Other religious houses · Contested ground · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Sharana community

Under the Kalachuri king Bijjala (1156 to 1167 on the Basavakalyan article), his minister Basava preached devotion to Shiva in the form of the personal linga worn on the body, against caste and ritual, with Allama Prabhu leading the assembly of the Sharanas (the 'Anubhava Mantapa' of the later tradition; the building is modern) and more than 600 composers of vachanas (short prose-poems in Kannada: the article).

After Bijjala's fall the Sharanas dispersed; by 1200 the community is a movement, not a house, with followers among the merchants and artisans of the Kannada towns and teachers at Ulavi, Sonnalige (Solapur) and Kudalasangama (from memory). It owns no land the sources show.

Who holds it

Title
No head: a movement of teachers, saints and lay devotees
Since
not pinned
Born
not known
Confidence
low

Basava (Basavanna) is dead by 1168 (from memory; the Kalyani records give the Sharana years under Bijjala); Allama Prabhu and others led the assembly at Kalyani (Basavakalyan article, read).

What it holds

  • No land known

How things stand that morning

Scattered but alive; the Yadava or Hoysala king whose officer holds the town has no quarrel with it.

Where the sources disagree

  • The campaign board's 'Anubhava Mantapa' is a modern building; the Basavakalyan article (read) says Basava set up the assembly in the twelfth century and also mentions the 108-foot statue of 2001.
  • sik (Balligavi, Lingayat communities) takes Basava's dates from Wikipedia as 1131 to 1196; this card says he is dead by 1168, from memory. Both put his death before the game; on the later reading he has been dead three or four years on 1 January 1200, not more than thirty. The map is the same either way.

Evidence: The Basavakalyan article (read) gives the vachana tradition; the dispersal and the later centres are from memory.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

Sources and studies

  1. Wikipedia: Basavakalyan (read this session)
  2. Wikipedia: Kalachuris of Kalyani (read this session)
  3. General knowledge of the medieval Deccan (Bhandarkar, Altekar, Sastri, B. R. Gopal, Suryanath Kamath): from memory, not re-read

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.