Vachana, meaning simply a saying or utterance, names a distinct literary and devotional form the Lingayat sharanas developed in the Kannada vernacular rather than in the Sanskrit of the Brahmanical literature they largely set aside: short, rhythmic prose statements, typically signed with the poet's own personal name for Shiva, a signature line called the ankita, that speak in a direct, often confrontational first-person voice about devotion, ethics and the poet's own spiritual struggle. Basava, credited with shaping the emerging Lingayat community as a minister at the Kalachuri court in Karnataka, is the tradition's central vachana poet, and his vachanas repeatedly attack caste distinction, ritual purity and idle scriptural learning in favor of honest labor and direct devotion to Shiva through the ishtalinga every Lingayat wears.
Other major voices include Allama Prabhu, whose vachanas take a sharper, riddling philosophical tone, and Akka Mahadevi, whose vachanas describe an uncompromising personal devotion to Shiva as her only husband, composed, according to tradition, after she left an arranged marriage to wander as a mendicant. Collectively the vachanas function as Lingayatism's primary scripture, read and quoted in place of the Vedic and Puranic literature the movement's founders treated as unnecessary for liberation.