Basava was the son of a Saivite brahmin, named Madenga Madamantri, at Hinguleswaram, a village near Bagwari in Belgaum, in the southern Mahratta country. When he was a boy he refused (they allege) to wear the braminical thread, because the rites that confer this mark of initiation require the adoration of the sun in the manner prescribed in the Vedas. Perhaps in truth he did assume it, but if so, he subsequently renounced it. Shortly after this time he escaped from his parents, and accompanied by his sister Acca Nagamma, he fled to Calianum, the capital of the Carnataca country, where the reigning prince was Bizzala or Vijala, a Jaina by religion, whose minister, a brahmin, was Basava’s maternal uncle: he bestowed employment on Basava, and ultimately gave him his daughter in marriage. (“This proves,” says a writer in the Madras Journal, “in my opinion, though opposed to that of his followers, that he did not lay aside the braminical thread in childhood, for had he done so no brahmin could have given him his daughter in marriage.”) At his death Basava succeeded to his office, and gradually usurped great power. It would seem that at this time he began to compare the opposed statements of Jainas and Brahmins, and perceived that both creeds were idolatrous. In the end he determined on getting rid of the braminical priestcraft, and accordingly refused to worship any deity but Siva, whose image, the lingam, is the most ancient idol known among the Hindus. A writer on the subject says:—“This symbol is as separate from indecency in the Hindu mind as circumcision is to the Mahomedan mind. The Brahmins with their usual love of filth have connected a variety of obscenities with the linga worship, but these are wholly unknown to the Jangams, who look upon this idol just as the catholics do upon a reliquary, with deep veneration ‘Hanging a golden stamp about their necks Put on with holy prayers.’ “The image erected in the Saiva temples being denominated Sthavara Linga, or the stable image, he denominated this reliquary the Jangama Lingam or Locomotive image: a phrase borrowed from the Vedas, where it is used for living being. Hence he and his followers are denominated Jangams, or living images of the deity.” Basava’s determined opposition to the Saivite Brahmins and to the Jainas raised him many enemies; while his bounty to the poor gained him friends equally numerous. At last the prince’s jealousy was roused, and a civil war ensued, wherein Bizzala was slain, and this event was soon succeeded by the death of Basava, who, according to his followers was “absorbed into the image,” or vanished; while the Jaina account declares that he fled to Capila Sangam, where the Malparba and Krishna rivers meet, about one hundred and four miles west of Bellary.