Tulu Nadu · Western Coastal Strip
Tulu Nadu had one long dynasty and then, for five hundred years, almost none. The Alupas held the coast from about the fifth century to 1444, and after them the region was governed by an overlord sitting somewhere else — Vijayanagara through provincial governors at Barkur and Mangalore, then Keladi, then Mysore, then the Madras Presidency — with a scatter of small houses at Ullal, Bangadi, Venur and Mulki holding a few hundred villages between them. Authority in the villages was therefore not dynastic at all. It sat with the guttu, the head of a landholding household that passed to a man's sister's son rather than to his own under aliyasantana, and with the daivasthana attached to it, where a hereditary performer possessed by a named spirit settled disputes as that spirit. Those two offices, not a king list, are what actually held the country together, and they are why the region's institutions survived every change of overlord. The modern period begins about 1550, when Keladi took the coast and European buyers began contracting for pepper directly with the local houses.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The Alupas are first visible in the Halmidi inscription of 450, which names Pashupathi of the Alupa line as a contemporary of the Kadambas, and their country was called Alvakheda. They moved their headquarters as their reach changed — Mangalore, then Udyavara near Udupi, then Barkur — and they were feudatories almost throughout, of the Kadambas, then the Badami Chalukyas, then the Rashtrakutas. The single most important document of the period is administrative rather than dynastic: the Belamannu copper plates of Aluvarasa II, of the early eighth century, are the earliest known copper-plate inscription in Kannada, which places the written administration of this coast very early indeed.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 450 | The Halmidi inscription names Pashupathi of the Alupa line as a contemporary of the Kadambas. |
| early 7th century | Aluvarasa I rules; the Vaddarase inscription is the dynasty's first full-length record. |
| early 8th century | The Belamannu copper plates of Aluvarasa II are issued — the earliest known copper-plate inscription in Kannada, carrying the double-fish emblem. |
| 8th century | Chitravahana Alupendra rules as a feudatory of the Western Chalukyas; Alupa coins carry Kannada and Nagari legends. |
| 968 | Kundavarma endows the bronze images at the Kadri temple in Mangalore. |
Under Hoysala and then Vijayanagara overlordship the Alupas thinned into one family among several, and the coast was reorganised administratively into two provinces, the Barakuru rajya and the Mangaluru rajya, each under a governor appointed from the capital. Barkur, with its fort and its recorded temples and basadis, was the northern seat. The small matrilineal houses date from this period: the Chowtas from the twelfth century at Ullal and afterwards Puthige, the Bangas at Bangadi, the Ajilas at Venur, the Savantas at Mulki. The last Alupa inscription, of Kulashekharadeva Alupendra, is dated 1444 and was found in a Jain basadi at Moodbidri, which is about right for how the dynasty ended — as an endowment rather than as a battle.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 1075 | Kunda Alupa is named as the ruler of Mangaluru in inscriptions of the period. |
| 12th century | Tirumalaraya Chowta I is the first recorded ruler of the Chowta house at Ullal; his successor moves the seat inland to Puthige. |
| 14th century | Vijayanagara divides the coast into the Barakuru and Mangaluru rajyas under appointed governors; Barkur becomes the northern administrative seat. |
| 13th–14th centuries | An Alupa princess marries the Hoysala Veera Ballala III; the family survives as a local house rather than a dynasty. |
| 1444 | The last dated Alupa inscription, of Kulashekharadeva Alupendra, is recorded at a Jain basadi in Moodbidri. |
| 1526 | A Portuguese force under the viceroy Lopo Vaz de Sampaio takes Mangalore. |
| 1544 | The Chowta principality divides into an Ullal branch and a Puthige branch. |
From 1550 Sadashiva Nayaka of Keladi administered the coast, keeping the two-province arrangement he inherited, and for two centuries the ports were worked by whoever could hold both the estuary and the pass behind it. The Chowta rulers of Ullal fought the Portuguese repeatedly in the middle of the sixteenth century over the terms on which their pepper and rice were sold. Mangalore then changed hands six times in forty years — Hyder Ali in 1763, the Company in 1767, Tipu Sultan in 1783, the treaty of 1784, the Company again in 1799 — and it is under the British that the coast's familiar institutions appear: the Basel Mission from 1834, with a printing press, a weaving establishment and the tile works that made Mangalore tiles a national product, and the first Kannada newspaper printed here in 1843. The rising of 1837, three years after the annexation of Kodagu, is the one large armed episode, and it came up from the ghat foothills rather than from the port.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1550 | Sadashiva Nayaka of Keladi begins administering the coast; his authority over South Canara is established by about 1554. |
| 1555–1570s | A sequence of engagements between the Chowta rulers of Ullal and the Portuguese, including a Portuguese sack of Mangalore in 1557 and a battle in 1568 in which the Portuguese commander João Peixoto was killed. |
| c. 1603 | With the Ullal branch extinct, the Chowta house moves its seat to Moodbidri. |
| 1763 | Hyder Ali takes Mangalore; the coast passes to the Mysore state. |
| 1767–1784 | Mangalore is held by the East India Company from 1767, retaken by Tipu Sultan in 1783 and renamed Jalalabad, and the second Anglo-Mysore war closes with the Treaty of Mangalore on 8 March 1784. |
| 1799 | After the fourth Anglo-Mysore war the coast passes to the East India Company and is administered from Madras. |
| 1834 | The Basel Mission opens at Mangalore, bringing a printing press, weaving sheds and the tile works that give the coast its export product. |
| 1837 | A rising against the Company draws Gowda, Bunt, Kudiya and other households from Amara Sullia, Bellare, Puttur and Nandavara, moving down from the ghat foothills towards Mangalore. |
| July 1843 | Mangalur Samachara, the first Kannada newspaper, begins publication at Mangalore under Hermann Mögling. |
| 1859 and 1862 | Kanara is divided into North and South Kanara in 1859; South Canara stays in the Madras Presidency when the northern district goes to Bombay in 1862. |
| 1894 | Ferdinand Kittel of the Basel Mission publishes a Kannada–English dictionary of about seventy thousand words. |
Rulers and commanders
Issued the Belamannu copper plates, the earliest known copper-plate inscription in Kannada, stamped with the Alupa double-fish emblem. The coast has a written administration in its own language from this point.
Dynasty: Alupa. Seat: Udyavara
Endowed the bronze images at the Kadri temple in Mangalore, among the earliest dated bronzes on this coast and the object by which his reign is fixed.
Dynasty: Alupa. Seat: Mangalore
The last Alupa whose inscription survives, recorded at a Jain basadi in Moodbidri in 1444. The title Alva persists in the Bunt community long after the dynasty stops issuing records.
Dynasty: Alupa. Seat: Barkur
Vijayanagara did not install a client dynasty here; it split the coast into the Barakuru and Mangaluru rajyas and posted a governor to each from the capital. Barkur's fort, spread over twenty acres, and its recorded temples and basadis belong to that arrangement, and the Keladi Nayakas kept the same two-province structure when they took over.
Dynasty: Vijayanagara provincial administration. Seat: Barkur
The first recorded ruler of the Chowta house, a Jain Bunt line holding roughly two hundred villages. Succession went by aliyasantana, the matrilineal custom of the Bunt community, so the throne passed through sisters' sons — the only substantial ruling house on the west coast that worked that way.
Dynasty: Chowtas of Ullal and Puthige. Seat: Ullal
The ruler of the Ullal branch after the division of 1544, crowned in 1525 by the house's own reckoning. Portuguese accounts record engagements with her in 1555 and 1568, the second of which killed their commander João Peixoto, and she kept relations with Arab merchants and the Zamorin of Calicut. She was eventually defeated and imprisoned. A great deal of what is now told about her comes from folk song and Yakshagana rather than from record, and historians do not agree that a single reign accounts for all of it.
Dynasty: Chowtas of Ullal. Seat: Ullal
Below the level of any dynasty, the working unit of authority was the guttu — a named landholding house whose property and standing passed to a man's sister's son under aliyasantana, and which maintained the daivasthana on its land. At the daivasthana a hereditary performer possessed by the household's named spirit heard disputes and gave judgement as that spirit. This is the office that survived Vijayanagara, Keladi, Mysore and the Madras Presidency without interruption.
Dynasty: Aliyasantana households of the Bunt and Jain communities.
Carried Keladi's authority down the ghats onto this coast from 1550, with control established by about 1554. He kept the Barakuru and Mangaluru provinces as Vijayanagara had drawn them, which is why the administrative geography outlasts three changes of ruler.
Dynasty: Keladi Nayakas. Seat: Ikkeri
The history of Tulu Nadu from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)