Tuluva

The Tuluva are a Dravidian people of Tulu Nadu, the coastal strip between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea. Their country is named in the Sangam Tamil anthologies as one of the twelve regions of ancient Tamilakam.

From about the fifth to the fourteenth century the Alupa dynasty ruled from Mangalore and Barkur, first independently and later as loose feudatories of the Kadambas, Chalukyas, Hoysalas and Vijayanagara. Under Vijayanagara the country grew wealthy on Arabian Sea trade, and this coast produced the Tuluva dynasty that later sat on the Vijayanagara throne.

After the empire's fall the Keladi Nayakas of Ikkeri took over, and refugees arrived from Portuguese Goa. Hyder Ali conquered the region in the later eighteenth century; after Tipu Sultan's defeat in 1799 it passed to the British. Tulu society kept matrilineal Aliyasantana inheritance, Yakshagana theatre and the spirit ceremony of Bhuta Kola.