Summary
Where Linga is present, slander cannot remain; where slander remains, Linga is not established.
Basavanna then asks what such Lingavantas are like and how they abide. The answer comes in the final line: Kudalasangama’s Sharanas are the incomparable Mahāghana.
Their greatness is not a personal claim or social distinction. Linga is so fully established in them that blame, disparagement, and the desire to find fault have lost their ground.
Imagery & Symbolic Relevance
The vachana contains no material image. Its movement is formed through two reciprocal negatives, two questions, and a final identification.
Where Linga Is Present
The first declaration is absolute: where Linga is present, there is no slander.
Basavanna does not merely advise the seeker to control harsh speech. He describes the condition created when Linga is truly established. Slander cannot arise from the same inward ground because it depends upon division, comparison, superiority, and the urge to diminish another.
This does not mean that the Lingavanta becomes incapable of recognizing falsehood or harmful conduct. What disappears is the movement that takes pleasure in blame and uses another’s fault to strengthen the separate self.
Where Slander Is Present
The second declaration reverses the measure: where slander is present, there is no Linga.
The negative must not be softened. Basavanna does not allow outward Linga-bearing, worship, religious speech, or claimed attainment to conceal the continuing habit of disparagement.
This does not mean that the Divine has ceased to exist. It means that Linga is not established as the governing presence within that act of slander. The speech itself reveals the division still operating within the speaker.
The two declarations therefore test each other:
established Linga leaves no ground for slander;
continuing slander reveals that Linga has not become the inward governing reality.
“What Are They Like? How Do They Abide?”
Basavanna then asks two questions about those in whom this condition has become complete.
The questions express wonder rather than uncertainty about their identity. Ordinary comparison cannot explain a person whose seeing is no longer governed by fault-finding.
The final line supplies the answer: they are Kudalasangama’s Sharanas.
The Incomparable Mahāghana
The Sharanas are described as upamisabārada Mahāghana—the incomparable great fullness or immeasurable spiritual density.
“Incomparable” is essential. Their state cannot be measured through ordinary conduct, reputation, rank, learning, or outward appearance.
Mahāghana does not glorify an independent human self. It describes the fullness manifested where Linga has become established without division. The Sharanas do not claim greatness; their condition bears the incomparable fullness of their relation to Kudalasangama Deva.
Kudalasangama Deva remains the Lord. The Sharanas are those in whom His Linga-presence is revealed through a life free from slander.
Lingayoga
Lingayoga must transform speech and the seeing from which speech arises.
The practitioner must refuse fault-seeking, disparagement, and the desire to establish personal superiority through another’s weakness. This restraint prepares the ground, but silence alone does not prove realization.
The fulfilled condition appears when Linga governs perception so completely that slander no longer finds an inward source. Until then, the presence of blame must be recognized honestly as evidence of remaining division.
Editorial Commentary
Ninde includes slander, blame, disparagement, and fault-finding intended to diminish another. It must be distinguished from responsible discernment, correction, or the protection of truth.
Lingavanta means one in whom Linga is established. The word indicates more than outward possession or wearing of the Linga.
Upamisabārada Mahāghana means incomparable great fullness or immeasurable spiritual density. The phrase praises the realized condition of Kudalasangama’s Sharanas without making an independent claim of personal divinity.
Related Vachana
Supporting Vachana
Sharana Sthala Vachana 1164 — Let Them Speak; It Is Their Work
Sharana Vachana 1164 describes those who continually search for faults, refuse correction, stir disturbance like one provoking a wasp’s nest, and make slander their habitual work.
Basavanna does not join their agitation. He recognizes the movement and refuses to make it the Sharana’s work.
This prepares Vachana 1341 precisely. Sharana Vachana 1164 establishes disciplined non-participation in slander; Vachana 1341 reveals the fulfilled condition in which established Linga has removed its very root.
Advancing Vachana
Aikya Sthala Vachana 1344 — When Linga Is Anga and Anga Is Linga
Vachana 1341 gives one decisive sign of the Lingavanta: slander cannot coexist with established Linga.
Vachana 1344 deepens this into uninterrupted non-separation. Linga is known as Anga and Anga as Linga; Linga as Prana and Prana as Linga. Nothing remains to be displayed as separately present or sought as absent.
The absence of slander in Vachana 1341 thus advances into the condition where the whole of embodied and living existence abides as uninterrupted Linga.
