Magic and Religion
A word may be added, at the end of this chapter, on the relation between the magic and the religion of the Todas. I have already pointed out reasons for believing that the Toda religion is one in process of degeneration, and we must not therefore expect to find among this people material for the study of the evolution of religion from magic or for the method of divergence of the two from some original stem which was neither magic nor religion.
The chief interest of the Todas from this point of view is that they show how side by side with a relatively high form of religion there may exist a body of beliefs crystallised in magical formulæ which bear a very close resemblance to the formulæ of the religious ritual. Their aim and their general nature leave no doubt that the formulæ given in the later part of [Chap. XII] are magical in nature, and yet they show more distinct evidence of appeal to deities than is to be found in the definitely religious formulæ of the dairy. These magical formulæ of the Todas seem to show us a stage of magic in which religion has been called [[460]]to its aid. The sorcerer does not endeavour to effect his purpose merely by the belief in the efficiency of like producing like, or other ideas which dominate the lower forms of magic, but has called to his aid the power of the gods and uses a form of words almost identical with that used in the religious ritual. Magic and religion are here closely allied, but it is possible that this alliance is but one of the products of the degeneration to which I believe the Toda religion is subject. It is possible that we have here evidence that during the process of degeneration of religion, religion and magic may approach one another—an approach which recalls their common origin from those low beliefs and ideas of the savage to which the name of neither magic nor religion should perhaps be properly applied. [[461]]
[1] I do not intend by this to indicate my belief that these cairns are ancient Toda monuments. I only wish to point out that one of the arguments which has been directed against this view is probably not valid. I shall return to this point in a future chapter. [↑]
[2] I had no Toda with me when I visited the place, so cannot speak with absolute certainty on the point. [↑]
[3] I do not wish to lay any stress on this argument, for, as I have already indicated, it is possible that the eating of sambhar is a recent innovation, which has arisen since the advent of Europeans to the Nilgiris. Also I do not wish to indicate by the above that I commit myself to a belief in the universality of totemism as a stage in religious development. I only wish to point out that if this has been so, the Todas furnish a good case in which we might expect all traces of this descent to have disappeared or to have become so blurred and scanty as to be of little value. [↑]
[4] These were the names given to me by the Todas, and their spelling may not correspond with that in ordinary use. [↑]
CHAPTER XX
GENEALOGIES AND POPULATION
The preceding chapters have dealt with the ceremonies and religious aspect of the life of the Todas. This and succeeding chapters will deal with the social organisation and the more secular side of the life of the people.
The social organisation has been studied largely by means of the genealogical record which is given in [Appendix V]. Before going to India I had worked out the details of the system of kinship, of the regulation of marriage, and of the social organisation generally of two Papuan communities on the basis of the pedigrees preserved by those communities.
It is a familiar fact that, both in ancient writings and in the memories of peoples to whom writing is unknown, long lists of ancestors may be preserved, going back in some cases to mythical times. Among existing peoples good examples of such genealogies are found in Polynesia and Uganda, but such a genealogical record is of little value for the investigation of social organisation.
The records which I obtained in Torres Straits were of a different kind; they only extended back for three or four generations, but included all collateral lines, so that a man was able to tell me all the descendants of his great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather, and knew the descent of his mother, his father’s mother, his mother’s mother, and his wife as fully as that of his father. By this means I was able to collect[1] a record of the great majority of marriages which had taken place in the community for the last three or four [[462]]generations, was able to work out the laws which had regulated these marriages and to study in detail the system of kinship.
On going to the Todas, one of my first objects was to discover if their pedigrees were preserved with the same completeness and fidelity as among the Papuans of Torres Straits.
It seemed at first as if I was to be disappointed. Those to whom I first broached the subject professed not to know the names of their own fathers and mothers. Some said they had forgotten them, but their demeanour excited the suspicion that reticence, and not ignorance, was the cause of the failure, and it soon became clear that this suspicion was correct.
There was a taboo on the names of the dead, and especially on those of dead ancestors. No Toda liked to speak of the dead by name, but to utter the name of a dead elder relative was strictly forbidden, and to the end of my visit I never heard the name of a dead man from one of his descendants. Thus the last piece of genealogical information which I collected was that of the names of the father and mother of Kòdrner, my constant attendant. The fact that he was always with me had prevented my inquiries into his parentage.
Having discovered the cause of failure it soon became evident that the Todas preserved their pedigrees almost, if not quite, as fully as the natives of Torres Straits. As in the islands, certain men had especial reputations as repositories of genealogical lore, and I began my investigations with the aid of one of the most famous of these, Parkurs (8), an old man almost blind as the result of cataract and so feeble that he had to be carried when he came to see me. With his aid and that of many others I compiled the records given in [Appendix V].
Throughout my visit, the collection of this genealogical material was regarded as something which should not be done. I never carried on this branch of my work during what I may call my public hours when I was visited by anyone who chose to come. At these times I sometimes obtained from a man the names of his wife and children, but always left any further inquiries till the time reserved for my investigations [[463]]into more esoteric matters, when only one man was alone with me and was not subject to the restraints imposed by auditors who might disapprove of the utterance of the names of the dead.
One result of the taboo on the names of dead ancestors was that the record of a man’s family was never obtained from one of that family; but this was no disadvantage, for the genealogical knowledge of those from whom I obtained my data was so wide that it covered the families of the whole or nearly the whole of the Toda community. I have no doubt that I could have obtained the whole of the material given in the tables from two men, one of whom would have given me the genealogies of the Tartharol, and the other those of the Teivaliol, and if I had chosen my informants wisely, I believe that their information would have been as full and accurate as that obtained from my many sources of information. Further, I found that the Teivaliol had a wide knowledge of Tarthar genealogies, and vice versâ, though a man of one division usually refused to guarantee the accuracy of anything he told me about the other division, and would often disclaim knowledge which some chance observation later showed that he possessed, at any rate in some measure.
Although certain Todas had special reputations for their knowledge of pedigrees and were undoubtedly more proficient in this respect than the general mass of the community, I believe that the knowledge was very widely spread throughout the people. My guide Kòdrner never professed to any special knowledge of genealogies, and yet chance observations would often show that his acquaintance with the pedigrees of the community was far more extensive and accurate than his professions would have led one to expect.
The results of the inquiry are given in Tables 1–72. This large accumulation of genealogical material was obtained from people who professed at first not to know the names of their own fathers and mothers. It would have been quite easy for me to have come away from the Todas and reported them as a people who did not preserve their genealogies.
The pedigrees are recorded in exactly the same manner as those which I have published in the Reports of the Torres [[464]]Straits Expedition, with the modifications rendered necessary by the presence of polyandry and infant marriage among the Todas. In any one table the descendants in the male line only are given, descendants in the female line being recorded in the genealogies of the husbands. Thus, if one wishes to ascertain the descendants of Pilivurch in Table 1, it is necessary to turn to Table 20 recording the genealogy of Teithi, the husband of this woman. The names of males are in capital letters, those of females in ordinary type, and the name of a wife always follows the name of her husband or husbands. Under the name of each individual is placed, in italics, the name of the clan to which the individual belongs, or, in the case of a married woman, of the clan to which she had belonged before marriage. The names of those now living are given in Clarendon type, of which Mudrigeidi and Savdur in Table 1 are examples. The abbreviation i.m. stands for “infant marriage.” The abbreviations d.y. and d.n.n. stand for “died young” and “died before being named” respectively. The latter implies that the child died within a few weeks of birth.
When the names of men are enclosed in square brackets, polyandry, and when the names of women are so enclosed, polygyny, is indicated.
In the Torres Straits Reports I have shown that there are definite reasons why the people should have preserved their pedigrees so fully. The pedigrees are not preserved for amusement nor out of idle interest in the doings of ancestors or neighbours. In Torres Straits the complex and far-reaching nature of the marriage regulations form the chief motive for the preservation of the pedigrees, while the transmission of property is perhaps of almost equal importance.
Among the Todas we shall see that the marriage regulations are far simpler than among the Papuans of Torres Straits, and in their case the chief motive is probably connected with the inheritance of buffaloes, the only form of property in which the Toda takes much interest. In the succeeding chapters we shall find several examples of social transactions in which the knowledge derived from the genealogical record has determined the issue. [[465]]