W.H.R.Rivers

“ The idea of ceremonial purity is one running through the whole of the dairy rites. Many of the details of the ritual, the purification of new vessels and of dairies revisited after a period of disuse, the ordination ceremonies of the dairyman, the elaborate ceremonies accompanying the making of new pep, all show a very deeply engrained idea that men and things have in themselves some degree of impurity, and that in order to be made fit for the service of the gods, they must be purified and sanctified by appropriate ceremonies. ”

“ Of course, in so large a mass of material there are mistakes.2 In one family no doubt a child has been omitted, especially when it died young and had no posterity to make its name important; in another case perhaps a child has been added to a family who was really the offspring of another mother. That there are such mistakes is certain, but they are probably few in number, and I have no doubt that, with one exception to be presently considered, such mistakes as have crept in do not appreciably impair the value of the genealogies as a record of the working of social regulations. ”

“ As we have already seen, there is some doubt whether the reverence paid to a village is paid to the village as a whole or to the dairy. There is no doubt, however, that the dairy draws to itself most of the veneration which a village excites.
Whenever a devout Toda visits a strange village, he goes to the dairy, and prostrating himself at its threshold, utters a prayer. My ordinary guide, Kòdrner, was not devout and did not pay this reverence, but his brother, Kutadri, was very scrupulous in performing these duties, especially when he went with me to the Kundahs. ”

“ When a word for a concept is absent in any language it by no means follows that the concept has not been developed, but in this case I have little doubt that there is no definite idea in the mind of the Toda corresponding to that denoted by our word 'adultery.' Instead of adultery being regarded as immoral, I rather suspected,' though I could not satisfy myself on the point, that, according to the Toda idea, immorality attaches rather to the man who grudges his wife to another. ”

“ When he has uttered the incantation, the sorcerer takes the hair and stones in their cloth to the village of the man upon whom he wishes these misfortunes to fall, and hides them secretly in the thatch of the roof of the man’s hut. ”

“ No village without a dairy is regarded as sacred, but there is no doubt that the village itself may have some sanctity, and it is probable that the chief village of a clan which no longer had a dairy might nevertheless continue to be treated with some degree of reverence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is easy to see how this belief in the magical powers of the Kurumbas may have arisen, or, more probably, how its existence may have been maintained. The slopes of the hills on which the Kurumbas live are extremely malarious, and it must often have happened that a visit to a Kurumba village was followed by an attack of fever of a severe kind. We probably have here a good example of a vicious circle. Whenever two tribes of different degrees of culture live near one another, the members of the lower usually acquire the reputation of being sorcerers. ”

“ When a woman marries she becomes of the same clan as her husband, and this is a matter of some importance in connexion with religious and social ceremonial. Thus, in the funeral ceremonies of a woman, the choice of appropriate day and place, of the people who are to take part in the funeral rites and other features of the ceremonial are determined, not by the clan of the woman’s father, but by that of her husband, and this even when the marriage itself forms part of the funeral ceremonies. ”

“ In nearly every known community, whether savage, barbarous or civilised, there is found to exist a deeply rooted antipathy to sexual intercourse between brother and sister. In savage communities where kinship is of the classificatory kind, this antipathy extends not only to the children of one mother, but to all those who are regarded as brothers and sisters because they are members of the same clan or other social unit. ”

“ All the work is done kabkaditi; the dairyman never turns his back to the contents of the dairy. In those villages in which he sleeps in the calf-house he goes naked (except for the kuvn) to the kugvali, washes his hands, prostrates himself at the threshold, enters, and puts on his tuni which is kept on the patatmar. He salutes the mani which he feeds with curd and milk as in other dairies. He also knocks on the patat three times, saying “Oñ” each time.
As in the other village dairies, he only prays and lights the lamp in the evening. ”

“ If one may speak of social organisation among buffaloes—and in the case of the Toda herds we are justified in doing so—we have a state of society in some ways analogous to that which many sociologists suppose to have existed at one time in the early stages of human society. We have various groups of buffaloes, and each buffalo—certainly each female buffalo—belongs to the same group as its mother. ”

“ If the sons are all living together, the buffaloes may be treated as if they were common property. The milk of the ordinary buffaloes is churned in the dwelling-hut, and that of the sacred buffaloes in the dairy, and the produce in each case is regarded as the property of the whole family. It is only when dissensions arise, or when some reason makes it desirable that the brothers should separate and live in different villages, that the laws regulating the partition of buffaloes come into force. ”

“ The duties of a child at the funeral ceremonies can quite well be performed by some other member of the clan.
There is a social reason which makes it inconvenient in some cases that a man should die without male issue. If a man is the only representative of his kudr, and has no children, the kudr will become extinct, and the clan will be put to the trouble of rearranging the families of which it is constituted. If such a man is childless he may take another wife in the hope of having a son to carry on the kudr, but the adoption of a child for the purpose is never thought of. ”

“ It is clear that the custom of adoption of children is not practised by the Todas. They denied its existence emphatically, and I met with no instance which led me to suspect its presence in compiling the genealogies.
If a child is left an orphan, it is looked after by the people of its clan, but it is always clearly recognised that the child retains the father’s property, and belongs to the madol and pòlm of the father.
There is, so far as I could ascertain, no religious custom which makes it necessary that a man should have children. ”

“ If there is an urgent reason why a woman from another village should come on a madnol, she must arrive after sunset.
If any of these rules are broken, the culprit may have to perform the ceremony of irnörtiti or one of the other allied rites. It seemed quite clear, however, that this only happened if some misfortune should befall the offender, his family, or his buffaloes. It would seem that a man might habitually and notoriously desecrate the madnol, but no steps would be taken by himself or the community so long as things went well with the man. ”

“ When a man divorces his wife, the woman’s people usually complain to the naim or council, but if it is decided that the man shall take his wife back, there appears to be no way of compelling him to do so. In any case the husband pays a fine (kwadr) of one buffalo to the wife’s people, just as he would have done if he had refused to take her when she reached the marriageable age, but he receives back any buffaloes he may have given as pòdri. Even if the council decides that the man ought to take his wife back and he refuses, a fine greater than one buffalo cannot be inflicted. ”

“ To me the chief interest of the genealogies is that they are a record of the past—a record of the working of social regulations which at the present time may be already affected by the new influences coming into the lives of primitive people all over the world. ”

“ The variety of the irnörtiti ceremony in which a buffalo is given to the ti dairy is that which approaches most nearly to a sacrifice; the offered animal is not killed, but in going to the sacred herd of the ti, it may clearly be regarded as devoted to the service of the gods. The ceremony of pilinörtiti to the sacred dairy of Kiudr is again an example of an offering to a higher power in those cases in which the ring is given by a man of another clan so that the mechanism of the kudr does not come into play. ”

“ The dairy of a ti is always called a poh.
The ritual of the ti reaches a far higher degree of complexity than is attained in any village dairy. The palol is a far more sacred personage than the wursol or the palikartmokh; his life is far more strictly regulated, and the ceremonies attendant on his entrance into office are far more elaborate. The ceremonies connected with dairy or buffaloes are more numerous, and when they correspond to ceremonies performed at the lower grades of dairy, they are much more elaborate and prolonged. ”

“ If we could accept the view that the cairns, barrows, and cromlechs of the Nilgiri Hills were the work of the ancestors of the Todas, we should have at once abundant further evidence that the Todas have degenerated from a higher culture. We should have an example of a people who once used, even if they did not make, pottery, showing artistic aptitudes of a fairly high order which they have now entirely lost. ”

“ In a few cases I heard the Badaga name of a man more often than his Toda name; thus Tövoniners is usually called Aravoin, and a noted Toda of the last generation is always spoken of by his Badaga name, Mervoin. In a few cases, men long dead are remembered by their Badaga names, while their Toda names are forgotten.
As I have already indicated, nicknames are often used by people of low culture as a means of evading taboos, and though, as we shall see shortly, such taboos exist among the Todas, I met with no instance in which a Toda, who was unable to utter a name, gave a nickname in its stead. ”

“ His position among the Todas is exactly that of a priest upon whom it is incumbent to maintain a very high degree of ceremonial purity. That his isolation is not a sign of divinity is, I think, shown by the results of infringement of his isolation. If the palol is touched by an ordinary man he loses his office and at once ceases to be a sacred personage, but the person who touches incurs no penalty. The sacrilege, according to Toda ideas, would attach not to him, but to the palol who, in spite of being touched, should persist in performing the duties of his office. ”

“ Among many races at or below the stage of culture of the Todas prohibition of marriage within the clan is usually accompanied by prohibition of sexual intercourse, and such intercourse is regarded as incest and often as the greatest of crimes. It is doubtful whether there is any such strict prohibition among the Todas. In the qualifying ceremony for the office of palol known as tesherst, it is ordained that the woman who takes part in the ceremony shall be one who has never had intercourse with one of her own clan, and I was told that it was far from easy to find such a woman. ”

“ To people living in the simple surroundings and with the simple life of the Todas we might well look for material to help us to understand the evolution of religion, but, if I am right, we must look for this in vain. If the religion of the Todas is a product of degeneration, it is hopeless to seek among the customs of this people for evidence of the mode of growth of religious ideas and practices. Thus, it is natural that we find among the Todas no clear trace of totemism, or of those ideas connected with animals which are probably allied to totemism. ”