the god Shiva. The name Chennamallikarjuna can be variously translated, but the most well-known translation is by the scholar and linguist A.K. Ramanujan, who interprets it as 'Lord, white as jasmine'. A more literal translationn would be 'Mallika's beautiful Arjuna', according to Tharu and Lalita. Based on the use of her ankita, about 350 lyric poems or vachanas are attributed to Akka Mahadevi. Her works frequently use the metaphor of an illicit, or adulterous love to describe her devotion to Chennamallikarjuna (Shiva). The lyrics show Akka Mahadevi actively seeking a relationship with Chennamallikarjuna (Shiva), and touches on themes of abandonment, carnal love and separation. The direct and frank lyrics that Akka Mahadevi wrote have been described as embodying a "radical illegitimacy" that re-examines the role of women as actors with volition and will, behaving in opposition to established social institutions and mores. At times she uses strong sexual imagery to represent the union between the devotee and the object of devotion. Her works challenge common understandings of sexual identity; for instance, in one vachana she suggests that creation, or the power of the god Shiva, is masculine, while all of creation, including men, represent the feminine: "I saw the haughty master, Mallikarjuna/for whom men, all men, are but women, wives". In some vachanas, she describes herself as both feminine and masculine. Akka Mahadevi's works, like those of many other female Bhakti poets, touch on themes of alienation: both from the material world, and from social expectations and mores concerning women. Seeing relationships with mortal men as unsatisfactory, Akka Mahadevi describes them as thorns hiding under smooth leaves, untrustworthy. About her mortal husband she says "Take these husbands who die, decay - and feed them to your kitchen fires!". In another verse, she expresses the tension of being a wife and a devotee asHusband inside, lover outside. I can't manage them both. This world and that other, cannot manage them both. Translations and legacy A. K. Ramanujan first popularised the vachanas by translating them into a collection called Speaking of Siva. Postcolonial scholar Tejaswini Niranjana criticised these translations as rendering the vachanas into modern universalist poetry ready-to-consume by the West in Siting Translation (1992). Kannada translator Vanamala Vishwanatha is currently working on a new English translation, which may be published as part of the Murty Classical Library. Akka Mahadevi continues to occupy a significant place in popular culture and memory, with