Communities & Lineages
How particular communities and family lines shape stories, rituals and institutions.
Bhuta Kola: When the Spirits Come to the Village
Once a year, a Tulunadu village gathers through the night as a performer becomes its guardian spirit, to dance, bless, and settle the village's disputes.
Kambala: The Coast's Buffalo-Racing Festival
Pairs of buffaloes race through flooded paddy fields, in front of crowds of thousands. Kambala began as a farmers' thanksgiving, and it has become a sport, a spectacle and a long legal argument.
Mangaluru Dasara: A Festival of the Twentieth Century
Every October, Mangaluru keeps ten days of Navaratri, with clay-idol pandals, tiger dancers and an all-night procession. It looks old, but the sources we found date its public form to the 20th century, and they do not agree on exactly when or by whom.
Bisu Parba: The Tulu New Year
On 14 April, the Tulu year begins with a display of fruit, vegetables, rice and gold laid out to be the first thing a family sees, a blessing from the elders, and the first seed of the new farming year.
Aati: Tulunadu's Monsoon Pause
In the heart of the monsoon, work slows, bellies run empty and people fall sick. Tulunadu answers with a bitter tree-bark drink on the new moon and a masked visitor who comes to every door.
Dharmasthala: The House the Daivas Asked For
In a village on the Nethravathi, a Jain chieftain gave his own house to four daivas who came to him as guests. Their messenger brought a Shiva linga from Kadri, and the shrine that grew up around it is still looked after by the chieftain's family, some eight hundred years on.
Keddaso: When the Earth Rests
For three days each February, Tulunadu treats the earth herself as a woman at rest. The fields are left alone, roasted grain is shared, and a ritual bath is given to the soil.
Koti and Chennaya, the Twin Heroes
Twin brothers born to a healer, raised in a king's palace and insulted for their caste, who stood up to a cruel minister, left their homeland, and died fighting for the king who took them in.
The Koti-Chennaya Paddana: A Fourteen-Hour Epic
Koti and Chennaya is one of only two Tulu oral epics long enough to count as a 'long epic'. It takes about fourteen hours to sing in full, yet it is sung in shrines, fields, wedding rooms and a comic play, in pieces.
Udupi Sri Krishna Matha: Eight Monasteries, One Child God
A small image of the child Krishna, said to have crossed the sea hidden in a lump of clay, is worshipped at Udupi in a temple no single owner runs. Eight monasteries founded by the philosopher Madhvacharya take turns to look after it, handing it on every two years in the Paryaya.
Under Mysore: Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan and the Coast, 1763 to 1799
For thirty-six years Tulunadu was ruled from Mysore, and the coast became a battlefield in the Anglo-Mysore wars. This page covers the siege of Mangalore, the 1784 captivity of Canara's Christians, and how historians read it.
From Company Rule to Today's Districts, 1799 to 1997
After Tipu Sultan, Tulunadu became a British district, rose once in 1837, and was redrawn on the map three times after independence. This page follows the changes of rulers and of borders, and says where our sources stop.
Kangilu: The Full-Moon Dance of the Arecanut Dancers
On the full moon of Maayi, dancers dressed in green from the arecanut palm circle through the village, seeking protection from sickness. It is a dance for a goddess, and in another telling, for Koragajja.
Koragajja, the Boy Who Was Turned Away
An orphaned Koraga boy, raised by a Billava woman and refused entry to a shrine because of his caste, who vanished at its gate and returned as one of the most called-upon daivas in Tulunadu.
Moodabidri: Eighteen Basadis and the Thousand Pillars
Moodabidri, a small town near Mangaluru, has eighteen Jain temples and is called the Jain Kashi of the South. Its Thousand Pillar Basadi is one of the finest Jain temples in India, its Guru Basadi kept some of the oldest Jain books for centuries, and one monk, the Bhattaraka, heads them all.
Purusha Vesha: The Comic Koti-Chennaya Play
In one folk theatre, two Gowda men play Koti and Chennaya for laughs, not for worship. It is the epic's comic side, and one of the least documented parts of the tradition.
Pili Vesha: The Tiger Dancers of Dasara
Young men, shaved and painted in yellow and black, prowl the streets of Mangaluru and Udupi to the beat of drums at Dasara and Janmashtami. The painting takes hours, the stunts are daring, and the paint itself has raised health questions.
The Chowtas: A Jain Royal House Ruled Through the Mother's Line
From about 1160 the Chowtas ruled from Ullal, then Puttige, then Moodabidri, under a succession that passed through the sister's line. This page follows that house, from the queens to the pension, and says where the sources part ways.
Jumadi, Neither Man nor Woman
Shiva and Parvati fused into a single body to destroy a demon no man or woman could kill, and became Jumadi, the royal daiva who came to a sixteen-year-old's aid at a single call.
Kudroli Gokarnanatha: The Temple the Billavas Built
In 1912 a Billava businessman and a delegation of elders built a Shiva temple at Kudroli, with the guidance of the Kerala reformer Narayana Guru. It was meant for a community kept out of other temples, and it later became the place where Mangaluru's Dasara procession ends.
The Coast in India's Freedom Struggle
South Kanara sent early volunteers to Gandhi, raised the national flag on a temple pillar in Udupi, and filled Mangalore's jail in 1942. The record is thin, and this page keeps to the few people and events we could check.
Chennemane and the Games of Tulunadu
When the monsoon kept people indoors, Tulunadu played Chennemane: a wooden board, a handful of seeds and a game with a king, a minister and a tenant. It is the best recorded of the many games the coast once played.
Pursere Kattuna: The Night Dance of the Suggi Full Moon
On the full-moon nights of Suggi, the last month of the Tulu year, troupes of men go from house to house through the night, as priests, ascetics, animals and spirits, to bless every home they visit.
Venkataramana at Karkala: The Tirupati of the West
Refugees from Goa brought their god to Karkala, the Jain capital, and were given land by its Jain king. The temple they built is called Padutirupathi, the Western Tirupati. Its legend has a lost idol, a dream and a hermit who walked from Tirumala.
Venkataramana at Kodiyal: The Idol in the Sack
On Mangaluru's Car Street, a Gowda Saraswat Brahmin temple keeps an idol that, the story goes, a wandering ascetic left in a shopkeeper's loft in 1804. Fumes rose from the sack, and the idol was set up in the community's temple.
Kukke Subramanya: The Temple of the Serpent's Refuge
In the forested Western Ghats, Subramanya is worshipped as lord of all serpents, because the serpent Vasuki is said to have fled to him from Garuda. Over the centuries the temple has passed from a Gowda family of administrators and Sthanika Brahmin priests to Shivalli priests and the state.
Babbarya, the Daiva of the Sea
The son of a Beary sea-merchant and a Jain mother, born by a miracle, sails a ship cut from a thousand-year-old tree and vanishes off Kaup. He stays on as Babbarya, guardian of the fishermen, and the people of the coast still argue about who he really was.
Mundkur Durgaparameshwari: The Goddess Who Was Turned to Face East
At Mundkur the goddess faces east, but the temple's story says she once faced west, until a Jain ruler turned her to reach the treasure beneath. The village is still run as a single unit, with a hereditary chief of ritual and the Chowta kings once came to its car festival.
Kalkuda and Kallurti, the Sculptor and His Sister
A master sculptor carves the great Bahubali at Karkala, and the king cuts off a hand and a leg so that he can never carve another. He carves one anyway, at Venur. His twin sister comes looking for him, and together they become two of the most feared daivas of Tulunadu.
Tudar Parba: Calling King Bali Home
In much of India, Deepavali is about gods defeating demons. In the paddy fields of Tulunadu, it is Tudar Parba, the night the good king Bali comes home, and farming families light a torch at the edge of the field to call him.
Kallurti and Panjurli, the Sister and Brother Daivas
In most Tuluva families the boar daiva Panjurli is not worshipped alone. He is paired with Kallurti, the avenging sister of the sculptor Kalkuda, and the two are treated as the family's head and judges.
Kordabbu and Tannimaniga, the Healer and the Sister Who Saved Him
An orphan with the power to raise the dead is walled into a well by a jealous king. A passing woman lowers her sari to pull him out, and he is bound to her as a brother. He goes on to become Babbu Swami, healer and king of the daivas.
Jarandaya, the Prince Who Could Not Swallow an Insult
The ninth son of a Jain king rides the coast settling quarrels, until a trader at Kapu makes him kneel in the road. His assistant plans a revenge that kills the trader. Both men become daivas, and the story of the feud is told in two ways.
Bappanadu: The Goddess and the Merchant Who Built Her Temple
At Mulki, where two rivers meet, a goddess's temple is named for a Muslim merchant. His boat is said to have struck her lost lingas, and with a Jain king and a Brahmin priest he built her shrine. The story is told at the temple, on the stage and in the village.
Mayndala, the New Mother Taken into the Unseen
A lord's spirit asks for a gift of a tender coconut from every house. One man refuses, and his sister, three days after giving birth, is lured out of her room in the night. She returns as Mayndala, the goddess women now pray to for an easy childbirth.
Kantabare and Budabare, the Twin Heroes of Mulki
A girl in a sesame field, a queen without children, and a sword that struck water: from these come the twins who guarded Mulki's borders, quarrelled over a piece of land, made it up, and walked away together to a well.
Agoli Manjanna, the Bhima of Tulunadu
A gentle giant who ate an agoli of rice at a sitting, carried a hill of leaves with a wild boar hidden in it, built Mulki's first kambala track, and carried two granite slabs to the temple at Bappanadu. He was never worshipped as a daiva.