Speaking of Siva

Speaking of Siva is A. K. Ramanujan's Penguin Classics translation of vacana devotional poetry composed in Kannada by the medieval Virashaiva, or Lingayat, saints, and it remains the standard English language introduction to this poetic tradition decades after its first publication. Its strength is Ramanujan's own standing as both a poet and a scholar of South Indian literature, producing translations that carry real poetic force in English while staying close to the vacanas' devotional and philosophical content. Its limit is that it is a translated anthology with Ramanujan's own introductory framing rather than a comprehensive scholarly history of the Virashaiva movement, so a claim about the movement's social or theological history beyond what the poems themselves convey needs a dedicated historical study alongside this collection.