The Custom of ‘Terersthi’
The marriage tie among the Todas at the present time has become very loose. Wives are constantly transferred from one husband, or group of husbands, to another, the new husband or husbands paying a certain number of buffaloes to the old. The amount of the compensation or ter is settled by a council, and from this the transaction has received its name of terersthi, or “compensation he tells (decides).”[8]
There is much reason to believe that this custom has altered its character in recent times. I was told that formerly the custom only applied to cases in which a man had lost his wife by death. If he wished to marry a woman who was already the wife of another or others, he went to the father of the woman and asked for his consent. The father would consult with two other elders, and if they were in favour of the proposed transaction the three elders would go to the woman, and if they obtained her consent they then went to her husband for his. If husband or wife were unwilling to be parted nothing was done, but if both consented, the new and [[524]]the old husband, the father of the woman, and the two elders met and decided on the number of buffaloes to be given as ter or compensation. This meeting was called terersthi. The ter had to be paid within a month, and all the buffaloes given had to be females. The man who was giving up the woman went to the village of the new husband and received his buffaloes, of which he was allowed to choose a certain number. If he had been awarded more than four buffaloes, he might choose three, if four or less, he might only choose two. Among the Tartharol, a man would usually choose wursulir, and among the Teivaliol, pasthir.
At the present time the number of buffaloes given as ter varies very greatly; the most frequent number is three, but often more are given, and in one case, about ten years ago, a man had to give twenty-five. The number seems to depend largely on the size of the herd possessed by the man taking a new wife. The more buffaloes he has, the more he has to pay.
When the buffaloes are given, the new husband has to give a feast, after which the old husband drives away his buffaloes. In a recent case Teigudr of Nòdrs (4) had taken Uwer from Nertolvan and Palpa of Pan (16) for nine buffaloes. These two men went to the village of Tedshteiri, where Teigudr was living, and were feasted, the food being cooked on nine ovens, corresponding to the number of the buffaloes. This correspondence between the number of the ovens and of the buffaloes given as ter, suggests that there may have been some definite ceremonial in connexion with this feast of which I failed to obtain an account.
The custom of terersthi has some reason on its side. Wherever infant marriage exists in a small community, it must often happen that a widower finds all the women of his community married, and without some machinery by which he is allowed to take the wife of another, he must remain unmarried or be content with marriage to a mere child. Even at the present time, we have seen that an adult man who has lost his wife may marry a girl only a few years of age.[9] [[525]]
At the present time the custom of terersthi has a far wider range. It is obvious that when a widower takes the wife of another he is simply transferring his difficulty, and the man whose wife he has taken will have to seek a new partner. It often happens that a man takes the wife of a boy married, perhaps, to a girl of about the same age as himself, and when this boy reaches manhood he will have to seek a wife and will naturally try to obtain the wife of another rather than be content with a child perhaps only three or four years of age. It would be impossible that such a custom as that of terersthi should remain limited in scope, but there is no doubt that at the present day it has become the custom for any man who takes a fancy for the wife of another to endeavour to obtain her for himself, and I was told that he would give large bribes to the elders of the Todas to attain his object. It seems quite clear that, at the present time, it is not considered necessary to obtain the consent either of the wife or of the husband, and in some cases the wife has been taken from her husband by force.[10]
In some recent cases the aggrieved parties in such disputes have appealed to the Government, and during my visit a petition was being drawn up for presentation to the Governor of Madras, asking that the abuses of the terersthi custom should be remedied.