The arpatznol.
Another sacred day is the arpatznol or arpasnol. This is the day of the week on which the father of a man has died. The father of Kutadri and Kòdrner died on a Friday, and every Friday is the arpatznol of these men. I could not learn definitely what are the restrictions for this day, but they seem to be of the same kind as those for the madnol, though I am doubtful whether they are very strictly kept. Kutadri and Kòdrner once drove their buffaloes from Kars to Isharadr on a Friday; the buffaloes were sick, and they moved them without thinking that it was their arpatznol. [[408]]Soon after Kòdrner fell ill and one of the buffaloes died, and the teuol found that the desecration of the arpatznol was one of the causes, though they had also bought things on a Monday, the madnol of Kars.
There is much variety in the days appointed as the madnol or palinol of different villages and clans. My records are very incomplete, but they show the most frequent days to be Wednesday and Friday, which are sacred in six clans. Sunday is sacred in five clans, Monday and Tuesday in three, and Thursday in two, while in no clan, so far as my records go, is Saturday a holy day.
It will have been noticed that funeral ceremonies may not be held on a madnol, and it seems to be exceptional that funeral ceremonies should take place on one of the dairy days. There is very little doubt that it is the prohibition of funerals on village and dairy days which chiefly determines the choice of funeral days. Thus, at Nidrsi, Wednesday is the madnol, Monday is the wursulinol, Friday is the tarvalinol, while the funeral of a male is held on Saturday or Sunday and that of a female on Tuesday or Thursday. Similarly, the village and dairy days of Melgars are Monday and Friday, while the funeral days for males are Sunday and Tuesday, for females Thursday and Saturday. At Kwòdrdoni, the village and dairy days are Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, the funeral days Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
In a few cases, it would seem that funerals may be held on dairy days; thus, at Kars Monday is the madnol, Tuesday the wursulinol, and Thursday the kudrpalinol, while the funeral days for males are Sundays and Tuesdays, for females Thursdays and Saturdays. If a mani is used, however, a male funeral must be held on Sunday, and I suspect that the holding of a male funeral on Tuesday is an innovation, and probably the same holds good for the choice of Thursday as a funeral day for females.
The funeral rites are not the only ceremonies which have their appointed days. Nearly every ceremonial occasion among the Todas has its prescribed day, and of these ceremonial days Sunday seems to occupy an especially favoured position. As many ceremonies are appointed for this day as [[409]]for nearly all the other days of the week put together. It is also the most frequent day for the funerals of males, and it seemed to me that whenever it was possible this day was chosen.
Several clans, however, have Sunday as the madnol, and if the laws of this day are observed ceremonies of which feasts form a part could not be performed on this day in these clans; thus, though I have no definite information on the point, I have no doubt that the irpalvusthi ceremony could not be performed.
It so happens that the clans which have Sunday as their madnol or palinol are Pan, Kanòdrs, Päm, Kwòdrdoni, and Pedrkars, all clans seated in outlying parts of the hills about which my information is less complete than in other cases. None of the larger and more important central clans about whose customs I obtained the fullest information had either madnol or palinol on a Sunday, and I have very little doubt that in those clans which have Sunday as a madnol, ceremonies, at any rate of a festive nature, would not be performed on this day. There is little doubt that the great prominence of Sunday as a feast day would have come out less strongly if my information about the outlying clans had been more complete.
I must leave this point uncertain, but I have little doubt that with fuller information about the customs of different clans we should find that the choice of days for ceremonies is chiefly, if not entirely, determined by the necessity of holding these on some day other than the madnol or palinol.
At the same time, there can be no doubt that Sunday is one of the days appointed for a festival or ceremony very frequently, and this is especially the case at the ti, the procedure of which is to a large extent uninfluenced by considerations concerned with the madnol and palinol. Even here, however, these days are not altogether without influence, for certain ceremonial days at the ti are feast days for the clan to which the ti belongs, and this would make it necessary that the ceremonies should not be held on the madnol of the clan. Certain days were said to be feast-days throughout the whole Toda community, but I have no knowledge as to how these [[410]]days would be kept by those clans on whose madnol they might fall.
Several previous writers, when recording the choice of certain days for the funeral ceremonies, have ascribed to the Todas a belief in lucky and unlucky days, in days of good or evil omen. One man, when telling me that Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday were days on which the irpalvusthi ceremony might be performed at the tarvali, referred to them as lucky days.
I think it is extremely doubtful whether the Toda in general has any such belief, and if he has, it is probable that the idea is a recent importation borrowed from the Hindus, among whom the belief in lucky or unlucky days is of course very prevalent. The distinction among the Todas is rather into feast and fast days, using the latter term in a wide sense.
It is possible that the institutions of madnol and palinol have grown out of the belief in unlucky days; that certain things were not done on these days because they were unlucky days, and that so there came into existence a code of rules prescribing what might and what might not be done.
The chief difficulty in the way of this view is the fact that the different clans of the Todas have different sacred days. One would expect lucky and unlucky days to be the same for the whole community. The sacred days place very definite restrictions on the intercourse between different clans, and this inconvenience must be increased by the fact that the different clans have different madnol, and there is no obvious reason why this difference in the choice of sacred days should have come about.
The distinction between madnol and palinol is, again, one which can hardly have grown out of the belief in unlucky days, though perhaps, given a village day, it is not an unnatural step for the Todas to have decided that they would have a dairy day also.
Whatever the origin of the laws regulating Toda custom in this respect, I think there is little doubt that when at the present time a given act is done or not done on a given day, the action is not based on a belief in lucky or unlucky days, [[411]]but, as nearly always among the Todas, on custom prescribing that the act shall or shall not be done on that day.
There are, however, other restrictions or relaxations connected with certain days of the week which have probably arisen out of a belief in lucky and unlucky days.
There is a regulation (now almost a dead letter) that the Todas must not cross the Paikara and Avalanche rivers on Tuesdays, Fridays, or Saturdays. Sundays and Wednesdays, on the other hand, are the days on which the wursol is allowed to sleep in the hut with ordinary people, and Mondays and Thursdays are the days on which the palol is visited by Todas other than the mòrol. Such facts suggest that the three days on which the rivers should not be crossed are unlucky days, but, on the other hand, the days which I was once told were lucky days included Saturday. The evidence at our command is conflicting, and does no more than suggest that the restrictions or relaxations common to the whole community may be connected with the belief in lucky and unlucky days.
Attention may here be called to the fact that the Todas evidently regard the first half of the month as most auspicious for their ceremonies, and it would seem that in most cases the first appropriate day of the week after the new moon is the proper day for nearly every Toda ceremonial. I met with no case in which any ceremony was appointed for the period of the full moon or for the second half of the moon’s period. At the present, it seems that such ceremonies as those connected with the migrations of the buffaloes may take place in the second half of the month, but I have no doubt that this is only a result of modern laxity.
The definite values assigned to different days of the week is a very special feature of Toda custom, and in the madnol we have an institution very closely resembling that of the Sabbath. In a busier community than that of the Todas, the existence of different madnol for different clans of the community would soon become a serious obstacle to carrying on the business of life, and such a community would probably agree that all clans should have the same holy day. At present the madnol is undoubtedly more sacred than the other [[412]]sacred days, and if the latter were then to be neglected, we should have a community in which various activities were prohibited on one day of the week, and the institution so arising would differ very little from the Hebrew Sabbath. It is possible that the Todas show in an early stage the institution of a Sabbath in which the whole community has not yet settled on a single and joint holy day.