Udupi: the matha, the coast and the university town

Udupi is the headquarters of Udupi district. It sits on the coast, about sixty kilometres north of Kudla (Mangaluru) ^{1 2}. The district was formed on 25 August 1997, carved out of three northern taluks of Dakshina Kannada — Udupi, Kundapura and Karkala ^{3 4}. In the 2011 Census, the city’s municipal council area had about 1.25 lakh people. The wider urban area had about 4.4 lakh ¹.

The name

In Tulu speech the town is Udupi (ಉಡುಪಿ). Some linguistic sources record an older Tulu form, Odipu (ಒಡಿಪು), and treat it as the earlier of the two names ^{5 2}. They trace it to the Tulu words oḍipuni (ಒಡಿಪುನಿ) or uḍepuni (ಉಡೆಪುನಿ), meaning to break or to breach ⁵. They read this as folk memory of a subsidence near Malpe, where land gave way to the sea ⁵. P. Gururaja Bhat instead ties the name to the old Vadabhandeshwara temple at Malpe ⁵.

The Sanskrit reading came later, from the temple. It reads Udupi as uḍu, star, plus pa, lord ¹. The story is that the Moon did penance here at the Chandramouleshwara temple, to lift a curse from Daksha ¹. The sources that tell this story call it a religious folk etymology: a meaning given to the name later, not where the word came from ⁵. But the change from the older name to this Sanskrit one is a real, recorded event. It appears in Narayana Panditacharya’s fourteenth-century book Sumadhva Vijaya ⁵.

The Krishna Matha and the Paryaya

Madhvacharya, the philosopher of the Dvaita school, founded the Sri Krishna Matha in the thirteenth century ^{6 7}. Devotees do not see the image of Krishna through a door. They see it through the Kanakana Kindi, a silver window with nine holes ¹. The tank beside it is the Madhva Sarovara ¹.

Eight mathas were set up in the same century to take turns running the temple ^{6 8}. This turn-taking is called the Paryaya (ಪರ್ಯಾಯ). Worship and management pass from the swami of one matha to the next every two years, on 18 January of an even-numbered year ^{9 8}. The order runs Palimaru, Adamaru, Krishnapura, Puttige, Shirur, Sodhe, Kaniyuru, then Pejavara ^{9 8}. Preparation for a turn starts a year ahead ⁸. The day after Krishna Janmashtami, the town keeps Vittla Pindi. A clay image of the child Krishna goes round Car Street, and people break pots of curd over the crowd. This festival has its own page.

Temples, churches and mosques

Car Street holds two temples older than the Krishna Matha, Anantheshwara and Chandramouleshwara ¹⁰. Anantheshwara dates to about the seventh or eighth century ¹⁰. Madhvacharya is said to have had his early schooling here, under his teacher Achuta Prajna ¹⁰. Chandramouleshwara stands close by, and keeps the Moon’s own penance legend, told above in the name section ¹.

Ambalpady, about three kilometres from the bus stand, holds the Janardhana temple, with the Mahakali temple beside it ¹¹. The temple’s own account says Mahakali came first, to protect the land, and gave the place its name ¹¹. Ambala Padi means the woods of Amma, the mother goddess ¹¹. She was worshipped first as a stone, and that same stone is worshipped today, beside a later wooden image ¹¹. Kadiyali, close to the town centre, holds the Mahishamardini temple ¹². Its idol is carved in the Chalukyan style, and the temple dates to about the seventh century ¹².

Milagres Church at Kallianpur, about six kilometres from Udupi, began in 1680 ^{13 14}. It came out of a treaty between the Nayaka of Bednur and the Portuguese ¹⁴. The church was rebuilt in 1881, and raised to a cathedral in 2012 ¹⁴. It serves the coast’s Konkani Catholic community ¹⁴. The Jamia Masjid stands about 450 metres from the bus stand ¹⁵. It was inaugurated in 2012. It was the first mosque in Udupi with a separate prayer hall for women ¹⁵.

The coast at Malpe

Malpe is the town’s port. It has been a natural harbour since ancient times, sheltered by the offshore St Mary’s Islands ¹⁶. Today it is one of the coast’s two leading fishing hubs ¹⁶. Mechanised fishing reached Malpe around 1960, and purse-seiners and trawlers followed through the 1970s ¹⁷. A fire at the harbour in July 1979 destroyed close to two hundred of the early mechanised boats ¹⁷.

St Mary’s Island, known locally as Thonsepar, lies off Malpe ¹⁸. The Geological Survey of India declared it a National Geological Monument in 1975 ¹⁸. Its rocks are hexagonal columns of basalt, formed by volcanic activity when Madagascar split away from India ¹⁸. Vasco da Gama landed here in 1498, set up a cross and named the island O Padrão de Santa Maria, the Pillar of St Mary ¹⁸.

Manipal

Manipal sits on the plateau above the town ¹⁹. Its name comes from the Tulu words mannu, mud, and palla, lake, after the circular freshwater pond at its centre ^{19 20}. Manipal was a quiet suburb until Dr T.M.A. Pai founded Kasturba Medical College here in 1953. It was India’s first self-financing medical college ²¹. Syndicate Bank was older. It was registered in Udupi in 1925 ²², and its head office was at Manipal ²³. Manipal is now a university town, built around the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, with students from close to fifty countries ²¹. End Point looks out over the Swarna river, on the town’s western edge ²¹. Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village is an open-air museum in the town, with centuries-old houses, shrines and palaces moved here from across the region ^{21 24}.

The people, and the food

In the 2011 Census, Kannada was the largest mother tongue in Udupi district, at about 42 per cent ⁴. In Kundapura taluk this Kannada is the local form called Kundagannada ⁴. Tulu came next, at about 32 per cent, mostly in the southern taluks of Udupi and Karkala ⁴. Udupi’s people include Bunt, Billava, Mogaveera, Shivalli Brahmin, Konkani Catholic and Beary families. Mogaveera families live on the coast at Malpe ²⁵. Shivalli Brahmin households are tied to the eight mathas and the paryaya ²⁶.

Outside the region, most people know Udupi for its vegetarian food. The name travelled with migrants from this coast, who opened cheap vegetarian eating houses called Udupi hotels ^{27 28}. Two early ones were K. Krishna Rao’s Udupi Sri Krishna Vilas, on Mount Road, Madras, from about 1926, and Rama Nayak’s Udupi Shri Krishna Boarding, in Matunga, Bombay, from 1942 ^{27 28}. A vegetable carries a village name too. The Mattu gulla is a green brinjal grown at Mattu village, near Katapadi. It carries a geographical indication, a legal tag that ties the name to that place ²⁹.

What to see

The Krishna Matha and Car Street, with the Chandramouleshwara temple beside it ^{1 30}. Malpe beach, and the ferry to St Mary’s Island ³¹. Manipal’s museums and End Point ²¹.

Some pilgrim places lie further out. Kollur Mookambika is about seventy-five kilometres north ³². The Anegudde Vinayaka temple at Kumbhashi is about thirty kilometres away ³³. The Kunjarugiri Durga temple, on its own hill, is about thirteen kilometres away ³⁴. The Bappanadu Durgaparameshwari temple at Mulki is about thirty kilometres south. It is named for Bappa Beary, the Muslim merchant credited with building it ^{35 36}. The Kaup lighthouse stands on its rock about seventeen kilometres south ³⁷. The British built it in 1901, and it is 27 metres tall ^{38 39}. Kaup is known for three Mariamma temples, the Marigudis ⁴⁰. Two are the Hale Marigudi, the old one, and the Hosa Marigudi, the new one ⁴¹. The third stands near Uliyargoli ⁴⁰. Barkur is about seventeen kilometres north. It was the old Alupa capital on the coast, and it has ruined forts and stone temples ^{42 43}. Its place in history is on the timeline.

Terms used on this page

• paryaya — the two-yearly handover of the Krishna temple
• ashta matha — the eight mathas of Udupi
• Udupi hotel — the vegetarian eating house the town’s migrants opened
• kudru — a river island

Related

• Kudla (Mangaluru): the junction of two rivers

Sources

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Last reviewed by tulunadu.org on 3 October 2026.