Indication that he was not a Shaiva by birth comes from the fact that he mentions the names of his parents in his very first work,
Basava Purana, as Visnuramideva and Sriyadevi, violating a general practice of Shaiva writers who do not mention their real parents but rather consider the god Shiva as the father and his consort
Parvati as the mother. The scholar Seshayya places him in the late 13th to early 14th century and proposes that the writer lived during the reign of
Kakatiya king Prataparudra II, whereas the Kannada scholar R. Narasimhacharya dates his writings to the 12th century and claims Somanatha was patronised by Kakatiya king Prataparudra I (1140–1196). His place of birth is uncertain because there is a village by the name Palkuriki in the Warangal district of the
Telangana state as well as in the Kannada speaking region (
Karnataka). He spent his last days in Karnataka in a village called
Kalya located in Magadi Taluk of Ramanagara district in Karnataka, the story goes that Palkuriki Somanatha upon wanting to see the devout nun Sarvashile Chennamma who was residing in Kalya, came to the village and upon the latter's request stayed back in the same village until his death, his
gaddige (tomb) is located in the village and is worshipped by the devout to this day, this information is recorded in the biography of Palkuriki Somanatha published by the
Sahitya Akamdemi. ==Writings==