Akka Mahadevi

Twelfth-century Kannada poet-saint of the Lingayat (Veerashaiva) tradition, one of the most radical female voices in medieval Indian devotional literature. Born in Karnataka around 1130, she was, by tradition, married against her will to a king but renounced her marriage and her clothing alike, walking through the world covered only by her hair, addressing all her vachanas (free-verse devotional poems) to her chosen lord, the formless Shiva called Chenna Mallikarjuna ("the beautiful jasmine-white lord"). Her work — direct, unornamented, defiant — has become a touchstone for both modern Kannada literature and contemporary feminist spiritual writing.