- Lived:
- trad. 1509–1606 · born at Bāda village near Bankāpura in today's Haveri district, Karnataka → a soldier's fort, then the roads of the Vijayanagara empire, Kāginele, Udupi, and (tradition says) Tirupati at the last
- Field:
- Kannada poetry and devotional song — with Purandara Dāsa, the twin pillar of the Haridāsa movement born from Madhva's Dvaita school
- The Big Idea:
- A shepherd-caste soldier turned singer took the machinery of high devotion — epic, allegory, kīrtana — and aimed it straight at caste: rice and ragi argue nobility before Rāma, and the poor man's dark grain wins.
- In their words:
- "Why these cries of caste, caste, caste? What caste, pray, has the soul? What caste has life itself?" (from the kīrtana "Kula kula kulavendu"; the rendering is ours)
- If you remember one thing:
- The temple would not let Kanaka in, so — the tradition says — the god turned round to face him; and today every pilgrim at Udupi sees Kṛṣṇa through Kanaka's window, so that the wall built to shut one man out became the frame through which everyone now sees God.