskrit was itself part of the movement's challenge to ritual authority.