The word itself carries mud at its heart. Kambala would come from kampa-kala, where kampa designates a waterlogged, marshy field—an ancient Dravidian etymology, though local linguists don’t entirely agree on its exact formation. Another reading, equally widespread in Tulu Nadu, breaks the word into kamba (a post) and la (the gush of water thrown up by the buffaloes). Two possible origins for a single word, as often happens when a tradition reaches too far back to trace its exact source.
For Kambala is ancient. Its history supposedly goes back a thousand years, to the time of the Tuluva kings—though the tradition itself wavers on its own origins: some say it was born in the aristocracy, a court entertainment; others connect it to peasants, as a celebration after the heavy agricultural work that follows the monsoon. The two versions don’t necessarily exclude each other. Historically, it was the Tuluva landowners who financed and organized the races—a way for these notables to display the strength and vitality of their beasts, and by extension their own.
Kambala remains, beneath its sporting appearance, a matter of earth and gods. In certain villages like Vandaru or Choradi, the race retains a votive meaning: peasants run their buffaloes as an offering of gratitude, for having protected them from disease. A local tradition even connects the rite’s origin to Manjunatha—a form of Shiva venerated at the Kadri temple, on the heights of Mangaluru, one of the oldest Shaivite sanctuaries in the region, built in the 11th century on the foundations of an ancient Buddhist monastery. The link isn’t merely legendary: the Kadri temple historically possessed its own Kambala buffalo shed, integrated into the annual processions of the local deity Malaraya. The races, in this reading, weren’t just a spectacle: they sought to satisfy the gods to ensure a good harvest.
Kambala’s territory has a name: Tulu Nadu, the land of the Tulu, a people settled for about two thousand years on this coastal strip of southwestern India. It covers the districts of Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Bhatkal in Karnataka, as well as Kasaragod, just across the border in Kerala. Tulu, a Dravidian language distinct from Tamil, remains alive there—Kambala is one of its most visible cultural expressions, alongside Yakshagana, the region’s dance theater.
The season begins in November and extends until March—the dry period, between two monsoons, when the rice fields, once the harvest is done, lend themselves to conversion into muddy tracks. About twenty local associations, the kambala samithis, now organize more than forty-five races each year along the coast, often in villages as isolated as Bradi Beedu—simple clearings traced amid the coconut trees, without permanent infrastructure, that become gathering places again only for the span of a day.
The format has changed over time. Traditional Kambala wasn’t competitive: pairs of buffaloes ran one at a time, timed, without a direct opponent. The double lane—two parallel tracks where two teams now face off simultaneously—has only existed for about fifty years. The rewards have also changed in nature: in the past, the winning pair left with coconuts and bananas; today, winning owners receive gold or silver, and the major races attract thousands of spectators, with informal betting on the competing teams.
Kambala today lives a tension that extends beyond Tulu Nadu alone. In 2014, the Indian Supreme Court banned the practice, alongside Tamil Nadu’s jallikattu and Maharashtra’s bullock cart races, deeming the beasts anatomically unsuited to racing and the practice a generator of fear and animal suffering. Karnataka responded in 2017 with a legal amendment exempting Kambala from this ban, under regulated conditions—a position the Supreme Court confirmed in 2023, while leaving open a review petition filed by animal welfare advocates, still pending to this day. The debate, in short, isn’t closed; it continues to replay itself, each season, between claimed tradition and concern for animal welfare.
