Kambla Buffalo Race.
The Bants are fond of out-door sports, football and buffalo-racing being amongst their favourite amusements. But the most popular of all is cock-fighting. Every Bant, who is not a Jain, takes an interest in this sport, and large assemblages of cocks are found at every fair and festival throughout South Canara. “The outsider,” it has been said,[35] “cannot fail to be struck with the tremendous excitement that attends a village fair in South Canara. Large numbers of cocks are displayed for sale, and groups of excited people may be seen huddled together, bending down with intense eagerness to watch every detail in the progress of a combat between two celebrated village game-cocks.” Cock fights on an elaborate scale take place on the day after the Dīpāvali, Sankaranthi or Vinayakachathurthi, and Gokalāshtami festivals, outside the village boundary. At Hiriadaka, in October, 1907, more than a hundred birds were tethered by the leg to the scrub jungle composed of the evergreen shrub Ixora coccinea, or carried in the arms of their owners or youngsters. Only males, from the town and surrounding villages, were witnesses of the spectacle. The tethered birds, if within range of each other, excited by the constant crowing and turmoil, indulged in an impromptu fight. Grains of rice and water were poured into the mouths and over the heads of the birds before the fight, and after each round. The birds were armed with cunningly devised steel spurs, constituting a battery of variously curved and sinuous weapons. It is believed that the Bhūta (demon) is appeased, if the blood from the wounds drops on the ground. The men, whose duty it is to separate the birds at the end of a round, sometimes receive nasty wounds from the spurs. The tail feathers of a wounded bird are lifted up, and a palm leaf fan or towel is waved to and fro over the cloacal orifice to revive it. The owner of a victorious bird becomes the possessor of the vanquished bird, dead or alive. At an exhibition of the products of South Canara, during a recent visit of the Governor of Madras to Mangalore, a collection of spurs was exhibited in the class “household implements.”
Kambla Racing Buffaloes.
For the following note on buffalo races, I am indebted to Mr. H. O. D. Harding. “This is a sport that has grown up among a race of cultivators of wet land. It is, I believe, peculiar to South Canara, where all the cultivation worth mentioning is wet. The Bants and Jains, and other landowners of position, own and run buffaloes, and the Billava, or toddy drawer, has also entered the racing world. Every rich Bant keeps his kambla field consecrated to buffalo-racing, and his pair of racing buffaloes, costing from Rs. 150 to Rs. 500, are splendid animals; and, except for an occasional plough-drawing at the beginning of the cultivation season, are used for no purpose all the year, except racing. The racing is for no prize or stakes, and there is no betting, starter, judge, or winning post. Each pair of buffaloes runs the course alone, and is judged by the assembled crowd for pace and style, and, most important of all, the height and breadth of the splash which they make. Most people know the common levelling plank used by the ryots (cultivators) all over India to level the wet field after ploughing. It is a plank some 4 or 5 feet long by 1 or 1½ feet broad, and on it the driver stands to give it weight, and the buffaloes pull it over the mud of a flooded rice-field. This is the prototype of the buffalo-racing car, and any day during the cultivating season in the Tulu country one may see two boys racing for the love of the sport, as they drive their levelling boards. From this the racing car has been specialised, and, if a work of art for its own purpose, is not a car on which any one could or would wish to travel far. The leveller of utility is cut down to a plank about 1½ by 1 foot, sometimes handsomely carved, on which is fixed a gaily decorated wooden stool about 6 inches high and 10 inches across each way, hollowed out on the top, and just big enough to afford good standing for one foot. In the plank, on each side, are holes to let the mud and water through. The plank is fixed to a pole, which is tied to the buffalo’s yoke. The buffaloes are decorated with coloured jhūls and marvellous head-pieces of brass and silver (sometimes bearing the emblems of the sun and moon), and ropes which make a sort of bridle. The driver, stripping himself to the necessary minimum of garments, mounts, while some of his friends cling, like ants struggling round a dead beetle, to the buffaloes. When he is fairly up, they let go, and the animals start. The course is a wet rice-field, about 150 yards long, full of mud and water. All round are hundreds, or perhaps thousands of people, including Pariahs who dance in groups in the mud, play stick-game, and beat drums. In front of the galloping buffaloes the water is clear and still, throwing a powerful reflection of them as they gallop down the course, raising a perfect tornado of mud and water. The driver stands with one foot on the stool, and one on the pole of the car. He holds a whip aloft in one hand, and one of the buffaloes’ tails in the other. He drives without reins, with nothing but a waggling tail to hold on to and steer by. Opening his mouth wide, he shouts for all he is worth, while, to all appearances, a deluge of mud and water goes down his throat. So he comes down the course, the plank on which he stands throwing up a sort of Prince of Wales’ feathers of mud and water round him. The stance on the plank is no easy matter, and not a few men come to grief, but it is soft falling in the slush. Marks are given for pace, style, sticking to the plank, and throwing up the biggest and widest splash. Sometimes a kind of gallows, perhaps twenty feet high, is erected on the course, and there is a round of applause if the splash reaches up to or above it. Sometimes the buffaloes bolt, scatter the crowd, and get away into the young rice. At the end of the course, the driver jumps off with a parting smack at his buffaloes, which run up the slope of the field, and stop of themselves in what may be called the paddock. At a big meeting perhaps a hundred pairs, brought from all over the Tulu country, will compete, and the big men always send their buffaloes to the races headed by the local band. The roads are alive with horns and tom-toms for several days. The proceedings commence with a procession, which is not infrequently headed by a couple of painted dolls in an attitude suggestive of that reproductiveness, which the races really give thanks for. They are a sort of harvest festival, before the second or sugge crop is sown, and are usually held in October and November. Devils must be propitiated, and the meeting opens with a devil dance. A painted, grass-crowned devil dancer, riding a hobby-horse, proceeds with music round the kambla field. Then comes the buffalo procession, and the races commence. At a big meeting near Mangalore, the two leading devil dancers were dressed up in masks, and coat and trousers of blue mission cloth, and one had the genitalia represented by a long piece of blue cloth tipped with red, and enormous testes. Buffaloes, young and old, trained and untrained, compete, some without the plank attached to them, and others with planks but without drivers. Accidents sometimes happen, owing to the animals breaking away among the crowd. On one occasion, a man who was in front of a pair of buffaloes which were just about to start failed to jump clear of them. Catching hold of the yoke, he hung on to it by his hands, and was carried right down the course, and was landed safely at the other end. If he had dropped, he would have fallen among four pairs of hoofs, not to mention the planks, and would probably have been brained. It is often a case of owners up, and the sons and nephews of big Bants, worth perhaps Rs. 10,000 a year, drive the teams.”
To the above account, I may add a few notes made at a buffalo race-meeting near Udipi, at which I was present. Each group of buffaloes, as they went up the track to the starting-point, was preceded by the Koraga band playing on drum, fife and cymbals, Holeyas armed with staves and dancing, and a man holding a flag (nishāni). Sometimes, in addition to the flag, there is a pakkē or spear on the end of a bamboo covered with strips of cloth, or a makara torana, i.e., festooned cloths between two bamboos. The two last are permitted only if the buffaloes belong to a Bant or Brāhman, not if they are the property of a Billava. At the end of the races, the Ballāla chief, in whose field they had taken place, retired in procession, headed by a man carrying his banner, which, during the races, had been floating on the top of a long bamboo pole at the far end of the track. He was followed by the Koraga band, and the Holeyas attached to him, armed with clubs, and dancing a step dance amid discordant noises. Two Nalkes (devil-dancers), dressed up in their professional garb, and a torch-bearer also joined in the procession, in the rear of which came the Ballāla beneath a decorated umbrella. In every village there are rākshasas (demons), called Kambla-asura, who preside over the fields. The races are held to propitiate them, and, if they are omitted, it is believed that there will be a failure of the crop. According to some, Kambla-asura is the brother of Mahēshasura, the buffalo-headed giant, from whom Mysore receives its name. The Koragas sit up through the night before the Kambla day, performing a ceremony called panikkuluni, or sitting under the dew. They sing songs to the accompaniment of the band, about their devil Nīcha, and offer toddy and a rice-pudding boiled in a large earthen pot, which is broken so that the pudding remains as a solid mass. This pudding is called kandēl addē, or pot pudding. On the morning of the races, the Holeyas scatter manure over the field, and plough it. On the following day, the seedlings are planted, without, as in ordinary cases, any ploughing. To propitiate various devils, the days following the races are devoted to cock-fighting. The Kamblas, in different places, have various names derived from the village deity, the chief village devil, or the village itself, e.g., Janardhana Dēvara, Daivala, or Udiyavar. The young men, who have the management of the buffaloes, are called Bannangayi Gurikara (half-ripe cocoanut masters) as they have the right of taking tender cocoanuts, as well as beaten rice to give them physical strength, without the special permission of their landlord. At the village of Vandar, the races take place in a dry field, which has been ploughed, and beaten to break up the clods of earth. For this reason they are called podi (powder) Kambla.
A pair of buffaloes, belonging to the field in which the races take place, should enter the field first, and a breach of this observance leads to discussion and quarrels. On one occasion, a dispute arose between two Bants in connection with the question of precedence. One of them brought his own pair of buffaloes, and the other a borrowed pair. If the latter had brought his own animals, he would have had precedence over the former. But, as his animals were borrowed, precedence was given to the man who brought his own buffaloes. This led to a dispute, and the races were not commenced until the delicate point at issue was decided. In some places, a long pole, called pūkāre, decorated with flags, flowers, and festoons of leaves, is set up in the Kambla field, sometimes on a platform. Billavas are in charge of this pole, which is worshipped, throughout the races, and others may not touch it.
Pūkāre Post at Kambla Buffalo Races.