Davalappa lived with his wife Shivamma and two children in Khilegaon village of Athani taluk in Belagavi district. Davalappa’s life was going well with agriculture and cattle rearing. Davalappa was a devotee of Lord Shiva. He was Shiv Sharan.

          Davalappa used to work in his field every day and graze his cattle and come home. After coming home, he used to tie all the cattle to the cattle ranch and get freed from work. After that, he would eat and sleep. But in the middle of the night, one of his cows used to come out of the cattle ranch and run to Davalappa’s field. There that cow used to pour milk into the snake’s burrow and then returned home soon. No one knew this. One day Davalappa came to know about this. This made him worried.

             One night Davalappa had a dream when he was sleeping worried about the cow. In that dream, a divine voice said to Davalappa, “Your cow which pours milk into the snake’s burrow is not an ordinary cow. That is the real Kamadhenu. You dig that snake burrow and you will find me there”. After sharing this news, the divine voice disappeared.

           The next day, Davalappa told his wife Shivamma about the divine voice he had heard in his dream last night. Immediately both Davalappa and Shivamma went to their field and dug that snake burrow. They saw a shining idol of Basavanna in that snake burrow. Davalappa and Shivamma were very happy to see Basavanna’s udbhav Murthy. They established that idol in their field and started worshiping it with the holy water of the Agrani river. Hundreds of villagers started coming to see Basavanna’s idol. Within a week, the number of Basavanna’s devotees increased from hundreds to thousands, from thousands to lakhs. It was Davalappa’s dream to build Basavanna’s small temple in his field. But he didn’t have that much money. But with the help of the people of Khilegaon and surrounding villages, Davalappa succeeded in building Basavanna’s temple.

          Hearing this glory of Lord Basavanna of Khilegaon, the Badshah of Bijapur became curious. He personally came to Khilegaon with his army to test the divine power of Lord Basavanna. Challenging Basavanna’s power, he put meat on the Naivedya plate and placed it in front of the Lord Basavanna idol. He gets his soldiers to attack the idol of Basavanna with spears. Then the meat on the plate turns into flowers. Bees came out of that flowers and started biting Badshah and his soldiers. Then, ultimately Badshah realized his mistake and bowed before the divine power of Lord Basavanna. He immediately apologized to Basavanna. In addition, he gave funding for the development of the temple and went back to Bijapur.