How Mangalore Plates Up Its Multi-Cultural Religious Milieu

Cosmopolitan cities are said to be a product of the 20th century, but Mangalore was a cosmopolitan port town by the 10th century, quips Professor Narasimha Murthy, a historian, talking of his adopted home, South Canara. A coastal province, it has been split into two districts, Dakshina Kannada, with Mangalore as its premier city, and Udupi, with the historic temple town as its centrepiece. Carefully unravelling a fragmented burial pot containing Jain inscriptions, Murthy tells me that it dates back to the 6th century CE -- snippets of history that the retired professor has been painstakingly gathering for his thesis on the Alupa dynasty, a feudatory clan that ruled this coastal region for an unbroken span of 14 centuries.