The Kuruba Rulers of Gingee

We know that Pallavas were Kurubas and after the fall of Pallava empire, the life of many Kurubas became very difficult and they had to migrate to other places from their capital city Kanchi. Some of them escaped to the jungles of the western ghats. Where due to their relative isolation, developed their own language, customs and traditions.

But, not many people know the tiny Kingdom of Gingee I the present day Tamil Nadu was founded and ruled by Kuruba Gowdas for over 200 years. The rulers of Gingee were the feudatories of the Cholas of Tanjavur. Valuable information regarding this can be found in the work of C.S.Srinivasachari in his "History of Gingee".

The story of the foundation of the Kingdom of Gingee goes thus- Ananda Kon, a shepherd by caste, accidentally found a treasure in one of the cavities of the western hill of Gingee while grazing his sheep in 1190AD. Making himself the head of a small band of warriors, he defeated the petty rulers of the neighbouring villages like Devanur, Jayan-gondan and Melacheri (Old Gingee), and built a small fortress on Kamalagiri which he re-named Anandagiri after himself. He raised his castemen to high places and bestowed on them the distinction of Sammanamanar (the honorable).  After reigning glori-ously for about fifty years he was succeeded by one Krishna Kon about 1240 A. D. This chief perpetuated his name by fortifying the northern hill and naming it after himself. Krishna Kon was followed by two princes successively Koneri Kon and Govinda Kon who cut out the elaborate steps to the fort-ress on Krishnagiri and built the Gopala-swami temple on its top. Puliya Kon succeeded him about 1300 A. D. He excavated tanks and built rest-houses by the sides of the roads leading to Trichinopoly, Tanjore.

Twenty years afterwards, this shepherd race was superseded by the chief of a neighbouring place, Kabilingan by name, who belonged to the Kurumba caste and now ascended the throne of Gingee. Subsequently this king was defeated by the rulers off Vijayanagar who were again Kurubas. About which I will write in a different blog.

http://archive.org/stream/historyofgingeea035396mbp/historyofgingeea035396mbp_djvu.txt -page 31-40
http://www.gingeefort.com/web/artical04.asp

Legend of Hakka and Bukka - The Great Kurubas

It's a known fact that Hakka and Bukka were brothers of the Kuruba Gowda community and they established the greatest Hindu empire - the Vijayanagar Empire. They were the sons of sangama and started the Sangama dynasty which ruled over Vijaynagar for over 200 years. The names of Sangama's sons were 1)Harihara(Hakka) 2)Bukka 3)Kampanna 4)Maranna and 5)Mudappa.

South India in the 13th century was ravaged by the marauding Muslim armies from the north. The powerful kingdoms of the south were Hoysalas, the Yadavas of Devagiri, the Kakatiya dynasty of Warangal and the Pandya dynasty of Madurai. These kingdoms where fighting amongst themselves like the North Indian Hindu kings when the Muslims started their invasion of India. There was no united front against the armies of Alla-uddin-khilji and his commander Malik Kafur ravaged the land like plague and destroyed many temples and cities including Dwarasamudra the capital of Hoysalas.
The Sangama's were the feudatories of the Hoysalas and were ruling the region around the present day Bellary, their resistance was futile as well initially.

After the fall of the Hoysalas, the sangama brothers were left to fend for themselves in their territory. One day the brothers Hakka and Bukka were on a hunting expedition and their hunting dog was chasing a hare, after a while of chasing the hare got exhausted and stopped and turned back against the hound and fought back and defeated it. This made the brothers think that even a weak animal can defeat the devil if it had the courage. They identified themselves as the hare and the hunting dog as the Muslims. They resolved to fight back and save Hinduism from becoming extinct in south India.

The place where the battle between the hare and the dog took place was chosen as the site of the new empire as per the advice of the saint Vidyaranya who was doings penance at that place. The brothers united their clan people and started building an army to fight the Muslims and the rest is history.


http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5697451347141645651#editor/target=post;postID=3341270335384972912
http://hampi.in/a-forgotten-empire-chapter-3
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tZcdTw0toXsC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=hakka+bukka&source=bl&ots=pQt2Kk7cSg&sig=LrC4R9Fp262wcwct433cfxOsTlE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=L6onUvqWBMKctQa4-ID4CQ&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBjg8#v=onepage&q=hakka%20bukka&f=false

Kuruba Lingayats

It's a know fact that the Kuruba Gowdas are the original inhabitants of Karnataka from which other communities branched out. The history, costumes and traditions of Kuruba Gowdas and Halumatha goes back to many thousands of years back. The earliest inscriptions and antiquities found in Karnataka confirm this very fact. I have mentioned in my previous blogs how different communities branched out of the core group of Halumatha, of which only Kuruba Gowdas are retaining the ancient costumes and traditions.

Lingayats of Karnataka make a major chunk of the population, about 15%. But there was no community called as lingayath before the 12th century. The great social reformer Basavanna started the reformation movement wherein he tried to create a caste less community. Basavanna himself was a Brahmin, but his followers were mainly from the lower strata of the time, many people became his followers and adopted Lingayathism. These people included majority from the untouchable group, Basavanna worked relentlessly to uplift them and bring them to the main stream of the society.

Many people belonging to the Halumatha community also became his followers and adopted Lingayathism as their religion. Some of the sub sated of the present Lingayats who are from the Kuruba Gowda community are -
1) Nonaba(ನೊಣಬ) Lingayats - they belonged to the Nolamba Kula(ನೊಳಂಬ ಕುಲ) of the Halumatha Kuruba community, Nolamba eventually became Nonaba.

2) Sada(ಸಾದ) Lingayat - belonged to the Halumatha Sada Kula(ಸಾದ ಕುಲ).

3) Reddy(ರಡ್ಡಿ) Lingayat - they belonged to the Ratta Kula(ರಟ್ಟ ಕುಲ) of Halumatha which eventually became Ratta to Radda to Reddy.

It is a known fact and an open secret that vast majority of today's Lingayats have Kuruba ancestry. 

http://www.prajavani.net/article/ಹಾಲುಮತ-ಕುರುಬ-ಮತ್ತು-ಲಿಂಗವಂತ

Great Kuruba 8 - Balada Hanumappa Nayaka

Balada Hanumappa Nayaka was the first Palegar of Bellary. The Palegars existed during and after the fall of Vijayanagar empire. This fact is stated in the Bellary Gazetter of 1916 in page 24. Balada Hanumappa Nayaka belonged to the "Hande Kuruba" caste. After the fall of Vijaynagar empire he aligned himself to the sultan of Bijapur and was given the title of "Wazir". He ruled over Bellary, Ananthpura, Kurugod and Bankapur.
I am trying to find more information about Hande Kurubas and the Kuruba Palegars, will add to this blog when I find the needed information. The point I am trying to make here is the Palegars belonged to different communities, they were not Kshatriyas,  but they belonged to middle castes like Bedas, Kurubas, Balajigas and some of they later adopted veerashaivism and recognised themselves as Lingayats.

http://www.prajavani.net/article/ಕನ್ನಡ-ಪಿತಾಮಹರೂ-ಮತ್ತು-ಹಂಡೆ-ವಜೀರರೂ

Great Kurubas 7 -Siddaramaiah Siddarame Gowda

Finally I could add the 22nd chief minister of Karnataka Mr Siddaramanahundi Siddaramaiah Siddarame Gowda to the list of great Kuruba Gowdas. Mr Siddaramaiah or Siddu as he is popularly known as, is and was the most deserving person to be the CM of Karnataka for a long time now. He is also called as Mr Clean of Karnataka politics for keeping out of corruption when he was in the position of power.

He has a lot to do to bring the AHINDA force to the forefront of Kranataka politics. I am sure he will take Karnatak to new heights of progress and social justice.

Also I want to use this opportunity to put to rest the myth that "Gowda" is a community and the efforts made by a certain community to portray the name as its monopoly. Mr Siddaramaiah's father was Siddarame GOWDA and both his brothers who still live in the Siddaramanahundi village in Mysore district have and use the "GOWDA" surname. His two brothers names are ERE GOWDA and RAMANNA GOWDA. His two uncles are called RAME GOWDA and SIDDE GOWDA.

I hope the so called fake GOWDA's who started using it as a surname now understand that GOWDA surname is used by all communities in Karnataka.

The Kuruba Villages

There are hundreds if not thousands of villages named after Kuruba Gowdas all over South India, about which I have mentioned in my previous blog. I do not think or come across any other community with so many villages named after them, the other community which has lent its name to many villages is the Golla(Yadava) community. Both these communities are dependent on the livestock management and are a proof that these two communities are the most ancient of all, once the people of these communities started to settle down in places after abandoning their pastoral life style those villages naturally came to be named after them.

Every time I go visiting a different town or city in Karnataka, I come across at least 2 or 3 villages named after Kurubas. I was obviously very fascinated about this and thought will do a bit more exploration about this trend. My impression was if a village was named after Kuruba Gowdas for example Kurubur or Kurubara Halli then those villages should be full of Kurubas. But I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that some of the villages named after Kurubas did not have any Kuruba Gowda families living in the village or very few families lived there and the majority belonged to different community like the Kunchitigas, Vokkaligas, Lingayats, Brahmins and other communities.

Now that is an interesting finding, villages named after Kurubas not having any Kuruba families ?, if you ask the villagers how the village got the name- no one knows exactly, those villages and their names are thousands of years old and people have forgot how the village got to be named after Kurubas.

After doing a bit of literature search, I have come to the conclusion that these villages which are inhabitated by Vokkaligas and Lingayats but having the name of Kurubara Halli, Kurubur etc were originally inhabitated by the Kurubas thousands of years ago, when they abandoned their pastoral life style and started settling down in a particular place and started to till the land and grow grains. These original Kurubas as time passed abandoned their community profession of sheep farming and took up agriculture full time and over time becam Vokkaligas, Kunchitigas etc, and when the reform happened in the 12th century by Basavanna, lot of Kuruba Gowdas became his followers and took up Lingayathism as their religion and hence became Lingayaths.

This trend only proves the fact that Kuruba Gowdas are the ancestors of all other living communities of today and they are the original inhabitants of the ancient land of India.

This simply goes to show and prove that all other communities

The Story of Adhi Gonda

The Halumatha Kuruba Gowda community is the oldest community among all the communities of India, the fact is proven by various sayings and proverbs used in the villages and cities even today. Most of the other communities which branched out of the Kuruba Gowda community maintain some sort of a like with their mother community either in terms of following our Gothra system, the Bedagu system or various other costumes and traditions which are linked to the Kuruba Gowdas.

One such interesting story which I came across recently is that of Adhi Gonda. This story is not so much used or prevalent among the Kuruba Gowda community, but is widely accepted and acknowledged as the origin of the Vokkaligas community of south India. The story goes that Adhi Gonda was a human ancestor who had two wives, the children born to the first wife took up agriculture as a profession and they came to be called as Vokkaligas, whereas the children of the second wife took up animal husbandry as a profession and were called as Kuruba Gowdas.

This story goes on to mention how the ox(Nandi) was sent by lord Shiva to help out the Vokkaligas in farming, this story was mentioned in a book about Vokkaligas, I do not thing any Kuruba Gowda community people accept this story as theirs as they believe they are the original inhabitants and ancestors of all other communities in India. Never the less this story is accepted by most Vokkaligas and shows how they establish their link to the Kuruba community.