CDS (I) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 52 of 120

Correct — A, Basavanna. Basavanna, who lived in the twelfth century and served as a minister at the Kalachuri court of Bijjala II in what is now northern Karnataka, is the figure the Virashaiva or Lingayat movement is traced to. He composed vachanas, short and direct prose-poems in Kannada, and founded the Anubhava Mantapa, an open assembly where men and women of every social station debated spiritual and worldly questions together. The movement rejected caste hierarchy, the authority of ritual and priesthood, and the doctrine of rebirth, and it made devotion to Shiva in the form of the linga worn on the body the whole of religion. Modern scholarship qualifies the word founder — Basavanna revived, refined and energised a Shaiva current that already existed — but among the four names offered he is the only one connected to Karnataka or to Virashaivism at all.

• (b)Appar — Appar is one of the Tamil Nayanars, the Shaiva saints of the seventh and eighth centuries whose hymns form part of the Tevaram. He belongs to Tamil bhakti, some four to five centuries before Basavanna and in another language and region.
• (c)Sambandar — Sambandar is likewise a Nayanar and a contemporary of Appar, celebrated for Tamil hymns to Shiva. The Nayanar movement worked within temple worship rather than against it, which is close to the opposite of the Virashaiva position.
• (d)Sundarar — Sundarar is the third of the great Tevaram hymnists, again Tamil and again several centuries earlier. Placing all three Nayanars together in the option set is the trap: they are genuinely Shaiva, which makes them plausible, but none is Kannada or Virashaiva.

The Virashaiva or Lingayat movement arose in twelfth-century Karnataka around Basavanna and a circle of vachana poets that included Allama Prabhu and the woman saint Akka Mahadevi. Its members wore the ishtalinga on the body as the sole object of worship, rejected temple ritual, image worship, caste distinction and the theory of rebirth, insisted on the dignity of labour, and permitted the remarriage of widows and post-puberty marriage — practices the Dharmashastras did not approve. Its literature is the vachana, written in Kannada prose-poetry accessible to anyone who spoke the language.

Three of the four names are Tamil Nayanars and one is Kannada, so the item is really testing whether a candidate keeps the two great Shaiva bhakti movements of the south apart. The separators are region, language and century: Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar are Tamil hymnists of roughly the seventh and eighth centuries whose songs make up the Tevaram, while Basavanna is a twelfth-century Kannada figure at a royal court. There is a genuine scholarly nuance behind the word founder in the stem, and it is worth knowing rather than worrying about: several accounts hold that Virashaivism traces itself to five earlier teachers and that Basavanna reorganised an existing tradition rather than starting one from nothing. That does not change the answer here, since no other option is even in the right region.

• Basavanna lived in the twelfth century, conventionally dated 1131 to 1196, and was chief minister to the Kalachuri king Bijjala II.
• He established the Anubhava Mantapa, an assembly open to men and women across social classes.
• The vachanas are his Kannada prose-poems, carrying the movement's rejection of caste, ritual and superstition.
• Modern scholarship describes Basavanna as reviving and energising an existing Shaiva tradition rather than inventing one.
• Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar are Tamil Nayanars of the seventh to eighth centuries, and their hymns form the Tevaram.

• Grouping all Shaiva saints together regardless of region, language and century.
• Reading Virashaivism as a temple-centred movement when it set itself against temple ritual and priesthood.
• Overstating founder — several accounts hold that Basavanna reorganised an existing tradition.

As a founder-to-movement pairing, as a statements item on Virashaiva practice, or by mixing Kannada and Tamil Shaiva saints in one option set.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Anubhava Mantapa, an assembly open to men and women of all social classes, is associated with

  • (a)Ramanuja
  • (b)Basavanna
  • (c)Chaitanya
  • (d)Namdev

  Answer(b) Basavanna — he set it up in twelfth-century Karnataka as a forum for open debate on spiritual and worldly questions.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Tevaram, a collection of Tamil hymns to Shiva, is the work of which group of saints?

  • (a)The Alvars
  • (b)The Nayanars
  • (c)The Siddhas
  • (d)The Sants of Maharashtra

  Answer(b) The Nayanars — Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar are its principal hymnists; the Alvars were the Vaishnava counterparts.