#MadaraChennaiah

Madara Chennaiah · c. 11th century CE

In the books · 1 chapter

Who this is

Bhakti poetry — by the Vīraśaiva tradition's own reckoning the first vachana poet in Kannada, and so the first voice of a whole literature; a cobbler and leatherworker by trade.

“A century before the famous reformers of Kalyāṇa, the tradition remembers an untouchable cobbler talking to Śiva in short plain sentences — and when the movement's celebrated founder wanted to say who he was, he called that cobbler his father.”

— The Great Indians, Ch. 91

The big idea, in the book's words:

“God can be spoken to in plain workshop Kannada, from the most "polluted" trade in the caste order, without priest, temple, Sanskrit or apology — and the work itself, awl and hide and all, can be the worship.”

— The Great Indians, Ch. 91