Malnad · Deccan Inland Plateau
Festivals
| Festival | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Puttari (Huthari) | Late November or early December, on a date and hour fixed by the almanac | Kodagu's harvest festival. The first sheaf is cut at a fixed moment on a fixed night, carried to the ainmane and tied at the door, with guns fired to mark it. Dancing follows for several nights, and the festival is the year's main occasion for a dispersed clan to reassemble in the ancestral house. |
| Kailpodh | Customarily 3 September | Marks the end of transplanting. Weapons and implements are cleaned, laid out and worshipped, and the afternoon is given to shooting and physical contests. It is a soldier's festival in a district with an unusually long military tradition. |
| Cauvery Sankramana (Tula Sankramana) | Mid-October | Pilgrims gather at Talakaveri to see the spring well up in the tank at the moment the sun enters Tula. The water is carried home in bottles and kept; a household will use it at a death. |
| Sringeri Sharada Navaratri and rathotsava | September–October | Nine nights at the math on the Tunga with processions, recitation and a chariot festival, drawing large numbers from across southern India. |
| The Yakshagana season | November–May | Not a single festival but the tirugata — the touring season, when troupes work a circuit of villages performing all night on open ground, one prasanga per night. It exists in these months because the monsoon makes outdoor performance impossible. |
| Ninasam culture course | October, at Heggodu | A week of lectures, plays and film in a village, running annually for decades, with participants drawn from across Karnataka. Among the more unusual cultural institutions in rural India. |
| Mahamastakabhisheka | Roughly every twelve years; the last was in 2018 | The anointing of the Bahubali monolith at Shravanabelagola from a scaffold erected for the purpose, drawing very large crowds over several weeks. |
| Shivaratri and the Malnad jatras | Phalguna (February–March), and through the dry months | Village temple fairs across the areca country, with Veeragase, night theatre, a cattle market and the year's shopping attached. They fall in the dry months for the same reason Yakshagana does. |
| Kodava Hockey Namme | April–May | A hockey tournament contested between Kodava family clans, running annually since 1997 and at times fielding several hundred family teams — recognised as one of the largest field hockey tournaments anywhere. It is a clan institution as much as a sporting one. |
The festival calendar of Malnad — what is celebrated, when it falls and what happens. (9)