Summary
Basavanna distinguishes between recounting the tested lives of earlier exemplars and personally undergoing such a test. The battles of ancient warriors may be described, the severe resolve of husband-vowed women may be praised, and the offerings of the Puratanas may be explained, but words cannot reproduce what they endured.
The Puratanas offered body, mind, and wealth and joined the Linga. Merely speaking about their conduct, repeating their names, or displaying admiration does not become the same offering.
When body, wealth, and life are tested in relation to Guru, Linga, and Jangama, borrowed speech cannot sustain the seeker. Anubhava belongs to lived participation; it cannot be acquired through learning, argument, praise, or criticism alone.
Imagery & Symbolic Relevance
The battles fought by the warriors of old form the first image. Their courage and victories may be narrated in many ways, but the narrator cannot thereby enter the battlefield and fight. The image separates knowledge about courage from courage proved through action.
The husband-vowed women of old form the second example. Their extraordinary resolve may be praised, but praise does not enable another person to enter the fire associated in the vachana with the husband’s passing. The comparison reveals the distance between admiring a severe act and personally undergoing its test.
The Puratanas provide the central spiritual example. They offered tanu, mana, and dhana—body, mind, and wealth—and joined the Linga. Their offering may be interpreted and described through the language of Anubhava, but narration does not itself become surrender. Their state cannot be borrowed from their history.
The half-formed warrior, husband-vowed woman, or Puratana represents one who assumes the appearance or language of an earlier exemplar without possessing the corresponding steadiness. Such persons speak extensively and gain outward recognition, but their claims remain untested.
When a real test arises, they repeat the names of those who were inwardly established and praise them in many ways. Instead of standing in their own offering, they seek protection in the remembered greatness of others.
The testing of body, wealth, and life before Guru, Linga, and Jangama gives the vachana its decisive measure. Remembrance of the Maheshwara-Puratana lineage cannot substitute for the personal surrender demanded in the present moment.
The final contrast is between Anubhava and verbal mastery. Reading accounts of experience, becoming skilled in letters, arguing, or condemning others may produce speech about the path, but they cannot generate the state being described.
The concluding declaration places Anubhava among the Sharanas of Kudalasangama. The Sharana is known not by the ability to recount earlier greatness, but by a life that has entered the offering and remained firm under testing.
Lingayoga
In Lingayoga, the vachana distinguishes inherited spiritual language from lived relation to Linga.
The seeker may learn from the warriors, husband-vowed women, and Puratanas, but their actions cannot replace his own surrender. Tanu, mana, and dhana must become concrete offering: embodied conduct, inward intention, and possessed wealth must all enter the relation of Guru, Linga, and Jangama.
Learning preserves and explains the teaching, but Anubhava begins only when the teaching enters life and remains steady under trial.
The movement is from narration to participation, from admiration to offering, and from borrowed authority to personally tested devotion.
Editorial Commentary
Basavanna does not reject the remembrance of earlier exemplars. He corrects the belief that praising or explaining them gives the speaker their realization.
The example of the husband-vowed women functions as a comparison between verbal admiration and tested resolve. It should remain within that source-bound purpose.
The final statement does not dismiss literacy or reasoning. It establishes their limit: neither can substitute for lived Anubhava.
Related Vachana
Supporting Vachana
Sharana Sthala Vachana 667 — The Warrior Who Has Not Fought
Sharana Vachana 667 exposes the person who declares that wealth, life, and self-regard belong to Kudalasangama Deva but refuses to let them be touched when the declaration is tested. Its dagger-battle image shows that surrender cannot be proved through speech or devotional appearance.
This prepares Vachana 679 directly. Vachana 667 tests the claim, “All is Yours.” Vachana 679 broadens that test by showing how people recount the battles, vows, and offerings of earlier exemplars without personally entering a comparable demand.
What appears in Sharana as untested surrender deepens in Aikya into the distinction between borrowed description and Anubhava. Only lived offering can stand when body, wealth, and life are brought before Guru, Linga, and Jangama.
Advancing Vachana
Aikya Sthala Vachana 682 — The Inadequacy of a Single Word
Vachana 679 establishes that speech cannot reproduce battle, resolve, offering, or Anubhava. Even an accurate description remains different from the life it describes.
Vachana 682 carries this further by asking whether a single word can contain the essence of sound, the bond of the Sharana, or the knowing of Kudalasangama Deva. The question is no longer only whether speech can produce realization, but whether realized relation can be contained in verbal declaration.
The movement is precise: Vachana 679 removes borrowed speech as a substitute for experience; Vachana 682 removes the subtler attempt to possess experience through a conclusive word. What must first be lived is then recognized as exceeding verbal containment.
