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I have already referred to the trustworthiness of the evidence given by the Todas. I must now speak of the great differences in this respect shown by different individuals. Some would give full and elaborate accounts of ceremonial which close investigation showed to be, so far as one could tell, thoroughly accurate. Others gave careless and slovenly accounts, full of omissions and inaccuracies of detail, though they rarely said anything which was distinctly untrue.

After some experience had been gained, one day's work was usually sufficient to enable me to make up my mind whether a man was a careful witness, and if he did not seem to be so, he was not again called upon for help. Different men were known to have especial acquaintance with certain branches of knowledge, and I always endeavoured to obtain such people. In the case of the religious ritual, it was not practicable to make use, to any great extent, of men actually holding any of the sacred offices, but I always had recourse to people who had held these offices and were personally familiar with the ceremonial.

Among the many aspects of social life and religion, I soon found that there were some about which there was no reticence, and these could be discussed in public with men, women, or children standing by and perhaps taking part. There were others which were of a more sacred nature, and, if they were approached in public, it was immediately obvious that the people were ill at ease and their answers became hesitating and unsatisfactory. After a short time I adopted the practice of devoting the mornings to my psychological work and to the discussion of affairs of a non-sacred character. In the afternoons I had private interviews with one individual at a time, or occasionally two. If I approached any dangerous topic during the morning, my guide made me a sign and I changed the subject, to return to it at an afternoon sitting.

In the investigation of all the more sacred ceremonies, it was found to be best that the narrator should be alone. He knew that he was telling what should not be told and was embarrassed if any other Todas were there to hear him.

One of the difficulties of anthropological inquiry is that the good and trustworthy narrators are often the most reticent. They are trustworthy because they are honest and pious members of their community, and are therefore naturally reluctant to offend against the sanctity of their religious customs by talking of them to a stranger. Some of my best informants were such men, who were gradually led on to tell me far more than they had ever intended, and then, having told me so much about a given subject, they would sometimes throw reticence to the winds and tell me all. It was very instructive in such a case to start a fresh topic which I knew to be forbidden ground and observe the complete change of attitude. One old man who had entirely lost his scruples in our absorption in the details of dairy ritual absolutely refused to speak a word when I turned to the subject of animal sacrifice, and for this and some other topics I had to be content with less scrupulous but at the same time less trustworthy witnesses.

I only found one Toda who was deliberately untruthful, and yet he was so much less reticent and less scrupulous than others that I often had to have recourse to his services. After I had been able to convict him more than once of having given unsatisfactory evidence, he was more accurate, but I was especially careful to check and obtain independent accounts of everything he told me, and I have only made use of so much of his evidence as I believe to be trustworthy. His knowledge was not deep or accurate, but he often told me enough to enable me to extract the full account from others, who, seeing I knew something, thought they might as well tell me all. On one or two subjects, the whole of my information is derived from this man, but whenever this is the case I mention the fact, so that my readers may know the doubtful nature of the evidence. I only give such information, however, when I believe it to be correct. The informant in question was one of the cleverest of the Todas, and his usual fault was not that he deliberately deceived, but that he supplied the lacunae in his knowledge by having recourse to his imagination. In the matter of folk-tales, where the difficulties of checking an account are especially great, I was obliged wholly to reject his assistance.

An altogether different type of witness was my constant attendant, K?drner. His special business was to bring me people as the subjects for my psychological work and to act as my guide in visiting various parts of the hills. He did not profess to any wide knowledge of custom or ceremonial, and was always diffident about the information he gave; but he was a good observer, and could give an excellent account of any ceremony which he had witnessed or of any procedure in which he had been involved.

Except in a few cases the Todas were quite unable to give any explanations of their customs, the answer to nearly every inquiry being that the custom in question was ordained by the goddess Teikirzi. In the few cases in which an explanation was forthcoming, it seemed to me that it was usually a recent invention. The explanations of customs given in this book are therefore almost invariably those arrived at by myself from the study of the available evidence.

While I was working I had by me the books or papers of Harkness, Marshall, Breeks, and Thurston, the chief previous writers on the Todas, and I inquired into most of the details mentioned by them; but I have not attempted any criticism or comment on the work of others except on special occasions when my own information is lacking or when I am uncertain as to the truth of their statements. Except in those cases in which I definitely refer to the work of others, every statement made in this book is the outcome of my own inquiry or observation. Whenever my account differs from those of others, it may be accepted that I have inquired into the discrepancy and that my account represents the result of a careful investigation.

As some of the accounts of the Todas were written many years ago, there is always the possibility that two dissimilar accounts may both be true and that the differences may represent changes in custom with lapse of time. There is one fact, however, which makes it probable that this explanation of discrepancies is not the true one. The accounts of the Todas which show the closest correspondence with my own are some of the earliest, especially the book of Captain Harkness, published in 1832, and the papers of Bernhard Schmid and C. F. Muzzy, published in 1837 and 1844 respectively. In many cases my work agrees more closely with these than with the accounts of later observers.

This is, perhaps, a suitable place to mention what I believe to be the chief source of error in previous accounts of the Todas. In their extensive intercourse with the Badagas, the Todas use the language of this people, with which they appear to be perfectly familiar. The Toda language is very difficult to understand, and the literature shows that from the first, most of those who have investigated Toda customs have used the Badaga language or Tamil as their means of communication. Every Toda village, every Toda institution or office, and nearly every object used by the Todas has its Badaga name as well as its proper Toda name, and, owing to intercourse through the intermediation of the Badagas, these names have come to be used not only by nearly all who have written on the Todas, but also in official documents connected with the people.

The names by which the Toda villages are known to Europeans are always the Badaga names and not those of the Todas, and similarly with the names of institutions such as clans, dairies, or ceremonies. The practice of giving Badaga names in their intercourse with Europeans has become so engrained that a Toda invariably uses these names when speaking to a European. During the first few weeks of my work, I received exclusively Badaga names, and to the end of my visit, whenever I visited a new district, the Badaga names would crop up till the people found that I wanted Toda and not Badaga. Kiunievan, who was the chief informant of Mr. Breeks in 1872, is still alive, and when I asked him why he gave Mr. Breeks the Badaga names in every case, he answered "He did not seem to want anything else," and this answer seems to me to give the clue to much of the error which has found its way into many of the accounts which have been given of the Todas.

One of the most serious errors which has arisen in this way is one connected with the Toda clans. Every account which has been given of the clan-system of the Todas is that of a system which is current among the Badagas as the Toda system, but has only a limited correspondence with the actual system as it is in use among the Todas themselves. Every Toda, if asked by a European to what clan or division he belongs, will promptly give his division according to the Badaga classification, and this has led to the incorporation of this classification in all the accounts of the Todas which deal with their social organisation.

Some words are necessary about the general plan of the book. I should have preferred to begin with the social organisation, and to approach the religious aspect of the life of the Todas through the ceremonies accompanying the chief incidents of life, including birth, marriage, and death. The ideas borrowed from the ritual of the dairy, however, so pervade the whole of Toda ceremonial, that I have been obliged to consider the ritual of the dairy at an early stage. After a preliminary chapter sketching the general character and life of the people, I have therefore given a full description of the elaborate ceremonial which centres round the dairy; and on this follow the accounts of other ceremonies and sacred institutions and a general discussion of the religion of the people. I then turn to the social aspect of life, and consider kinship, marriage, and the various factors upon which the social organisation depends. Then, after some chapters on diverse topics, I describe the relations of the Todas with the other tribes of the Nilgiris, and in the final chapters discuss certain special problems, including the origin and affinities of the Toda people.

THE TODA PEOPLE

I do not propose to describe at any length the physical characters of the Todas. It must be sufficient to say here that the people differ remarkably in general appearance, and perhaps still more remarkably in general bearing, from the other inhabitants of Southern India. The average height of the men is about 5 ft. 7 in., and that of the women 5 ft. 1 in.; both are well-proportioned, and the men robustly built. Their heads are distinctly dolichocephalic, the cephalic index of the men being 73.3. The shaved heads of the children show very well the great length, and probably owing to the special method of shaving , this feature is in them exaggerated so as to seem almost abnormal.

The nose is usually well-formed and not especially broad, the nasal index being 74.9. It is often distinctly rounded in profile. The skin is of a rich brown colour, distinctly lighter than that of most of the Dravidian inhabitants of Southern India. The skins of the women are lighter than those of the men. There is much hair on the bodies of the men, who usually grow thick beards, and the hair of the head is luxuriant in both men and women. The men are strong and very agile; the agility being most in evidence when they have to catch their infuriated buffaloes at the funeral ceremonies. They stand fatigue well, and often travel great distances. One day I met an old man about seventy years of age going to the market at Gudalur for a supply of grain, and in the evening I met him on his return carrying a large and heavy bag. He had travelled over thirty miles, had gone down and again come up some 3,000 feet, and most of his journey had been in a climate much warmer than that of his native hills.

My guide at the end of the day would sometimes go a distance of eight or ten miles and back to arrange for my supply of men for the next day's work, and I have seen him on these occasions running at a steady pace which he would keep up for miles. In going from one part of the hills to another, a Toda always travels as nearly as possible in a straight line, ignoring altogether the influence of gravity, and mounting the steepest hills with no apparent effort.

In all my work with the men, it seemed to me that they were extremely intelligent They grasped readily the points of any inquiry upon which I entered, and often showed a marked appreciation of complicated questions. They were interested in the customs of other parts of the world, and appeared to grasp readily the essential differences between their own ways and those of other peoples. It is very difficult to estimate general intelligence, and to compare definitely the intelligence of different individuals, still more of people of different races. I can only record my impression, after several months' close intercourse with the Todas, that they were just as intelligent as one would have found any average body of educated Europeans. There were marked individual differences, just as there are among the more civilised, and it is probable that I saw chiefly the more intelligent members of the community.

My time was largely devoted to experimental work, especially on the nature of the sensory and perceptual processes. The people entered readily into this work, quickly grasped the nature of the methods employed, and showed the same power of close attention and careful observation which, as I have found in other races, enable even more definite and consistent results to be obtained from uncultured races than from most classes of a civilised community.

I had slighter opportunities of estimating the intelligence of the women than that of the men, but, as a general rule, it seemed to me that there was a very marked difference between the two sexes. Some of the younger women, when examined by various tests, showed as ready a grasp of the methods as any of the men, but most of the elder women gave me the impression of being extremely stupid. It was often obvious that they were not attending and were thinking far more of their personal appearance and of the effect it was having on the men of the party than of the task they were being set, but even when a liberal discount was made for this, it seemed to me that they were distinctly less intelligent than the men.

The characteristic note in the demeanour of the people is given by their absolute belief in their own superiority over the surrounding races. They are grave and dignified, and yet thoroughly cheerful and well-disposed towards all. In their intercourse with Europeans, they now recognise the superior race so far as wealth and the command of physical and mental resources are concerned, but yet they are not in the slightest degree servile, and about many matters still believe that their ways are superior to ours, and, in spite of their natural politeness, could sometimes not refrain from showing their contempt for conduct which we are accustomed to look upon as an indication of a high level of morality. It is in the matter of ethical standards that the difference between the Todas and ourselves comes out most strongly.

THE VILLAGE AND THE HOUSE

The Todas live in little villages scattered about the hills. The greater part of the plateau consists of grass-covered hills separated by valleys, sometimes narrow, more often of wide extent. In every valley there are streams and in many places swamps. In the hollows of the hills are small woods, generally known as sholas, and it is usually near these sholas that the Toda villages are to be found. Some parts of the hills are much more thickly beset with villages than others, and this is especially the case in the neighbourhood of the part known as Governor Shola, about six to eight miles west and north-west of Ootacamund.

In other parts one may go considerable distances without finding a Toda village, but relics of the former history of the Todas may be found widely scattered over the hills, and I think there can be little doubt that at one time the Toda habitations were much more generally distributed than they are at present. The bazaar at Ootacamund has now become an important place in the economic life of the Todas; they sell there the ghi or clarified butter in which form their dairy produce chiefly goes to the market, and they procure in return at the bazaar the rice and grain and other things which have now taken their places among the necessaries of life. In consequence there exists a tendency for the larger part of the Todas, especially those of the Todanad, to live within an easy distance of Ootacamund, and many of the villages in the more distant parts of the hills are now only occupied for a few weeks in the year.

The Toda name for a village is mad, but this is now often replaced by the Badaga form of the word, mand, and the latter word is used exclusively by the Europeans and others living on the Nilgiri hills. A mad usually consists of several huts. In some villages there may be only one hut, and the maximum number I have seen is six. At some places where there was formerly a village with dwelling-huts there is now only a dairy, but the term mad is still applied to the place at which the dairy is situated. The term mad is also given to the funeral-places of the Todas. Sometimes the funeral-place is also a village at which people live; sometimes it has only a dairy; while in other places there may be no trace of human habitations; but the term mad is equally applied in all three cases. The term is also used for the dairies and accessory buildings connected with the most sacred herds of buffaloes . Each group of buildings is called a mad or ti mad. The term has therefore a wider significance than "village" and denotes rather a "place"--a place connected in any way with the active life of the Todas. The chief village of a clan and certain other sacred or important villages are called etudmad and other villages are often known as kinmad.

A typical Toda village consists of a small group of huts , often on a piece of ground slightly raised above the surrounding level and enclosed by a wall . In this wall there are two or three narrow openings, large enough to admit a man but not a buffalo. In most villages there is a dairy or there may be several dairies. Each of these buildings is also enclosed by a wall, usually higher than that surrounding the dwelling-huts. The dairies may be near the huts, but more commonly are at some little distance from the latter. Somewhere near the dairy will be found a circular enclosure, the buffalo-pen, or tu, in which the buffaloes are enclosed at night, and there may be more than one tu for use on different occasions or for different kinds of buffalo. There will be a small pen for the calves which is called kadr, and there may also be a house for the calves . A small structure called kush , used as an enclosure for calves less than fifteen days old, may often be seen, situated between the spreading roots of a tree.

Close to the village there will be at least one stream , and very often there are two streams. If possible, there should be two streams, in order that one may be used for the sacred purposes of the dairy, the pali nipa, while the other is used for household purposes, the ars nipa. Where there is only one stream, different parts are used for the two purposes, and the two parts of the stream then receive the names pali nipa and ars nipa. In this case the pali nipa is always above the ars nipa, so as to avoid the danger that the water used for the dairy shall have been contaminated by contact with household vessels. At some villages there may even be a third stream, or part of a stream, used in the ordination ceremonies of the dairymen.

It has often been a subject of remark by visitors to the Nilgiri Hills that the Todas have chosen the most beautiful spots for their dwellings, and interest has been taken in the love of beauty in nature which this choice shows. I think there can be little doubt that the choice of suitable dwelling-places has been chiefly determined by the necessity of a good water-supply, and if possible of a double water-supply, and the Todas have chosen the beautiful spots, not because they are beautiful, but because they are well watered. Their choice has been dictated, not by a love of beautiful scenery, but by the practical necessities of their daily life.

In the immediate neighbourhood of a village there are usually well-worn paths by which the village is approached, and some of these paths or kalvol receive special names. Some may not be traversed by women. When I first visited the village of Taradr, nearly the whole population of the village met me at the spot where the path to the village leaves the road. We all went along together till I suddenly found that I was walking with the men and boys only, while the women and girls were following another path. We were going by the way over which the sacred buffaloes travel when leaving or approaching the village, and the women might not tread this path, but had another appointed way by which they were to reach their home.

Within the village there are also certain recognised paths, of which two are especially important. One, the punetkalvol, is the path by which the dairyman goes from his dairy to milk or tend the buffaloes; the other is the majvatitthkalvol, the path which the women must use when they go to the dairy to receive buttermilk from the dairyman. Women are not allowed to go to the dairy or to other places connected with it, except at appointed times when they receive buttermilk given out by the dairyman, and when going for this purpose they must keep to the majvatitthkalvol. This path is sometimes indicated by a stone, the majvatitthkars, and the spot where the women stand to receive the buttermilk is called the majvatvaiidrn.

At many villages there are other stones which have definite names and mark the sites where certain ceremonial functions are performed.

The house is called ars, and is of the kind shown in Fig. 7. It is shaped like half a barrel, with the barrel-like roof and sides projecting for a considerable distance beyond the front partition containing the door. The size of the hut is by no means constant; in some cases it is sufficiently roomy to enable people to move about with ease and comfort, while in others it is so small that it is unbearably stuffy, and the smoke from the fire, which is always burning, makes it difficult to believe that anyone can long live in it. The entrance to the hut is always very small, and is closed by a door which slides over the opening on its inner side.

Some houses are much longer than others, with a door at each end and a central partition, so as to form a double hut which is called epotirikhthars, i.e., "both-ways-turned house." This kind of hut did not seem to be common, and I only saw three or four examples, of which one is shown in Fig. 8.

A much more common kind of double hut is called merkalars, i.e., "other-side house," in which the back part of the hut is partitioned off, with a door at one side.

In some Toda villages there may now be found huts of the same kind as those of the Badagas. In the cases in which I found such huts, I was told that they had been built by Badagas who had lived in the villages while the Toda occupants were away. Todas may also occasionally be found living away from their own villages, usually near tea plantations. They do this because there is a demand for buffalo manure at the plantations, and when living in this way they not uncommonly use huts of the Badaga pattern.

In front of the hut on either side of the door there are usually raised seats called kwott?n, and there are similar raised portions, called t?n, within the huts on which the people sleep. The floor of the hut is divided into two parts, which are marked off from one another by the hole in which grain is pounded by the women. The part in front of this is often used for churning, and with this part women have nothing to do, their operations being limited to the hinder part.

There is little difference between the dress of men and women. Each wears a mantle called the putkuli, which is worn thrown round the shoulders without any fastening. Under it is worn a loin-cloth called tadrp, and the men also wear a perineal band called kuvn, corresponding to the Hindu languti. The kuvn is kept in position by a string round the waist called pennar, a string which, we shall see later, is of considerable ceremonial importance.

THE DAILY LIFE OF THE TODAS

The daily life of the Toda men is largely devoted to the care of their buffaloes and to the performance of the dairy operations. As we shall see later, much of the dairy work is the duty of certain men set aside to look after the sacred buffaloes and the sacred dairies connected with them. A large proportion, however, of the Toda buffaloes are not sacred, and their care falls on the ordinary Todas. The milking and churning is chiefly the duty of the younger men and boys, but the older men also take their part, while the head of the family exercises a general superintendence.

On rising in the morning, the men salute the sun with the gesture called kaimukhti, shown in Fig. 10, and then they turn to their work of milking the buffaloes and churning the milk.

When the dairy operations of the morning are over, the buffaloes are driven to the grazing ground, the people take their food and go about any business of the day. Some may collect firewood and procure the leaves used as plates and drinking vessels; others may carry out any necessary tendance which the buffaloes require, or may go to fetch grain or rice from Badaga villages or from the bazaar. The chief men of the village may perhaps have to attend a meeting of the naim, or council, which holds very frequent sittings to adjudicate upon the many disputed points which arise in connexion with the intricate social organisation of the people.

While the men are doing their work, the women will have been seeing to their special tasks, of which three, represented in Fig. 11, have come to be regarded as pre-eminently woman's work.

They pound the grain with the wask in a hole situated in the middle of the floor of the hut, and when the pounding is finished the grain is sifted with the murn, or sieve, and the hut is swept with the kip. It seemed that pounding grain is normally performed wearing the tadrp only.

Though these are the three operations which are regarded as pre-eminently woman's work, the women have other things to do. They rub the seats or beds both inside and outside the hut with dried buffalo-dung, and use the same material to cleanse the various household utensils. They mend the garments of the family, and some women devote much time to the special embroidery with which they adorn their cloaks.

The ordinary routine of the day is often broken by the visits of people from other villages, who may have come to talk over a proposed marriage or transference of wives; to announce some approaching ceremony; to discuss some business connected with the buffaloes, or perhaps, but probably rarely, to pay a friendly call. Such a visit will probably give the opportunity of observing the characteristic Toda salutation shown in Fig. 12. This is essentially a salutation between a woman and her male relatives older than herself. If a man visits a village in which he has any female relatives younger than himself, these will go out to meet him as he approaches the house, and each bows down before the man, who raises his foot, while the woman places her hand below the foot and helps to raise it to her forehead, and the same salutation is repeated with the other foot. This mode of greeting is called kalmelpudithti, or "leg up he puts." It is usually a salutation in which women bow down before men, but it may also take place between two men or between two women, while on certain occasions a male may bow down and have his forehead touched by the feet of a woman.

In the evening the buffaloes again find their way to the milking-place, and the operations of the morning are repeated. When these are finished the buffaloes are shut up in the enclosure, or tu, for the night; the lamp is now lighted and saluted by the men who use the same gesture as that with which the sun had been saluted in the morning. The people then take their food and retire to rest.

SKETCH OF SOCIAL ORGANISATION

I shall consider the social organisation in detail at a much later stage, but it is necessary to give here a brief sketch in order to make its main features clear before going on to describe the Toda ceremonial, which often shows differences according to the division or clan with which the ceremony is connected. The fundamental feature of the social organisation is the division of the community into two perfectly distinct groups, the Tartharol and the Teivaliol. As we shall see more fully later, there is a certain amount of resemblance between these two divisions and the castes of the Hindus. There is a certain amount of specialisation of function, certain grades of the priesthood being filled only by members of the Teivaliol. Further, marriage is not allowed between members of the two divisions, though certain irregular unions are permitted; a Tarthar man must marry a Tarthar woman, and a Teivali man a Teivali woman. The Tartharol and Teivaliol are two endogamous divisions of the Toda people.

Each of these primary divisions is subdivided into a number of secondary divisions. These are exogamous, and I shall speak of them throughout this book as 'clans,' using this word as the best general term for an exogamous division of a tribe or community.

Each clan possesses a group of villages and takes its name from the chief of these villages, the etudmad, and the people of a clan are known as madol, or village people.

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