Kantabare and Budabare, the Twin Heroes of Mulki

Tulunadu has more than one pair of twin heroes. The best known are Koti and Chennaya, who came from Padumale. A second pair guarded the small kingdom of Mulki, on the coast north of Mangaluru.

Their story is shorter, and it ends in a quiet way: two brothers who have done their duty, and a well.

The story

The Billawar Association of Mumbai, the Billava community’s own association, tells the story at length. Its version is the main source for this page. Other retellings differ in places, and the paddana itself, the sung epic, will have its own variants.¹

A queen without children

The association places the story in the 17th century. Chandraya Ballala of Varapadi, also called Ulepady, known as Sawanta Arasa, ruled Mulki from Kolloor. His queen was Pulla Pergadti of Aikalaguttu. They had been married for many years and had no children.¹

A tenant named Manjanna brought the queen fresh fruit one day and saw that she was worried. When he asked, she told him. He told her to pray to Manjunatha of Kadri, who answers prayers as Vishvanatha of Kashi and Jagannatha of Puri do. The queen travelled to Kadri in a palanquin with her family.¹

A girl in a sesame field

On the way, near the Kajeri gardens at Surathkal, the queen saw a girl in a field of oilseed using a stick to drive off birds. The girl came up to the palanquin and scolded the queen’s party angrily for damaging her crop. The queen was impressed and asked who she was. The girl said that her name was Aachu and that she was a Billava.¹

The queen kept her talking, and Aachu answered every question with confidence. When the queen asked whether she would come with her, Aachu said she must first ask her uncles, and went back to the field. The queen sent word to the uncles to meet her when she came back from the temple.¹

The uncles’ sword

Aachu’s four maternal uncles, Kaje Jetti, Kaje Mainda, Kaje Dooma and Kaje Aita, were afraid that their niece had offended the queen. They waited for the queen with fruit and green coconuts. She asked them to let Aachu come to the palace, and promised to treat her as her own daughter. They agreed. They gave Aachu a sword decorated with ornaments and prayed for her protection, and the daiva Jumadi followed her, in answer to their prayers.¹

The queen kept her promise. Aachu grew up in the palace and became a beautiful woman, and the queen arranged for her to marry one of the queen’s tenants, Varapadi Kunda Baare. She went on living in the palace.¹

The well of sweet water

One very hot day the queen and Aachu went out to see the tenants’ children. Aachu fainted near Guddesana, and the sword her uncles had given her fell on the ground and made a spout of water. In that empty place, the queen looked round for help. The hole made by the sword became a well full of sweet water. She soaked the loose end of her sari in it and gave Aachu the water, and Aachu woke at once.¹

Soon after, Aachu was pregnant, and the story says that people believed the sweet water had caused it. That night Manjunatha came to the queen in a dream and told her Aachu would have twin sons with divine powers.¹

By custom, a woman went to her mother’s home for her first child. Aachu set out with her uncles, but her labour began as she reached the Kolloor hill, and local people took her to a house near the foot of it, at a place called Tirtha Gudde. There she gave birth to twin boys. The queen came and took Aachu and the babies back to the palace, but Aachu died soon after. The queen became the foster mother and named them Kaanta and Booda, later known as Kaanta Baare and Booda Baare, or Kantabare and Budabare.¹

Heroes of Mulki

At sixteen the boys had learned every kind of fighting at the Samanta Garadi at Sasihitlu. They used their divine powers to build another garadi, with a well in front of it, and the story says each of them lifted two enormous stones to bring to the site. One stone fell into the Pavanje river as they crossed. The other three were set as steps by the garadi gate. The association says the well and the three stones can still be seen.¹

The wedding that broke the rule

When the king died, the queen worried about her kingdom, and about the marriage of her only daughter, Duggu, also called Manjamma. By custom the neighbouring kings were invited, and they usually fell out over the choice of groom. The twins promised her a wedding without trouble, and to avoid any, they broke the old custom and married Duggu to Beesabannar Pergade of Aikala.¹

King Kubera of Bedra Puttige, called Chautarasa at the time, was furious. He felt Mulki had humiliated him, and he had long wanted to extend his kingdom over Mulki. One night he and another enemy of Mulki, Dugganna Konde, crossed the Mundkur region and reached Mulki’s border. The twins fought as part of Mulki’s infantry, beat them, and cut off the head of Dugganna Konde. Kubera escaped.¹

The quarrel and the ruse

The queen, pleased, told the brothers they could ask for anything. Budabare asked for the land at Rajapuri. The queen said it had been held by others for many years and it would be wrong to make them leave, and she offered other properties, but he would take nothing else. Kantabare tried to calm him, without success, and the misunderstanding between them grew until Budabare left his brother to join Bailasoodarasa of Karkala. He won many battles on his own for the new king.¹

Kubera heard of the split and planned another attack. An old Mulki spy and fighter heard of it and went to Budabare with a message: Kantabare was badly wounded in battle, and he must come. Budabare hurried to him. His brother greeted him with open arms. They forgave each other, and fought together again.¹

At Kubemar they drove Kubera off a second time and killed Shivamunguli, the army chief of Mundkur Ballal. They crowned Beesabannar Pergade as the new king at Simantoor, and promised to go on guarding the borders, as they had always honoured truth and justice.¹

The last battle

This time Kubera was very strong, because, the story says, he had the blessing of Koraga Babbu. He did not run away, and he attacked the twins with one weapon after another and insulted them. Budabare, enraged, cut off his head, and Kubera’s soldiers gave in. But a sword had struck Kantabare’s right arm, and he paid it no heed, and it did not heal for a long time.¹

Leaving together

After the war, when their duties were done, the brothers were resting under a tree at Kolloor. Budabare looked at his brother’s arm and asked if their work on earth was done. Kantabare said it was: the wound would not heal now, and to live on in that state might dishonour them. They bowed to mother earth and prayed to all the gods they believed in, then walked hand in hand to Simantoor. By the sweet-water well they stood and disappeared, going to their home in heaven.¹

When the two pairs of twins met

The association adds an episode from the same time. Koti and Chennaya, the brave twins of Padumale and Enmur, were building garadis in many places along the borders of Tulunadu of that time. When Kantabare and Budabare heard that they were nearing Mulki’s border, they decided to stop them.¹

The four fought at Hejamadi for seven days and seven nights, with no winner. The goddess Durgaparameshwari of Bappanadu appeared and told them to stop: all four were equally strong and brave, and all four were her devotees. None of them was to take another’s land, and the borders of Mulki would stay with the Baare brothers. She allowed Koti and Chennaya to build a garadi near the Mahalingeshwara temple at Hejamadi, and all four accepted her judgement.¹

The association itself says that the twins lived in the 17th century. Our page on Koti and Chennaya gives a different dating for that pair, so the meeting cannot be taken as a plain fact. It is best read as a tale of two heroes’ territories at peace.

The twins at Mundkur

The Mundkur story is a second tale about the same pair. In it the twins are not heroes of Mulki’s borders but defenders of a village and its goddess, and the enemy is a Jain ruler, Veeravarma. The Mundkur local history says that Kanthabare and Boodabare were born at Ulepady, across the Shambhavi river from Mundkur, and that they were devotees of the Mundkur goddess.² The details below come from our research notes, which take them from a temple guide that we could not open. We give them as that account, not as a checked one.³

The ruler and his men

Veeravarma ruled Mundkur in the time of Jain rule, and, as the local history puts it, he was a bad ruler. He was guided by a scheming minister, Manjappa Ajiri, and backed by two enforcers, Shivappa Mungli and Siddhappa Mungli. Injustice and robbery in daylight became usual.³

The twins crossed the Shambhavi every day to worship the goddess. Veeravarma was afraid of them and told the ferrymen not to carry them. When the brothers came to the bank and were refused, they prayed, and the river is said to have parted so that they could walk across.³

Turning the goddess

With the help of sorcerers from Kerala, the account says, Veeravarma weakened the power of the temple’s guardian daivas, Dhumavati and Raktheshwari. Then he had the image of the goddess turned from west to east, so that he could dig up the treasure buried beneath it. The Mundkur local history gives the same turning, and says the treasure was under the idol.²

The sugarcane test

Veeravarma called the twins to his court and set them a test. If they could cut through a bundle of sugarcane with a single stroke, he would give them a fertile coconut garden, Obban Thota. On their way to court the next day, at a place called Kallakanda, the goddess herself appeared and gave them a divine sword.³

They cut the bundle in two, and found an iron rod hidden inside it. Veeravarma had cheated them. He refused to hand over the garden and ordered their arrest.³

The end of Veeravarma

With the goddess’s sword the twins killed Veeravarma, his minister Manjappa Ajiri and both Mungli brothers.³ Both the local history and the Shivalli Brahmins page for the temple say that the twins killed Veeravarma and his men, as the paddana tells.² ⁴

The brothers took Obban Thota, the account says, and ruled that its produce should pay for the oil of the temple’s ever-burning lamp. They dug a well there with their own hands and drank from it, and the well is still shown. With no one left to govern, they asked the Chowta rulers of Moodabidri to take charge of the Mundkur magane.³ The Shivalli page says the magane was handed over from the Mulki territory to the Chowtas of Moodabidri as the paddana tells.⁴ The local history, on the other hand, gives the handover as a transfer by King Narasimha Banga Raja of the Bangas in Shaka 1337, about 1415 CE.²

Two tellings

The two stories do not mention each other. The Billawar version has a battle near the Mundkur region, in which the twins and Mulki’s army fight Kubera and Dugganna Konde, and an army chief of Mundkur Ballal, Shivamunguli, who is killed at Kubemar. It does not mention Veeravarma.¹ Our page on the Mundkur Durgaparameshwari temple tells what happened to the temple and the village afterwards.

What we could not find

• Where they are worshipped. Our notes say that the twins are worshipped at Ulepady, at Guddesana and at the Sasihitlu garadi, that no kola is held for them and the offering is an agelu, and that their weapons and bows are kept at Ulepady. We did not find this in the sources we could read, so we leave it out.
• The Mundkur story’s source. The ferrymen, the parting river, the sugarcane test, the sword and the killing of Veeravarma’s men come from our research notes, which cite a temple guide (IshtaDevata) that we could not open. The Mundkur local history and the Shivalli Brahmins page confirm only that the twins killed Veeravarma and that the Chowtas took charge.
• The Tulu retelling. Our notes cite a Tulu-language blog that we could not open.
• The paddana. We have not read the text itself, or a scholarly study of it.

Related

• Koti and Chennaya, the Twin Heroes, the other pair of twins, from Padumale
• Mundkur Durgaparameshwari: The Goddess Who Was Turned to Face East, where the twins kill Veeravarma in the local history
• Kadri Manjunatha, the god the queen prays to
• Jumadi, the daiva who follows Aachu to the palace

Sources & further reading

The books and articles behind the numbered notes on this page.

1. The Billawar Association, Mumbai, “Kantabare Boodabare” (the community’s own retelling; read 9 October 2026): the whole story, the 17th-century dating and the meeting at Hejamadi.
2. “Namma Munkoor”, Mundkur history post (local blog, 2009; read 9 October 2026): the twins born at Ulepady, Veeravarma, the turning of the image and the Chowta handover.
3. IshtaDevata, “Durgaparameshwari Temple, Mundkur” (temple guide; we could not open it, and take its account from our research notes): the ferrymen, the parting river, the sugarcane test, the sword, the killing of Veeravarma and his men, Obban Thota and the lamp.
4. Shivalli Brahmins, “Mundkur Shri Durga Parameshwari” (read 9 October 2026): the twins killing Veeravarma and the handover to the Chowtas, as the paddana tells.

All of these are informal retellings, and the third could not be checked. We found no scholarly source.