The Bhutas and Daivas of Tulu Nadu
ದೈವೋಲು
Also Daiva, Bhuta, Panjurli, Koragajja, Kalkuda, Jumadi.
Village and folk
Who this is
The daivas of Tulu Nadu are not gods of a pantheon but of a place, and they are answerable. Each has a territory, a story, usually a death by injustice, and a duty: Panjurli the boar spirit guards the fields, Koragajja finds what is lost, Kalkuda was a sculptor maimed by a king and takes complaints against power. In the kola, the night performance, an impersonator of a particular family takes the makeup, the costume and then the daiva, and speaks as it: hears disputes, gives judgement and is obeyed. For centuries this was the actual justice system of the coast, and in villages it still settles matters that never reach a court.
How to recognise them
No sanctum image in the usual sense. A bronze mask or a sword kept in the shrine, and in the kola the performer himself in enormous costume: the ani, a palm frond halo several feet across, body paint in red and yellow, bells, torches and a fire that is walked through. The faces are fixed to each daiva and the costume is not improvised.
Family and companions
No family tree in the puranic sense. The daivas have territories and ranks: the ones of the whole region, the ones of a village, and the ones of a single house, and a family will say which daiva is its own. Some, like Panjurli, are animal; some, like Kalkuda and Kallurti, are the dead who were wronged; some are the Vedic gods absorbed as local lords.
How they are worshipped
Through the ritual season, from about December to the Pattanaje in May.
The kola or nema, held yearly or at intervals, at the shrine of the daiva, through the night, with the paddana sung as the story is told and the performer taken over. Food is offered in quantity, disputes are brought, and the daiva’s word is accepted. The season runs from Vrischikam and ends at Pattanaje in Besya, after which nothing is performed until the rains have gone.
The stories
As they are told, with the disagreements left in
Kalkuda and the hand
Kalkuda was a sculptor whose work was so good that a king, having had his temple built, cut off his hand so that he could never build a better one elsewhere. He was later killed, or died of it, and became a daiva. His sister Kallurti is with him. What is brought to the two of them is injustice done by those with power, and the kola of Kalkuda is the one at which a complaint against a landlord or an official is traditionally made. A tradition that turns the maimed craftsman into the judge of the people who maimed him is making a point that has not needed restating.
Koragajja and the lost thing
Koragajja was of the Koraga community, among the most despised in the old order, and is now among the most widely petitioned daivas on the coast, by every community. He finds what is lost. A person who has mislaid something promises him a coconut or toddy and asks, and when the thing is found the promise is kept. The shrines take offerings from everybody. That the spirit of an outcaste man is the one the whole coast turns to for help is said plainly in Tulu Nadu, and the tradition does not treat it as an irony.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- Tulu Nadu
- Dakshina Kannada and Udupi keep the kola and the nema through the season, with Dharmasthala’s four dharma daivas among the most widely known.
- Karnataka
- The Malnad and the coastal districts share the tradition, and the Yakshagana troupes and the bhuta impersonators keep the same seasonal calendar.
- Kerala
- The theyyam of north Malabar is the neighbouring form, with the same structure of a performer possessed and speaking, and the two shade into each other at the Kasaragod border.
Their days
Every one of these has a page of its own
Where to see them
From the temple directory
- Sri Manjunatha Temple, Dharmasthala Dharmasthala, Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka
- Kateel Durgaparameshwari Temple Kateel, Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka