Sometime towards the end of eleventh century, a devotee of Śiva pulled down a Jaina temple (basadi) in Puligeṟe—the present-day Lakṣmēśvara in the Gadaga district of Karnataka—and installed an image of Sōmanātha in its place. He was a merchant and came from Saurāṣṭra. We do not know his name. Kannada sources call him Ādayya, an unlikely name for a Saurāṣṭran merchant. The event seems to have caused great unrest in the region, perhaps even bloodshed, if latter-day accounts are to be believed. It certainly captured the Śaivite imagination, and over the centuries, it has been recounted several times, mostly in ‘Vīraśaiva’ hagiographies.

Over half a century after the destruction of the basadi at Puligeṟe, a similar incident took place at Abbalūru—in the neighbouring Hāvēri district—in which Jainas apparently tried to desecrate the Brahmēśvara temple. Ēkānta Rāmayya, a devotee of Śiva, prevented the desecration by performing a miracle. He severed his own head and put it back again to the consternation of the Jainas assembled there, after taking it on a procession for seven days. The Kaḷacūri king Bijjaḷa II is said to have honoured Rāmayya for performing this spectacle. Like the merchant from Saurāṣṭra, the saviour of Abbalūru has attained a pride of place in hagiographic literature.

Devotees of Śiva, like Ādayya and Ēkānta Rāmayya, were known in the Kannada-speaking region as śaraṇas or protégés of Śiva. Harihara (ca. 1175), one of the greatest ever poets of the Deccan region, was their first hagiographer. He was a junior contemporary of many śaraṇas such as Basava, Allama Prabhu, Cannabasava, Akkamahādēvi, Maḍivāḷa Mācayya, and so on, who are known today for the vacanas they composed. According to Harihara, the śaraṇas were part of Śiva's entourage (gaṇa) in his abode, Kailāsa. Indumauḷi (Śiva) was aggrieved by their sensual lapses and sent them to earth to live a life of carnal fulfilment. They also had a religious mission to accomplish, and the incidents at Puligeṟe and Abbalūru were part of this mission. But latter-day narratives, mostly from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, have been zealous in sanitizing the lives of the śaraṇas, as protégés of Śiva were now believed to be too infallible to fall prey to sensual calls.