Allama Prabhu (1160 CE) was a mystic-saint and Vachana poet (called Vachanakara) of the Kannada language in the 12th century. He was the patron saint (Prabhu, lit, "Master"), the undisputed spiritual authority, and an integral part of the Veerashaiva (lit, "Devotees of the god Shiva") movement that decisively shaped society in medieval Karnataka and forever changed the contour of popular Kannada poetry.

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  • Allama Prabhu (1160 CE) was a mystic-saint and Vachana poet (called Vachanakara) of the Kannada language in the 12th century. He was the patron saint (Prabhu, lit, "Master"), the undisputed spiritual authority, and an integral part of the Veerashaiva (lit, "Devotees of the god Shiva") movement that decisively shaped society in medieval Karnataka and forever changed the contour of popular Kannada poetry. He is normally included among the "Trinity of Veerashaivism" – Basavanna, the founder of the movement, and Akka Mahadevi, the most prominent woman poet of that time being the other two. The socio-religious movement they pioneered used poetry (called Vachana Sahitya, lit, "Vachana literature") to criticise mere ritual worship and the caste-based society, and gave importance to moral values and love of mankind. It is well accepted that though Basavanna was the inspiration behind the Veerashaiva movement and earned the honorific "elder brother" (anna) at the "mansion of experience", Allama was the real guru who presided over it. According to the scholars K. A. Nilakanta Shastri and Joseph T. Shipley, Vachana literature comprises pithy pieces of poetic prose in easy to understand, yet compelling Kannada language. The scholar E. P. Rice characterises Vachana poems as brief parallelistic allusive poems, each ending with one of the popular local names of the god Shiva and preaching the common folk detachment from wordly pleasures and adherence to devotion to the god Shiva (Shiva Bhakti).
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  • Allama Prabhu
  • Allama Prabhu in bedagu mode
  • I saw
    The fragrance fleeing
    When the bee came,
    What a wonder!
    I saw
    Intellect fleeing
    When the heart came.
    I saw
    The temple fleeing
    When God came.
  • If the mountain feels cold,
    What will they cover it with?
    If the fields are naked,
    what will they clothe them with?
    If the devotee is wordly,
    what will they compare him with?
    O! Lord of the caves!
  • Look here,
    the legs are two wheels;
    the body is a wagon
    full of things

    Five men drive
    the wagon
    and one man is not
    like another.

    Unless you ride it
    in full knowledge of its ways
    the axle
    will break
    O Lord of Caves
  • The tiger-headed deer,
    The deer-headed tiger,
    Joined at the waist.
    Look, another
    Came to chew close by
    When the trunk with no head
    Grazes dry leaves,
    Look, all vanishes, O Guheswara.
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  • Allama Prabhu (1160 CE) was a mystic-saint and Vachana poet (called Vachanakara) of the Kannada language in the 12th century. He was the patron saint (Prabhu, lit, "Master"), the undisputed spiritual authority, and an integral part of the Veerashaiva (lit, "Devotees of the god Shiva") movement that decisively shaped society in medieval Karnataka and forever changed the contour of popular Kannada poetry.
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  • Allama Prabhu
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