History of Udupi

The district administration gives two explanations. The more widely accepted one derives Udupi from its Tulu name, Odipu, linked to the Vadabhandeshwara temple at Malpe. The other reads it as Sanskrit udu (stars) and pa (lord): the lord of the stars is the moon. In the legend, the moon lost its light through a curse of Daksha, whose 27 daughters, the stars, were its wives; it prayed to Shiva at Udupi and got its shine back. The Chandramouleshwara shrine where the moon is said to have prayed stands in the same enclosure as the Anantheshwara temple.

The Alupa dynasty ruled this stretch of coast for well over a thousand years, as vassals of larger powers: the Kadambas, the Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas, the Hoysalas and finally Vijayanagara. They moved their capital several times, from Mangalore to Udyavara near Udupi and later to Barkur, about 16 km north, where temples, a Jain basadi and fort ruins still lie scattered through the town. The last known Alupa inscription dates from 1444. The Anantheshwara temple in Udupi, generally dated to the 8th century under the Alupas, is one of the oldest temples still standing in Tulu Nadu.

Madhvacharya, founder of the Dvaita school of Vedanta, was born at Pajaka, about 12–13 km from Udupi; his dates are uncertain, and the two ranges usually given are 1199–1278 and 1238–1317. He studied and took his vows at the Anantheshwara temple. By tradition he found the image of Krishna inside a large ball of gopichandana, sacred clay, and installed it at Udupi; the Krishna Matha is dated to 1285. He placed eight disciples at the head of eight monasteries, the Ashta Mathas: Palimaru, Adamaru, Krishnapura, Puttige, Shirur, Sode, Kaniyooru and Pejavara.

The eight mathas run the temple in rotation. In the Paryaya the charge passes from one matha to the next every two years, and the tradition has run for about five centuries. The next handover: 17–18 January 2028 (expected). Pajaka, with the family house and four spring-fed tanks, can be visited as a short trip.

The best-known Udupi legend belongs to the 16th century. Kanakadasa, a Kuruba chieftain of the Vijayanagara army who became a devotee and singer, could not enter the temple because he was not a Brahmin; Vadiraja Tirtha, pontiff of the Sode matha, gave him a hut behind it. The legend says the image of Krishna turned west towards his singing, an earthquake cracked the wall, and Vadiraja widened the crack into a window instead of sealing it. Pilgrims still look at the deity through this opening, the Kanakana Kindi, on the west wall. The German scholar Hermann Mögling wrote these oral stories down in the 1860s, and the versions he recorded differ in details from the legend told today. Vadiraja is also credited with renovating the temple complex and with the origin of Mattu gulla, the local brinjal still offered at the temple.

In the Vijayanagara era the rulers of Karkala, about 37 km away, raised the 42-foot Gomateshwara monolith in 1432 and the Chaturmukha Basadi in 1586. After Tipu Sultan's defeat in 1799 the British annexed the coast to the Madras Presidency, and from 1859 Udupi was part of its South Canara district; the Kaup lighthouse dates from 1901.

Two national banks were founded here. Corporation Bank opened in Udupi on 12 March 1906 (the founder's house is now the free Corporation Bank Heritage Museum), and Syndicate Bank in Manipal in 1925, with T. M. A. Pai among its founders. Both were merged into larger banks in 2020. On 25 August 1997 Udupi, Kundapura and Karkala taluks were separated from Dakshina Kannada to form Udupi district.