Summary
Pinda, embodied formation, stands as the beginning, while knowledge becomes Shunya. Between this beginning and end, the hundred rests upon the One.
The One itself stands as the hundred. Therefore, the hundred and the One cannot be added together as “hundred and one,” as though they were two independent realities.
When this distinction in number has ended, even the separate utterance “Kudalasangama Deva” is no longer present. The Lord is not denied; the speech that names Him as something apart has reached its limit.
Imagery & Symbolic Relevance
The vachana is governed by three related images: beginning and end, the hundred and the One, and the disappearance of the naming word.
Pinda as the beginning places the movement within embodied existence. Pinda is the formed bodily condition from which the vachana begins. Basavanna does not begin with an abstract doctrine detached from life.
Knowledge becoming Shunya gives the other limit. Knowledge does not remain an accumulation of ideas or a separate knower’s possession. It enters the condition called Shunya, where ordinary distinctions no longer provide its measure.
Between embodied beginning and knowledge becoming Shunya, the hundred stands upon the One. The hundred functions as multiplicity: the many forms, movements, and distinctions that appear within existence. The vachana does not identify one hundred separate doctrines or bodily elements, and no fixed list should be imposed upon the number.
The One is the ground upon which the hundred stands. Multiplicity therefore has no independent support outside the One.
The next clause is more precise than saying merely that the hundred disappears into the One. Basavanna says that the One itself stands as the hundred. The many are not a second substance later joined to their source; the One appears through the hundred.
For this reason, there can be no “hundred and one.” Such an addition would require the hundred to stand independently and the One to remain beside it as another reality. The Kannada removes that separation.
The final line carries the same movement into speech. There is no longer the utterance that says “Kudalasangama Deva.” The wording does not state that Kudalasangama Deva has ceased to be. It states that the distinct word used to point toward Him no longer stands as a separate act of naming.
The numerical distinction and the verbal distinction end together: the hundred cannot be added to the One, and the Lord cannot be held apart through a separate naming word.
Lingayoga
In Lingayoga, the practitioner begins within Pinda, the embodied field, and proceeds through knowledge. Neither the body nor knowledge is to become an independently possessed identity.
The hundred standing upon the One shows that every faculty, action, experience, and distinction must remain grounded in Linga. Practice fails when the many movements of life are treated as though they possess a source apart from the One.
The One standing as the hundred also prevents rejection of embodied multiplicity. The practitioner need not erase action, perception, service, or relation. Their apparent plurality must be known without creating an independent second reality.
The final movement concerns sacred naming. The Name guides remembrance and devotion, but it must not become another object possessed by the mind. When the relation is complete, the word does not continue to place Kudalasangama Deva at a distance from the one who utters it.
This is not an instruction to abandon the Divine Name prematurely. It is the stated Aikya condition in which counting, separation, and the distinct act of naming no longer arise.
Editorial Commentary
Pinda may mean embodied formation, bodily aggregate, or embryonic form. Here it marks the beginning of manifested embodied existence.
Shunya should not be reduced to ordinary nothingness. In this vachana, it names the condition into which knowledge enters when it no longer stands as separately possessed knowing.
The number hundred signifies multiplicity only through its contrast with the One. The Kannada does not authorize assigning a separate doctrine to each numerical unit.
The clause “the One itself stood as the hundred” must be preserved. The teaching is not that two independent realities are later joined, but that the apparent many stand through the One.
The absence of the utterance “Kudalasangama Deva” concerns the ending of separate verbal designation. It does not declare the non-existence of the Lord.
Related Vachana
Supporting Vachana
Sharana Sthala Vachana 805 — Where There Is Life, There Is Śiva
Sharana Vachana 805 rejects the division of living beings into worthy and unworthy. It asks the seeker to know life with life as one and declares: where there is life, there is Shiva. This recognition must become equal seeing and compassion toward all living beings.
This prepares Vachana 1267 by revealing the One within the apparent many. The different living beings remain visible, but Shiva is not divided among them or placed beside them as an additional reality.
Aikya Vachana 1267 carries this recognition beyond equal seeing into the structure of number itself. The hundred rests upon the One because the One stands as the hundred; therefore, no separate “hundred and one” can be established.
Advancing Vachana
Aikya Sthala Vachana 1012 — Where the Unknowable Became Silence
Aikya Vachana 1012 describes an awareness beyond ordinary knowing taking hold. Truth stands beyond both knowing and forgetting; name and fixed measure fall away; movement loses its course in the inaccessible; and speech becomes stilled within Kudalasangama Deva.
Vachana 1267 removes the numerical distinction between the hundred and the One and ends with the absence of the separate utterance “Kudalasangama Deva.”
Vachana 1012 reveals the condition that follows when number and naming can no longer contain the Reality. Measure falls away, searching movement ceases, and speech rests in wordless wonder before Kudalasangama Deva.
