The Vīraśaiva tradition, which developed over the last eight centuries in the Kannada-speaking region of the Deccan plateau in India, holds a unique place in Hindu society. Its members do not adhere to the hierarchical structures of Brahminical-centered society, and they practice a distinct set of rituals, such as carrying a personal liṅga on their body and worshiping it individually (as well as in groups). The roots of the tradition are linked to a revolutionary community of devotees of the Hindu god Śiva from the twelfth century, headed by the saintly figures Basavaṇṇa, Allama Prabhu, and Mahādēviyakka, whose poetry is the most translated and read literature ever produced in the Kannada language. This book takes a pioneering approach to understanding the origins of Vīraśaivism by focusing for the first time in English-language scholarship on a corpus of hagiographies about the twelfth-century devotees that was produced at a very early stage of the tradition. This untitled collection of narrative poems, commonly called the Śivaśaraṇara Ragaḷegaḷu (“Poems in the Ragaḷe Meter for Śiva’s Saints”), is the first written account of the devotees of the Kannada-speaking region, and its author was an accomplished poet called Harihara. By closely reading the saints’ stories in this text, the book takes a more nuanced historical view than commonly held notions about the egalitarian and iconoclastic nature of the early tradition, arguing instead that early bhakti (devotionalism) in the Kannada-speaking region was less radical and more accommodating toward traditional religious, social, and political institutions than thought of today.