Festivals Through the Year

In the first days of the Tulu year, before the rains arrive, a family sets aside the best of its new paddy seed. By evening the sowing rites begin. Everything that follows, from the quiet of the monsoon to the buffalo races of the dry season, hangs on that beginning.

For most of Tulunadu’s history, life ran on the paddy field. It is no surprise that the Tulu calendar and its festivals are pegged to the farming year, and that to know when something happens is to understand a good part of why.

Twelve months, starting in April

The Tulu months, in order, are Paggu, Beshya, Kaarthel, Aati, Sona, Nirnaala, Bonthyolu, Jaarde, Peraarde, Ponny, Maayi and Suggi.¹ Paggu runs from about mid-April to mid-May, and Aati from about mid-July to mid-August.

You may hear that the Tulu calendar runs a month ahead of the usual Hindu calendar. The sources we checked do not bear this out. Month by month the two run side by side. What is different is the start of the year: in Tulunadu it begins in Paggu, rather than in Chaitra as elsewhere in India.¹

Why the year starts there is not settled, and we have not found a source that explains it.

Walking through the year

Bisu Parba (Paggu, mid-April). The Tulu New Year, and an openly farming festival. Families set aside new paddy seed in the morning and begin sowing in the evening. It falls on 14 or 15 April.² In neighbouring Malabar, Vishu is kept with similar customs on the same date, and spring harvest festivals elsewhere in India, such as Bihu and Vaisakhi, fall around the same time.² Its own page is Bisu Parba: The Tulu New Year.

Pattanaje (Beshya, tenth day, about 24 to 25 May). The formal close of the festival season. Temple chariot festivals, nemotsava (festivals in which a daiva or deity is carried out in procession), folk dances, Kambala and Yakshagana are all expected to be over for the year.⁵

Aati (mid-July to mid-August). The monsoon lull. Heavy rain and the lean weeks before harvest traditionally rule out weddings, housewarmings and temple festivals. The month has its own observance, Aati Amavasya, and its own folk performance, Aati Kalenja.⁶

Nagara Panchami (Shravana). This is the day families return to their serpent groves to worship the naga, a tradition told in Nagaradhane: The Serpent in the Sacred Grove. We have found no Tulu reason for its date, so here we mark only that it comes in the monsoon weeks.

Kural Parba, or Thene Habba (first day of Nirnaala, in September). A first-harvest rite kept in the household, on the day after Cauvery Sankramana. The head of the family cuts the first ear of new paddy, and an odd number of ears (three, five, seven or nine) are carried home to the chant of “Poliyo Poli”, a prayer for prosperity. They are laid before the family’s Tulasi shrine or household deity, and the day ends with a meal cooked with the new rice.⁸ It is a home festival, not a temple one.

Tudar Parba, or Bali Padyami (Bonthyolu, the day after Deepavali). The night Tulunadu’s farmers call home the exiled king Bali, told in Tudar Parba: Calling King Bali Home. It falls just after the main monsoon harvest, so it works as a thanksgiving. It is Tulunadu’s own version of a festival kept across the south, like Onam in Kerala. A Mangalore University lecturer told The News Minute in 2016 that it was once an elaborate village affair, organised through the guttu house (the ancestral landed family home), until about 40 years earlier, when land-ceiling laws ended the zamindari system.³ Today it is kept on a smaller scale, and differs from family to family.

The dry season (Bonthyolu to Maayi, November to March). This is Kambala season, when pairs of buffaloes race through flooded paddy fields.⁴

Keddaso (Ponny, around February). Often described as “Mother Earth’s menstruation”, a three-day rest for the land. For these days the earth is treated as a menstruating woman is in a Tulu household: with rest, and a closing purification. People are said to do no farming work, to give the earth its rest.⁷ Each day has its own rite, from roasted grain offered to the earth on the first day to a symbolic bath for the earth on the third.⁷ It is sometimes compared with Assam’s Ambubachi Mela and Odisha’s Raja Parba, which rest on a similar idea, though the comparison is made in passing rather than in detailed study.

Kangilu (Maayi, full moon, around March). A masked folk dance that calls on the goddess Khadgeshwari, sometimes identified with Mariyamma, and on Koragajja. One dancer in the troupe wears a mask and black body paint to represent Koragajja, and the troupe collects alms house to house.⁹

Suggi (March to April). The last month of the year, running into the New Year. Its full moon is the time of a night-long dance, Pursere Kattuna, and the month ends as Bisu Parba begins.

Why Mangaluru Dasara is not here

Mangaluru’s ten-day Dasara, with its clay-idol Sharada, its Vijayadashami procession and its crowds, looks old enough to belong on this calendar. We have left it out on purpose. It has no farming-cycle or daiva logic of the kind that ties Bisu Parba, Aati, Keddaso or Kambala to this land. It is Navaratri, a festival kept across India. Its processions are joined by the tiger dancers described on Pili Vesha: The Tiger Dancers of Dasara.

What marks the Mangaluru celebration out is its beginning. Swarajya reports that this public form of worship was needed in the years before independence, when gatherings were prohibited by the colonial rulers. The Sharada Mahotsava began around 1922, on the lines of Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s Ganeshotsav, as a way of bringing people together.¹⁰ That is a story of the twentieth century and of the freedom movement. It grew into today’s Mangaluru Dasara. Its story is told on a page of its own, Mangaluru Dasara: A Festival of the Twentieth Century.

Related

• Nagaradhane: The Serpent in the Sacred Grove, the worship behind Nagara Panchami
• Koragajja, the Boy Who Was Turned Away, the daiva who appears in Kangilu
• Bhuta Kola: When the Spirits Come to the Village, the night-long rites that fill much of the festival season

Sources & further reading

The books and articles behind this page.

1. Wikipedia, “Tulu calendar”: the twelve months from Paggu to Suggi (spelt “Suggy” there), with Paggu as the first, matching Chaitra–Vaishakha. It does not say the calendar runs ahead of the Hindu one.
2. Wikipedia, “Bisu Parba”: the Tulu New Year on the first day of Paggu, 14 or 15 April, the morning seed rite and the evening sowing, and Vishu in Malabar on the same date.
3. Anisha Sheth, “In coastal Karnataka, Deepavali is the return of beloved king Baliyendra, banished by Vamana”, The News Minute (1 November 2016): Tudar Parba, where Abhay Kumar of Mangalore University says the celebration was an elaborate village affair, organised through the gutthu mane, until about 40 years before the article, when the land-ceiling laws ended the zamindari system.
4. Wikipedia, “Kambala”: the Kambala season, “generally” November to March.
5. Wikipedia, “Pattanaje”, and Mangalore Heritage, “Pattanaje”: the tenth day of Beshya, the close of the festival season, and Gejje Bicchapuna.
6. Wikipedia, “Aati kalenja”, and “Aatida Amaase”: the monsoon month, the bark decoction on Aati Amavasya, and the door-to-door masked performer.
7. Wikipedia, “Keddaso” (the three named days, the month of Ponny, the earth’s rest from farming), and Mangalore Heritage, “Keddasa”: the three-day rest and its rites.
8. Mangalore Heritage, “Koral Parba”: Kural Parba, its timing and its ritual.
9. Wikipedia, “Kangilu”, and Mangalore Heritage, “Kangilu Nalike”: the full-moon masked dance.
10. Harsha Bhat, “100 Years Of Celebrating Sharada On The Coast Of Karnataka”, Swarajya (26 September 2022): gatherings prohibited by the colonial rulers, the Tilak Ganeshotsav model, and the start of the Sharada Mahotsava around 1922.

Notes 5 to 10 were checked against the pages themselves. Most are heritage websites and Wikipedia, so treat the details of the smaller festivals as well attested but not deeply cross-checked.