Tradition · spirit possession performance

Būta Kōla, Tulu Nadu

Also known as Bhuta Kola, Bhoota Kola, Daiva Nema, Būta Kōla — Tulu Nadu

Function

Arts & performance

Confidence

Not assessed

Location

12.870, 74.880

Worth knowing

The bhuta is a magistrate as much as a deity: land quarrels and family disputes in Tulu villages were, and in places still are, put to the possessed performer for judgement, and the answer is binding on people who would not accept a court's. Kantara in 2022 took the practice to a national audience and to an argument about who owns the depiction.

Connections (3)

• AnalogueTeyyam, north Malabar

  Teyyam in Malayalam-speaking north Malabar and būta kōla in Tulu-speaking coastal Karnataka are the same institution across a language border: a hereditary performer from a subordinate caste is possessed by a local deity, and in that state gives judgements that the landholding castes accept. Many of the deities are shared across the border under different names, and in both the performance is paid for by the very families whose authority it temporarily inverts.

• Patronage networkDharmasthala

  Dharmasthala is administered by a Jain family, its principal deity is Shiva, its priests are Vaishnava Brahmins, and its guardian spirits are four bhūtas whose annual nema is performed by hereditary possession specialists. All four things are true at once and the shrine is the busiest in the region. It is the clearest single demonstration that the Tulu country's bhūta worship is not a survival beneath Hinduism but a system running alongside and inside it.

• Craft tradition ofMangaluru / Mangalore

  Būta kōla belongs to the Tulu-speaking coast around Mangaluru, and the kambala buffalo races, the daiva shrines in family compounds and the nema calendar are parts of the same order. The 2022 film Kantara took it to a national audience and provoked a sharp argument within Tulu Nadu about who owns the depiction — performers from the Nalike, Pambada and Parava communities pointing out that the practice is their hereditary work and the profits were not.

On these journeys

• Possession, mask and shadow — the ritual theatres

Sources

Wikipedia, “Buta Kola”. Sangeet Natak Akademi documentation; UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage nomination files where the practice is listed.

• Wikipedia — Buta Kola