Bhuta Aradhane: The Daivas of Tulu Nadu and the Night They Speak

There are a great many daivas, and knowing a few of the principal ones makes the tradition legible.

Panjurli:

• The boar daiva, the most widely worshipped in Tulu Nadu
• Protector of crops and of the household
• The katha connects him to a boar who damaged fields, was killed, and was given divine status and a duty to protect what he had once destroyed
• Varte Panjurli, Annappa Panjurli and other forms are found at different shrines

Guliga:

• A fierce daiva, often paired with Panjurli, and treated with particular caution
• Approached in matters requiring force

Koti and Chennaya:

• Twin brothers, historical or semi historical figures, remembered as warriors who resisted injustice from a local ruler and died in that struggle
• They became daivas and are worshipped at garodis, shrines with a martial association where the Tulu combat tradition of garadi was taught
• Their paddana is one of the great oral epics of the region

Kalkuda and Kallurti:

• A brother and sister. Kalkuda was a sculptor, and in the katha his hand or limbs were maimed by a ruler so that he could not make anything comparable elsewhere
• He and his sister became daivas, and the story is explicitly about a craftsman destroyed by a patron

Siri:

• A woman whose story is told in the Siri paddana, an extremely long oral epic performed by women
• The Siri cult involves possession rituals in which women take on the roles of the lineage of women in the epic

What these stories have in common. Look at the list. A boar killed for eating crops. Twin brothers killed resisting a ruler. A sculptor maimed by his patron. A woman whose life went wrong.

The daivas of Tulu Nadu are, very substantially, people who were wronged. That is the tradition's central proposition, and everything else follows from it.

The kola is the performance at the centre of the tradition, and describing it accurately matters.

What happens:

• The ritual is held at a daivasthana or at a family's ground, usually at night, running until dawn
• A performer from one of the specific communities that hold this hereditary role, principally Nalike, Pambada and Parava, takes on the daiva
• The preparation is elaborate. Face painting in intricate patterns, sometimes taking hours; the ani, a large halo like structure worn on the back; anklets, ornaments and costume
• Drumming and the singing of the paddana accompany the preparation and the performance
• At a point in the process the performer is understood to be taken by the daiva
• The daiva then moves, dances, carries fire or a sword, and finally speaks

The speech. This is the part that matters most.

• The daiva delivers the nudi, the utterance
• Petitioners come before him, and he hears complaints, settles disputes, gives judgements, makes promises and issues warnings
• People bring genuine matters. Land disputes, family quarrels, illness, wrongs done
• The daiva's judgement is accepted, and by everyone present

What that means socially. This is the tradition's most remarkable feature and needs saying without softening.

The performer belongs to a community that the social order of this coast has historically kept at or near the bottom. During the kola, that same person, in that costume, is the deity.

Landowners, upper caste families and the local powerful come before him, stand while he sits, and accept his rulings. Then the night ends, the costume comes off, and the ordinary order resumes.

Anthropologists have written a great deal about whether this is a genuine inversion or a release valve that makes the ordinary order more sustainable. It is worth knowing that the argument exists, and worth noticing that for one night a year the hierarchy is precisely reversed in front of everybody, by agreement.

The literature of this tradition is oral, in Tulu, and it is one of the significant bodies of Indian oral epic.

What a paddana is:

• A sung narrative in Tulu recounting the origin and deeds of a daiva
• Performed at the kola, and also sung in other contexts including while working, particularly in paddy transplanting
• Transmitted orally, over generations, within the communities that hold the tradition
• Varying between performers and regions, as oral literature does

The Siri paddana deserves particular note:

• It is very long, and one recorded performance ran to a very substantial number of lines, placing it among the longer oral epics documented anywhere
• It is performed by women
• It follows Siri and the women of her lineage across generations
• It has been the subject of serious scholarly recording and study

Why oral epics matter. India's written literary tradition is enormous and very well studied. The oral tradition is larger still and much less so.

• Oral epics exist in every Indian language region, in the hundreds
• They are performed by communities that frequently had no access to writing or to Sanskrit learning
• They preserve histories, grievances and social memory that written sources do not record, generally because the written sources were produced by the other side of the argument
• They are being lost, rapidly, as performance contexts disappear

What Tulu Nadu has that most regions do not is that its oral tradition is still in active ritual use. The paddanas are not being performed for audiences or archives. They are being sung because a kola is happening and the daiva has to be called properly.

That is why the tradition is intact, and it is also why it depends entirely on the kola continuing.

Visitors often want to know whether this is Hinduism, and the question is worth answering carefully.

What is actually the case on this coast:

• The same families worship at temples of Vishnu, Shiva, Durga and Ganapati, and at daivasthanas
• The two are understood as different categories with different rules, not as rival systems
• A family may have a kuladaiva, a daiva of the lineage, alongside a kuladevata in a temple
• Major temples on this coast frequently have a daivasthana attached, and the daiva is understood as serving or guarding the temple deity
• The Nagas are worshipped alongside both, and naga banas and sarpa kshetras are found everywhere in this region

How the categories differ:

• Devas are approached with Sanskrit ritual, vegetarian offering and brahmin priesthood
• Daivas are approached in Tulu, at night, through possession, with offerings that may include meat and toddy, by hereditary practitioners from specific non brahmin communities
• Devas are universal. Daivas are local, attached to this place and this family
• You petition a deva. You negotiate with a daiva, and daivas can be angry, can be neglected, and can retaliate

What the right description is. This is Hindu practice, as practised by Hindu communities in this region, in a form that does not resemble the temple Hinduism most accounts describe.

It is also older in its layer than much of what surrounds it. Local guardian deities, possession, oral epic and offerings of this kind are found across India beneath and beside the Sanskritic tradition, from the Konkan's Ravalnath and Betal to the theyyam of north Kerala, the guardian deities of Tamil Nadu and the gram devatas of every village in the country.

Tulu Nadu is not unusual in having these. It is unusual in that its version survives intact, is documented, and is performed at a very high level of artistry.

This section is different from the others in this series, because a kola is not a monument and you cannot simply turn up.

Where and when

• Across Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts of Karnataka and Kasaragod in Kerala
• The season runs roughly from December to May, after the harvest, though timings vary by shrine and family
• Individual kolas are announced locally and are not published on any general calendar
• Some are public, held at a daivasthana for a village. Others are private, held by a family on its own ground

How to see one

• Ask locally, in the district, rather than planning it from elsewhere
• A local contact is essentially necessary. Homestays and guesthouses in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi will often know what is happening and where
• If it is a family occasion, you attend because you have been invited, not because you have found out where it is

How to behave

• This is a ritual, not a performance. People present are petitioning a deity about real matters
• Ask before photographing or filming. Practices differ, some shrines permit it and some do not, and the answer may be no
• Do not photograph people during possession without explicit permission
• Do not use flash
• Sit where you are directed and do not move around during the ritual
• Do not approach the daiva unless invited to. There is an order to who comes forward and when
• Dress modestly and remove footwear where required
• If offered prasad, accept it graciously
• Do not leave in the middle. If you cannot stay for the night, position yourself where you can leave without crossing the space

On the recent attention. A widely seen Kannada film in 2022 brought bhuta kola to national notice, and visitor interest has risen sharply since.

That is a mixed development. Attention brings recognition and some support for practitioners. It also brings people who treat a family's ritual as a photo opportunity, and practitioners on this coast have been clear that they do not appreciate it.

If you go, go as a guest. The tradition has survived for centuries without an audience and does not need one now.

Related things to see in the region

• Garodis, the shrines of Koti and Chennaya, and the garadi martial tradition
• Kambala, the buffalo race, held in the same season
• Yakshagana, the region's all night theatre form, which is performance rather than ritual and is far easier to attend
• The naga banas and sarpa kshetras found across the region

A closing thought. Most of what visitors are shown of Indian religion is architecture, which survives because stone does. Tulu Nadu's tradition is carried in songs nobody wrote down and in a costume somebody puts on for one night. It has lasted just as long, and it is a great deal easier to lose.