The Gods
The Toda gods are definitely anthropomorphic beings, who are believed to have lived in this world before man existed. Both man and buffalo were created by the gods, and the Todas seem to picture a time when gods, men, and buffaloes lived together on the Nilgiri Hills, and the gods ruled the men. At this time the gods seem to have lived much the same kind of life as the Todas themselves. Ön was palol to the buffaloes of the Nòdrs ti, his son Püv was palikartmokh at Kuudr, and other gods are believed to have filled dairy offices. From the earliest times, however, the gods were connected with the hills—i.e., they were believed to dwell on the summits of the hills of the Nilgiri plateau. At first they seem to have mixed at times in human society and at other times to have retired to their hill-tops. The earliest of the gods was Pithi, who was born in a cave, and the Todas and many of their buffaloes were created by his son Ön and his wife. Later death came to the gods in the person of Püv, the son of Ön and Ön followed Püv to the world of the dead, called Amnòdr, of which he has since been the ruler. He left behind him as predominant among the deities Teikirzi, a goddess, who ruled over the Todas. It is to her that the origin of most of the Toda institutions is ascribed, and there is some reason to think that she was predominant among the gods even before Ön went to Amnòdr.
The Todas seem to believe that Teikirzi was at one time a person living among them, giving laws and regulating the affairs of the people. At the present time she is believed to be all-pervading; and, though she has her special hill, she does not dwell there only, as in the case of all but one of the other Toda deities.
There seem to have been many other gods contemporaneous with Ön and Teikirzi, and certain of these are believed to have been related to these deities and especially to Teikirzi. The gods are believed to be very numerous: the Todas speak of the 1,600 gods, the 1,800 gods, but it would seem that these expressions are used in the sense of “an infinite [[444]]number.” The gods are believed to have held their councils, meeting on some special hill, to which each god came from his own hill-top. The hill of Pòlkab, near Kanòdrs, and the village of Miuni are both renowned as meeting places of the gods.
There is a very definite association between the Toda gods and the hills of the Nilgiri plateau. Nearly every one of the gods has his hill where he dwells, and often when speaking of the gods the Todas seem to identify the god with the hill. There are two river gods, Teipakh and Pakhwar, associated with the two chief streams of the district, but there is some reason to believe that even these gods have their hills where they sometimes live, while at other times they inhabit or are identified with their streams. In the case of Teipakh, the god and the natural object seem to be very closely identified, and Kuzkarv, growing up in the river Teipakh, is said to be sitting in the lap of his maternal uncle. Again, one god is associated with a bubbling pool, but he also has his hill-top and is believed only to visit the pool on certain occasions. There can be little doubt that most of the Toda gods are hill-deities and that the association of the gods with hills is so strong that even the gods of streams and pools may be assigned their hills in general belief.
There is one important feature which is said to be common to all the hills inhabited by deities. They all have on their summits the stone circles which the Todas call pun. My informants were very definite about this and fully understood that these stone circles corresponded to the cairns and barrows opened by Breeks and others.
I was not able to examine into the question for myself and ascertain whether the circles called pun were actually present on the god-inhabited hills, but I have no reason to doubt that this was usually the case. Most writers on the Todas have been inclined to suppose that the cairns and barrows, with their contents, were in no way connected with the Todas, and they have based this opinion largely on the indifference of the Todas to these monuments. The people who are so jealous of their dairies that they will not allow anyone to enter or even view their contents, will allow any stranger to open the [[445]]cairns and take their contents, and will even assist in the demolition. When I asked the Todas what they thought of the rifling of the pun they showed just the same indifference. They did not seem to think the matter any concern of theirs, and yet they believe in a definite association between the presence of a pun and the abode of a deity.
There seem to be three chief possibilities. One, that the cairns are Toda remains and that the association of the stone circles above them with the presence of a god is the last surviving relic of the fact. The second is that when the Todas came to the Nilgiri hills they found mysterious stone circles on certain hills, which marked out these hills as possessing features out of the common, and that this gave them a sanctity which led to the idea that they were inhabited by gods. A third possibility is that the same peculiarities which led the original builders of the circles to choose certain hills also led the Todas to choose them as the abodes of their deities, and that it was only later that they came to recognise the association between the circle and the presence of a god.
Whichever possibility may give the true explanation, one would have thought that the Todas would have objected to the disturbance and excavation of the cairns. There is little doubt that they were ignorant of the fact that objects were buried beneath the stone circles, but they are quite intelligent enough to know that there is a connexion between the stones and the objects beneath them when once these have been found.
I have very little doubt that the true explanation of the indifference of the Todas towards these monuments is that they have no definite traditional injunction against interfering with the circles. The Todas are the slaves of their traditions and of the laws and regulations which have been handed down to them by their ancestors. Till the Europeans came to the hills, it had never occurred to anyone to meddle with these stones or explore the soil beneath and around them. In consequence there was no reason why injunctions against interference should be handed down, and when the European arrived with his spade and pickaxe the Todas found nothing in their traditional laws telling them that it was wrong to [[446]]interfere with these places, and they exhibited the indifference which led the explorers to suppose that there was no connexion of any kind between the Todas and the monuments.[1]
Although the Toda deities seem to be in general a development of hill-spirits, there can be little doubt that some of the gods are deified men. In the case of Kwoten, the account of his life is so circumstantial as to leave little doubt that he was a real man who was deified after a mysterious disappearance, believed to have been due to intercourse with a female deity, and around whose life there have clustered certain miraculous incidents. Similarly, his servant Erten, and his relatives Teikuteidi and Elnâkhum are probably deified men.
Another possible instance of a deified man is Kwoto or Meilitars. The account of his life is again so circumstantial that it seems most likely that he was an exceptional man who was deified while various incidents in his life acquired a miraculous setting. It is perhaps in favour of the comparatively recent origin of these gods that objects belonging to them, or which come into their lives in some way, are still preserved, and perhaps a still more cogent argument in favour of the recent deification of Kwoten is the fact that the prohibition against marriage between the clans of Pan and Kanòdrs, believed to be due to the murder of Parden by Kwoten, still persists.
Of these deified mortals one became associated with a definite hill while the other was not assigned any special hill, but it was believed that all places should form his province.
There is little doubt that these mortals were deified as heroes and not as ancestors, and there is little to indicate that ancestor-worship has played any part in the evolution of the Toda religion. When a person dedicated a buffalo on account of some fault committed, it seemed that the action might be spoken of indifferently as dedication to the gods or to the ancestors of the dedicator. Thus, when Teitnir gave a [[447]]buffalo after the death of his wife, some said it was given to the gods, while others said it was given to Teitnir’s grandfathers, and when I tried to inquire more definitely into this point the two things were said to be the same. The ideas of the Todas seemed to me, however, to be so indefinite and vague on this point that I am inclined to attach little importance to this one piece of evidence.
Against the identification of gods with ancestors is the fact that the dead go to another world, and are believed to return to this world after a long interval as ordinary mortals, while most of the gods belong to this world and are believed to have belonged to this world before death came to either gods or men.
There is little to support the idea that the gods are personifications of the forces of nature. There is no evidence whatever that any of the gods are personifications of the sun, of other heavenly bodies, of thunder, lightning, or other elemental forces.
We have already seen that there is evidence that light is reverenced, and that this reverence extends to the sun, and it is probable that definite worship of the sun may at one time have formed a prominent part of the religion of the Todas. But there is not the slightest evidence which would lead to the identification of any one of the Toda deities with the sun.
There is no evidence of phallic worship among the Todas. One of the ti villages in the Kundahs is known to the European inhabitants of the Nilgiris as “Ling mand,” but the supposed Ling stone at this place is evidently a neurzülnkars.[2]
In the last chapter we have seen that it has been supposed that divinity attaches to some of the sacred objects of the Todas, and especially to the dairy and the mani or bell. I cannot say definitely that the dairy and the bell are not regarded as gods, but I do not believe that they are so, and, as I have endeavoured to show in the last chapter, I think it probable that the sanctity of the bell has arisen by a gradual [[448]]process of transference of sanctity from the buffalo to the object worn by it, and I think it not unlikely that this transference may have reached its full development in comparatively recent times.
If my view be accepted, it would still leave open the religious status of the buffalo, and especially of the bell-buffalo, and here, scanty as the evidence is, it seems to me probable that the buffalo was never regarded as a god in the same sense in which this word is used for the anthropomorphic beings of the hill-tops. In the oldest legends, in which the buffaloes spoke like men, it is clear that they were in subjection to the gods, and were in no way regarded as themselves divine.
Some writers on the Todas have supposed that the palol is regarded as a god, but at the present time it is certain that he is in no way divine. He is treated with respect, but nothing of the nature of worship or adoration is paid to him. 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.
Whether the palol may ever have been more sacred in the past I cannot say. An indication that he may at one time have been regarded as divine is to be found in the special clauses of the Kiudr prayer which are uttered on the occasion of the migration of the buffaloes of the Nòdrs ti. Here the kwarzam of the palol is eupalol, which stands for teupalol, or “god palol,” but in the next kwarzam the same prefix is given to his garment, the tuni, and I have little doubt that these kwarzam simply refer to the sanctity which attaches to the palol and his garment as part of the sacred institution of the ti. There is no doubt, however, that, according to tradition, the gods held the office of palol and that the palol of the [[449]]Nòdrs ti is the direct successor of the god Ön, but to whatever extent Ön may have passed on his divine character to his immediate successors, there is little doubt that at present the palol has lost any divinity which may at one time have been ascribed to him.
It is very difficult to ascertain how far at the present time, according to Toda belief, the gods intervene in human affairs. Each clan is believed to have its nòdrodchi, or ruling deity, but I could not learn what he is supposed to do. In general the nòdrodchi of a clan is a god dwelling on a hill near the chief village of the clan, and two clans living near one another may have the same ruler. Thus Teipakh is connected with both Piedr and Kusharf, Atioto with both Kwòdrdoni and Pedrkars, while Etepi, who is the nòdrodchi of Keradr, and Kuzkarv, the nòdrodchi of Keadr, are almost certainly one and the same deity. In the two latter cases a Tarthar clan has the same god as a clan of the Teivaliol.
Little can be said about the nature of these connexions between gods and clans, but it is possible that when a clan or a member of a clan is said to incur the anger of the gods it is the nòdrodchi who is chiefly offended and inflicts punishment in the form of death or disease to man or buffalo. The Todas certainly believe that misfortunes are due to the anger of the gods. It is clear that the various offerings described in [Chapter XIII] are piacular and propitiatory. They are designed to atone for wrong done and to avert any future evil consequences of the offence which has been committed.
The power of the gods is believed to show itself in various ways. In several cases dairies have been disused because the dairymen have died in office, and this was said to have happened because the gods of those places were severe. It was apparently believed that they had visited infringements of the laws regulating dairy ritual with death.
The various misfortunes which befell different members of the community as the result of my visit were all ascribed to the anger of the gods. Again, the untoward incidents of the funeral of Sinerani (see p. [391]) were ascribed to the anger of the gods because there had been an infringement of funeral custom. These and other cases show clearly that [[450]]the gods are held to be the source of punishment for sins committed by the Todas, and that they may be appeased by offerings.
Each of the ti dairies has connected with it many deities whose names are especially mentioned in the prayers, and it is probable that for infringements of their ritual these gods are the avenging deities.
The attitude towards the gods shown by the formulæ used in the dairy ceremonial has already been considered. Though there is no direct evidence in these formulæ that there is actual supplication to the deities, it is almost certain that this supplication is implied. The formulæ used in other Toda ceremonies have the same general form as those used in the dairy ritual; and here, again, though there is no direct appeal to deities in the words of the formula, such appeal is almost certainly implied. The formulæ of the various ceremonies of the Todas are almost certainly of the nature of prayers in which the gods are asked to give blessings and avert evils. Apart from the formulæ of the definite ritual, there seems to be no doubt that the Todas offer supplications to their gods for help and protection.
In the formulæ used in Toda sorcery appeal to the gods is even more definite than in the prayers of the dairy ritual. In them the names of four most important gods are mentioned, and it seems quite clear that the sorcerer believes that he is effecting his purpose through the power of the gods.
Another definite way in which the gods of the Todas are believed to intervene in human affairs is in divination. During the frenzy into which the teuol or diviners fall they are believed to be inspired by the gods. The diviners are chiefly consulted in the case of misfortune, and they are believed to reveal the reasons for the divine displeasure which has been the cause of the misfortune, and to communicate the ways in which the gods may be appeased. The diviners are believed to be directly inspired by the gods, and their name, teuol, or “god men,” shows how definitely this belief is present in the Toda mind. In this case each diviner is believed to be inspired by a special deity, though sometimes more than one deity may reveal himself by the same man. [[451]]
In the process of divination men are possessed by gods; and another example of possession by the gods may be mentioned here, as I have not found a suitable place for it elsewhere. If any of the gods should sit on the back of a buffalo, the animal will go to the hill called Kûrâtvan, near Neduvattam, and this is said to have happened to two buffaloes in recent times. A buffalo which goes to this hill is allowed to find its own way back, and, provided the buffalo goes only to etudmad, its course will not be interfered with. One of the two buffaloes above-mentioned travelled back by way of Taradr, a place called Panmtu, Nòdrs, Miuni, and then went to its own village.
In the chapter on divination I have pointed out that many of the deities who inspire the diviners are not true Toda gods, and this suggests that the practice of divination may have been borrowed from surrounding peoples, in which case caution would be needed in drawing conclusions from the beliefs associated with the practice. I believe, however, that the information given to me on this point is based on recent utterances of the teuol themselves when in a state of frenzy. Each teuol was asked by whom he was inspired, and I think it not unlikely that the answers were influenced by the recent associations of the Todas.
At the present time none of the gods are ever seen by mortals. As we have already found, the hills where they are supposed to dwell are, in some cases, regarded with reverence; but I obtained no evidence that the Todas avoid the summits even of those hills where the most important deities are supposed to be, though unfortunately I omitted to put this to the test by asking any of the more scrupulous Todas to accompany me to these places. The god-inhabited hills, however, are, in most cases, the sites of cairns and barrows, and the whole experience of those who have excavated these sites seems to show that the Todas exhibit no special reluctance to visit these dwelling-places of the gods.
I think that there can be little doubt that most of the individual gods of the Todas are becoming very unreal beings to those who talk of them. The stories of the earlier gods are now being forgotten, and the ideas of the Todas about them are [[452]]very vague. On the other hand, certain gods of obviously more recent origin seem to be replacing, to some extent, the older gods. The lives of Kwoten and Meilitars can be related by many in great detail, but though they seem to inspire more interest among the Todas I cannot say that I observed anything to show that they receive any special worship or reverence. Meilitars is especially mentioned in the Kanòdrs prayer, but this would only put him on a level with many objects of no great amount of sanctity. The attitude of the Todas towards these two beings seemed to me to be rather that of people towards heroes than towards gods, though the mythology has raised them to the level of the gods.
Nevertheless, the idea of “god” is highly developed among the Todas and I am inclined to believe that the most satisfactory explanation of the Toda deities is that the people came to the Nilgiri Hills with a body of highly developed gods; that round these gods have clustered various legends connected with the Toda institutions; that these old gods have gradually through long ages lost their reality; that certain heroes have been raised to the ranks of the gods and that the lives of these heroes, founded to some extent on actual fact, have more interest to the Todas and are remembered and passed on while the legends of the older gods are gradually becoming vaguer in the progress towards complete obliviscence; that the gods as a whole, however, are still regarded as the authors of punishment and that there is a tendency to make an abstraction of the power of the gods.
The Todas, then, show us a stage of religious belief in which gods once believed to be real, living among men and intervening actively in their affairs, have become shadowy beings, apparently less real, invisible and intervening in the affairs of men in a mysterious manner and chiefly in the case of infraction of the laws which they are still believed to have given.
The present state of the Toda religion seems to be one in which ritual has persisted while the beliefs at the bottom of the ritual have largely disappeared. The Todas are an example of a people whose lives are altogether dominated [[453]]by custom and tradition, and on the religious side this domination has taken a form in which ritual has become all-important, while the religious ideas which underlie the ritual have become blurred and unreal or have disappeared altogether. It seems to me that the Todas have had a religion of a comparatively high order for people living in such simple circumstances. During a long period of isolation there has come about an over-development of the ritual aspect of this religion. Year after year, and century after century, the priests have handed on the details of the ceremonial from one to another. The performance of the prescribed rites in their due order has become the all-essential of the religion and the ideas connected with it have suffered. This is shown most clearly in the prayers, in which we have seen that the prayer proper has gradually come to take a relatively subordinate position, and is even in danger of disappearing altogether, while the importance of the kwarzam by which the sacred objects of the dairy are mentioned has been magnified. The dairy utterances, which were probably at one time definite prayers calling on the gods for help and protection, are now on their way to become barren and meaningless formulæ.
Just as the prayer of the Todas seems to have almost degenerated into the utterance of barren formulæ, so is there reason to believe that the attitude of worship which is undoubtedly present in the Toda mind is becoming transferred from the gods themselves to the material objects used in the service of the gods. I acknowledge that I am here on less sure ground than in the case of the dairy formulæ, but the general impression left on my mind by the study of the beliefs and sacred institutions of the Todas is that the religious attitude of worship is being transferred from the gods themselves to the objects round which centres the ritual of the dairy. If I am right in these surmises, we find the Todas to possess a religion in process of degeneration. I do not suppose that this degeneration has been in progress only during the short time that the Todas have been exposed to the injurious contact of the outer world. The study of the Toda religion makes it seem to me most probable that the Todas came [[454]]to the Nilgiri Hills with a religion of a higher order than they possess at present, with a developed system of gods who were believed to direct and govern the affairs of men, and that by a long and slow process these gods have become unreal, the supplications of the people for their guidance and assistance have become mechanical, and worship has been transferred from gods, not to stocks and stones, but to bells and dairy vessels.
At the present time it would seem that even the ritual of the Toda religion is often carried out less carefully than of old. Among the former occupants of dairy offices of whom I made inquiries, I found some who gave accounts so full of inaccuracies and omissions that it seemed unlikely that they could have performed the duties of their offices in a satisfactory manner, and when I had the opportunity of observing parts of the dairy ritual it seemed to me that the ceremonial acts were performed by some of the dairymen in a very perfunctory and slovenly fashion. We have already seen that some of the features of Toda ritual have entirely disappeared, and it seems not unlikely that the same fate may overtake the whole at no great distance of time.
In the case of both custom and ritual, the Todas are now often content if they keep the letter of the law, and several examples of the evasion of ceremonial laws have been recorded. We have seen that several of the laws concerning the madnol are certainly not kept in the spirit, and only by a stretch of imagination, in the letter. A woman evades the law that she may not leave the village on the madnol by leaving it before daybreak and returning after daybreak till her work is done. A man takes money out on the day before the madnol and, burying it elsewhere, is able to carry out business which the spirit of the law forbids. In ceremonies, ritual duties which involve discomfort or restraint are assigned to young boys, to whom the restraint is no restraint. A man goes near the palol whom properly he should not approach, but since he does not speak nor is spoken to, he is regarded as ceremonially absent.
Objects of value which should be burnt for the use of the dead are sent to the next world ceremonially by swinging [[455]]them over the fire, and are then removed. The emblems of womanhood are taken out of the hut when the wursol goes there to sleep, but the women themselves remain. Probably the behaviour of the kaltmokh in the sleeping hut during the ceremony after migration (p. 142) is a sign that he should not be there, and is evading an uncomfortable and perhaps dangerous custom.
The Todas seem to show us how the over-development of the ritual aspect of religion may lead to atrophy of those ideas and beliefs through which the religion has been built up and then how, in its turn, the ritual may suffer and acts which are performed mechanically, with no living ideas behind them, may come to be performed carelessly and incompletely, while religious observances which involve trouble or discomfort may be evaded or completely neglected. The Todas, in fact, show us, in little, the general traits characteristic of the degeneration of religion.
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. There are several reasons why the Todas should not furnish any clear evidence of this frequent starting-point of religion. In the first place, they are people to whom one animal has become so predominantly sacred that it might be expected that any other relations with animals of a sacred character would have disappeared; the cult of animals in general would have been swamped in the cult of the buffalo. Secondly, if I am right in the supposition I have advanced in this chapter, it is probable that the Todas came to the Nilgiri Hills with the cult of the buffalo or other milk-giving animal already to some extent developed, and if at this time they had customs and beliefs connected with other animals, these would naturally soon disappear if these animals were [[456]]absent in the new country. At the same time, it is perhaps not without significance that the Todas are allowed to eat the flesh of the sambhar. In their former home, in the low country, it is almost certain that this animal would not have been a totem, and therefore it would be natural that on their reaching the Nilgiris they might be permitted to eat it.[3]
It is doubtful how far the Todas have an idea of a supreme god. At the present time they speak of and constantly appeal to Swami, and they will say that Swami is above all the gods, but I have very little doubt that this is a recent idea. Swami was chiefly spoken of and reverenced by the younger men, and it is quite clear that the name should not properly occur in the formulæ of any Toda ritual. Nevertheless, the possibility cannot be excluded that the idea is old. It is probable that at one time there existed direct appeal to gods in the Toda prayer, and this direct appeal may have been to some supreme being who was addressed as Swami.
Apart from this question of the meaning of Swami, two deities stand out from the remainder of the Toda gods. One of these is Meilitars, whose cunning was able to deceive the gods, and who was able to perform miracles which were regarded as beyond the powers of the other gods. His story seems to show one way in which a god might rise above his fellows, and might become a supreme god, but this has certainly not happened in his case. There is not the slightest evidence to show that Meilitars is in any way worshipped as a supreme god. There is a much stronger case for the supremacy of the goddess Teikirzi. Teikirzi is said to be the foundress of many of the Toda institutions; the final explanation of all things in the Toda mind is that “it is the will of Teikirzi.” She is said to be all-pervading, and [[457]]is regarded as the ruler of this world; she is mentioned in many of the sacred formulæ, and of the occasional kwarzam uttered by the Todas on various occasions by far the most frequent are those of Teikirzi Tirshti.
Teikirzi is undoubtedly the most important Toda deity, and yet she is not so pre-eminent that she can be said to be in any way a supreme god. Though she is the ruler of this world, it is Ön who rules the world of the dead.