Billava
L. K. Ananthakrishna Iyer recounted the community's belief that billava means bowmen and that it "applied to the castemen who were largely employed as soldiers by the native rulers of the district".
[3][a] The Billavas are first recorded in inscriptions dating from the fifteenth century AD but Amitav Ghosh notes that "... this is merely an indication of their lack of social power; there is every reason to suppose that all the major Tuluva castes share an equally long history of settlement in the region".
A compact geographic area, Tulu Nadu lies on the coastal belt of Karnataka and Kerala and has natural boundaries in the form of the Arabian Sea, the hills of the Western Ghats and the rivers Suvarna and Chandragiri.
[5] William Logan's work Manual of Malabar, a publication of the British Raj period, recognised the Billavas as being the largest single community in South Canara, representing nearly 20 per cent of that district's population.
[1] Thurston said of these exogamous Billava groups that "There is a popular belief that these are sub-divisions of the twenty balis which ought to exist according to the Aliya Santana system (inheritance of the female line).
Iyer, who considered the most prevalent of the Billava Bhutas to be the twin heroes Koti and Chennayya,[21] also described the spirits as being of people who when living had ... acquired a more than usual local reputation whether for good or evil, or had met with a sudden or violent death.
Tulu bhutas, on the other hand, though they have their vengeful aspects, are often benign, protective figures, ancestral spirits and heroes who have been assimilated to the ranks of minor deities.
[23]Bhuta Kola is a cult practised by a large section of Tulu Nadu society, ranging from landlords to the Dalits, and the various hierarchical strands all have their place within it.
[23] For example, the pooja rituals include devil-dancing, performed by the lower class Paravar[c] or Naike,[19] and the Bunts – who were historically ranked as superior to the Billava[d]– rely upon the Poojary to officiate.
The Billavas, being among the dispersed people, were bonded to their landlords by the necessities of livelihood and were spread so that they were unable to unite in order to assert authority.
[16] Heidrun Brückner describes the Billavas of the nineteenth century as "frequently small tenant farmers and agricultural labourers working for Bunt landowners.
[30] The British had wrested the region from the control of Tipu Sultan in 1799, as a consequence of the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, and in 1834 the Christian Basel Mission arrived in Mangalore.
[31] They initially condemned the caste system because it was an inherent part of the Hindu religion and therefore must be wrong, but they came to see the divisions caused by it as being evil in their own right and took to undermining it as a matter of social justice.
Support against oppression by landlords and money lenders, hope for better social standards, education for their children, chances of employment in the mission's firms, the prospect of food provision, clothing, shelter and a decent state of life—such motives might have contributed to their decision for baptism.
The missionaries took the view that the proposition was contrary to their belief in equality and that it represented both an incomplete rejection of the caste system and of Hindu practices.
"[33] A further barrier to conversion proved to be the Billava's toddy tapping occupation: the Basel Mission held no truck with alcohol, and those who did convert found themselves economically disadvantaged, often lacking both a job and a home.
[35][e] Nireshvalya Arasappa—described by Kenneth Jones as "one of the few educated Billavas"—was one such person who looked to conversion from Hinduism as a means to advancement during the nineteenth century.
The attempt met with little success: the Billavas were suspicious of the Brahmo representatives, who wore western clothing and spoke in English[30] whereas the Basel Missionaries had studied the local languages and produced a copy of the New Testament in both Tulu and Kannada.
