The Pepkaricha Ceremony
In the account of the daily work of the dairy, it will be remembered that whenever the dairyman goes out to milk for the first time he puts some buttermilk into his milking vessel. This is done in every dairy, and the buttermilk so added is called pep. The milk of every day has mixed with it some of the buttermilk from the milking of the day before, and in this way continuity is kept up in the dairy operations. Under certain conditions this continuity is broken and new pep has to be made, and the process of doing so is the ceremony called pepkaricha, pepkarichti, or pepkarichanudr—i.e., “pep he purifies,” or, “if pep is purified.”
In some cases new pep has to be made for the whole clan [[167]](madol); in other cases it has only to be made for one of the dairies of the clan.
The ceremony is performed for the whole clan whenever anything goes wrong with a certain dairy vessel called mu, which is buried in the buffalo pen at the chief village of the clan. We have seen that this vessel is used in the ordination to certain dairy offices, and it is also inspected as a matter of routine about once a year. If it is broken or has been stolen or tampered with in any way, it becomes necessary to make new pep for the whole clan.
Among the Tartharol, new pep has also to be made after the funeral of a male on account of the defilement of the mani involved in its exposure to the ordinary people at the funeral ceremonies.
The conditions which necessitate the making of new pep for a single dairy are, (1) if a Tamil or other “foreigner” has entered the dairy, (2) if an ordinary Toda (perol) has gone into the dairy at night, (3) if the dairyman has used tobacco. In these cases the people of the village at which the offence has been committed procure a new mu, and, after purifying it, go to some other dairy of the clan, where they procure some buttermilk to act as pep and take it to their own dairy. It is only when new pep has to be made for the whole clan that the prolonged ceremony of pepkarichti has to be carried out. This ceremony differs in its details for each clan, and is more complicated in some cases than in others. As an example, I will give the proceedings for the Kuudr clan.
When it becomes necessary to make new pep for the whole group of dairies belonging to the clan it is necessary to take the buffaloes to one special dairy. The Kuudr people go to the dairy of Kwirg near Sholur. On the day of going to Kwirg, a feast is held at which the food called ashkkartpimi is eaten.
Whenever new pep is made it is necessary to have a new palikartmokh, and the man who is to undertake the duties goes to Kwirg with the milking buffaloes of the pasthir and is accompanied by a number of Kuudr men. The men take with them a new and complete set of dairy vessels, and reach Kwirg in the early morning of a Sunday after the new moon. [[168]]The buffaloes are at once penned in the tu. The first business is the ordination of the new palikartmokh, which is carried out as usual. When at the stream for the purification ceremony, the palikartmokh has with him a new mu, which he fills with water at the stream. He takes this vessel to the tu in which the buffaloes are penned, and knocks one of the buffaloes on the back with his wand (pet), so that it moves to one side. Then with the wand he digs some earth from the spot where the hoof of the buffalo had been resting, and mixes this earth with tudr bark. He places part of the mixed earth and bark in the mu and puts the rest on one side; this part of the ceremony is called mukatchkudrspini, or purification of the mu, literally “mu purification I have purified.”
The palikartmokh then brings all the other dairy vessels and implements, beginning with the patat, and purifies them by throwing on them mixed earth and tudr bark, sprinkling them with water from the mu three times, saying “Oñ” each time. The things of the patatmar are purified first and then the things of the ertatmar, and the purified objects are placed in the dairy. Fire is made by friction and the palikartmokh goes out to milk. Buttermilk is not put into the milking-vessel as usual, and the lamp is not lighted. The milk is poured into the patat, and the palikartmokh then prepares food, which he gives to the people who have come with him, but he himself fasts. All the men then go away except one or two, who are to remain as companions of the dairyman. In the evening the palikartmokh takes off some of the cream,[1] which has risen to the top of the milk, and puts it into the lamp which he lights, and then prays, using the kwarzam of Kwirg[2] and the kwarzam of the pep only.
If the milk has coagulated it is now churned, and then the buffaloes are milked as usual, but if the milk has not coagulated, it is left till next morning. In the evening the dairyman takes food as usual.
On the following day, it seems that the milk has always [[169]]become solid and is churned. Immediately after churning and without taking food, the dairyman puts together the dairy things according to the usual method followed when going from one village to another, and goes with his buffaloes to the village of Kiudr. The dairy vessels are carried in the usual manner, the new buttermilk called puthpep being in the patat and the butter in the mu.
The people living at Kiudr leave the village, and the man who has been filling the office of palikartmokh there throws away all the old dairy things and takes the mani to the stones by the side of that dairy called neurzülnkars (see p. [129]). After leaving the bells there for a little time, the dairyman takes them to the pali nipa, and then his office ceases and he becomes perol.
The new palikartmokh, who has come from Kwirg, purifies the dairy and his new dairy vessels and the mani in exactly the same way as when reaching a new dairy, and then places the bells, vessels, and other objects in the dairy. During the next month, till the following new moon, the dairyman and his companions stay alone at Kiudr doing the ordinary business of the dairy. During this time they may be visited by men of the Kuudr clan, but neither by women nor by men of other clans. At the end of the month, on the Sunday after the new moon, the palikartmokh drives the buffaloes (now called ponir, festival buffaloes) to Kuudr, taking with him the puthpep and the dairy vessels. When the people at Kuudr see the dairyman coming with the ponir, they leave the village and all go to Kiudr, which the buffaloes have just left. There they hold a feast to which many people of other clans, both men and women, are invited.
When the palikartmokh reaches Kuudr, he purifies the dairy as he had done at Kiudr and puts the vessels in their places.
Certain men of the clan then come, each with a new mu, and these vessels are laid by the side of the stones called keinkars and tashtikars in the wall of the pen. At Kuudr fifteen new mu should be brought by the fifteen heads of families of the Kuudr clan. The palikartmokh then purifies each mu with tudr bark in the usual way and places the [[170]]vessels on the patatmar of the dairy, after which he gives food to those who have provided the vessels.
The palikartmokh with his companion or companions then stay at Kuudr for a month, when, again on a Sunday after the new moon, all the Kuudrol assemble at Kuudr and hold a feast. On that day a new palikartmokh is appointed for each dairy of the Kuudr clan. Each man goes through the usual ordination ceremony and then receives one of the new mu containing some of the new pep, which he takes to his dairy. Each new dairyman also provides new dairy vessels, and, when he reaches his dairy, purifies the mu and the new dairy things in the way already described. He puts the vessels into the dairy and then goes to milk, taking some of the new pep in his milking-vessel, and thereafter matters go on as usual. Each new dairyman fasts while going to his dairy with the new pep, although the rest of the people are feasting.
Those who remain at Kuudr bury the mu in which the pep was brought from Kwirg. It is buried by the side of the pen, under a tree called teikhkwadiki.
The ceremony of making new pep is carried out on the same lines in all dairies, but usually it is less complicated and fewer villages have to be visited than in the case of the Kuudrol. It seems that there is a tendency in some clans to perform the ceremony less rigidly than of old. Thus, the Kars people used to go to Keshker for new pep, but now they perform the ceremony at Kars itself, so that the migration to a new place with its attendant ceremonial is avoided.
There are certain differences in the procedure in the case of Teivali and Tarthar clans. One, the necessity for new pep after the funeral of a male, has been already mentioned.
Another difference is that there is a buried mu for each kind of dairy, so that a clan which has two or three kinds of dairy will have two or three mu buried in the pen. If it is the mu belonging to the wursuli which is broken or tampered with, the ceremony is performed by the wursol, who takes earth from the footprints of one of the wursulir. If the mu of the kudrpali is injured, the kudrpalikartmokh performs the ceremony, taking earth from the footprints of one of the other [[171]]kinds of sacred buffaloes. Thus at Kars he takes it from the prints of the martir.
At Kanòdrs new pep has to be made at a place called Kautarmad, which I could not identify. It is a long way from Kanòdrs, but the people have to go there because the god Kwoto used to make pep there. There is one feature peculiar to the ceremony for this clan. Earth has to be taken from a certain spot from which it was taken by Kwoto, and this earth is mixed with that taken from the footprints of the buffalo.
Another special feature of the Kanòdrs dairy is connected with the buried mu and is probably the result of the fact that this dairy is now only occupied occasionally. When the pohkartpol leaves the dairy on vacating office, he takes up the buried mu, pours into it a small quantity of pep, and reburies the vessel, covering it on the top with a stone. When he resumes office, he takes up the mu and purifies it with the two kinds of earth used in the full ceremony, and puts the pep which has been buried into his milking-vessel when he goes out to milk for the first time. As in other Tarthar clans, the full ceremony of pepkaricha is only carried out when the mu is broken or stolen, and after the funeral of a male.
A characteristic feature of Toda dairy procedure is the coagulation of the milk before it is churned. This coagulation occurs in a few hours without the addition of rennet or other special coagulating agent, the milk drawn in the morning being nearly always solid at the time of the afternoon churning. This rapid coagulation of the milk is almost certainly assisted By the added buttermilk or pep, the curdling being probably an acid coagulation set up or hastened by the addition of the sour buttermilk. If this were the case, it might be expected that habitual failure of the milk to coagulate might be regarded as a reason for making new pep, and I therefore inquired carefully into this point. It was quite clear, however, that delay in the coagulation was not looked upon as a reason for the ceremony. If there was habitual delay, it was customary to consult the diviners, and they always gave one of two reasons for the delay: either that it was due to the action of a sorcerer, or that the dairyman had committed one [[172]]of the offences against the dairy of which a list is given on p. 295.
If delay were said to be due to the first cause, the sorcerer would be invited to the village, entertained with food, and induced to remove his spell; if to the second cause, the dairyman would have to perform the irnörtiti or similar ceremony; but there was never any question of making new pep, the necessity for this ceremony being entirely dependent on the condition of the buried dairy vessel.