The Position of Women
There is no doubt that women have a subordinate position in the Toda community. The ceremonial of the dairy has a predominant place in the lives and thoughts of the people, and the exclusion of women from any share in this ceremonial must have influenced the attitude of the [[567]]community towards the sex. The laws regulating the relations of the dairymen with women also can hardly have contributed to raise the esteem in which they are held. The special ceremonies in which women are concerned involve various disabilities due to the ideas of impurity connected with these ceremonies. The seclusion-hut of a woman has attached to it the same ideas of impurity which attach to a corpse or its relics.
Not only are women excluded from any share in the work of the dairies connected with the sacred buffaloes, but they are also prohibited from any part in the milking of the ordinary buffaloes or in the churning of their milk, which is performed solely by males in a part of the hut with which women have nothing to do. It seems that at one time women had the one function of tending the buffaloes at the time of calving, but even this is no longer allowed them.
In other household matters, the duties of women are very limited in scope. Their chief work is the pounding and sifting of grain, the cleaning of the hut, and the decoration of clothing. I am doubtful whether they are allowed to cook, at any rate to cook food in which milk forms one of the ingredients. With such occupations as divining and sorcery they have nothing to do, but one woman has the reputation of possessing the powers of healing which belong to the utkòren.
I could not learn of any matters of social importance in which women are consulted. When collecting genealogies in Torres Straits, I found that women were often repositories of this important branch of knowledge, but I received no indication that this was the case with the Toda women, though I cannot say definitely that they may not have possessed some knowledge of this and cognate subjects.
Though thus unimportant in ceremonial and of little influence in the regulation of social affairs, women have nevertheless much freedom. In general social intercourse the two sexes always seemed to be on the best of terms, and I never saw or heard anything to indicate that women are treated harshly or contemptuously. [[568]]
In my psychological tests it certainly seemed to me the general intelligence of the women was very much lower than that of the men. Some of the younger women were as acute and intelligent as the men, but the older women seemed to me hopelessly stupid. They did not try to give their minds to the tasks I set them with anything approaching the keenness and interest shown by the men, and again and again I failed to obtain results of any value in tests which men understood readily.
It seems probable that the intelligence of the two sexes is not appreciably different in youth, but that the social life of the women does nothing to develop this intelligence and everything to force its exercise into the narrowest channels.
It might, I think, be expected that polyandry would be associated with a subordinate position of woman, and there can be no doubt that the Todas show the association of the two conditions.
When a woman marries she becomes of the same clan as her husband, and this is a matter of some importance in connexion with religious and social ceremonial. Thus, in the funeral ceremonies of a woman, the choice of appropriate day and place, of the people who are to take part in the funeral rites and other features of the ceremonial are determined, not by the clan of the woman’s father, but by that of her husband, and this even when the marriage itself forms part of the funeral ceremonies.
While I was on the hills, the widow, Kiuneimi (3), who had been living with her father at Nòdrs, died. Her husbands had belonged to Kanòdrs, and as a member of this clan she should have been taken to its burning-ground. This was, however, so far from Nòdrs that it was decided not to go there, but to hold the funeral ceremonies near the place where she had died. The proper funeral place for Nòdrs women could not, however, be used, for she belonged to another clan, and the body was therefore taken to a village which was not a true funeral place, and so no laws were infringed.
The funeral of Sinerani (p. 391) is an excellent example which shows how all the details of a funeral ceremony are [[569]]dependent on the transference of a young girl to the clan of a boy who acts as husband to the corpse. By her marriage to Keinba, the dead girl became a member of the Keadrol, and her funeral should have been held at the burning-ground of this clan. Many of the features of the ceremonies were in accordance with this change of clan, and since all were not so, the various mishaps which occurred at the funeral were ascribed by the Todas to the departure from prescribed custom. [[570]]
[1] A full account of the two divisions and of their relation to one another will be given in [Chapter XXIX]. [↑]
[2] Another name for a man of no clan is pazuli, but I do not know whether this is merely a synonym of padmokh or whether a man can lose the right of belonging to a clan for any other reason than that described above. [↑]
[4] A meeting of the council is often spoken of as kûtkûdriti, “the assembly assembles,” or kûtpuniti, “the assembly makes.” [↑]
[5] It seemed clear that the term naim is also applied to these clan councils. [↑]
[6] For a full account of this controversy see the Manual of the Nilagiri District, by H. B. Grigg, Madras, 1880. See also Thurston, Bull. i. 182. [↑]
[7] I am not clear on whom the expense of rebuilding and repairing a dairy would fall when the dairy is situated at a village occupied by one family only, and used exclusively for buffaloes which are the private property of that family. [↑]
[8] On p. [70] I have given an example of the ownership of sacred buffaloes in the Kars clan. [↑]
CHAPTER XXIV
ARTS AND AMUSEMENTS
The arts of life among the Todas are extremely simple. The fact that their agriculture is done for them by the Badagas and that all the objects they use in their daily life are made for them by the Kotas leaves them free to devote their whole attention to the care of the buffalo and the dairy. This employment has acquired so ceremonial a character that, having dealt with the ceremonies of the Todas, we find little left to consider in connexion with the regulation of the affairs of daily life.
The artistic side of life among the Todas is but little developed. Their interest is so much absorbed in ceremony that little is left for the development of art, even of a primitive kind. The decorative arts are of the simplest and are directed only to the adornment of the clothing or the person, and even here we shall find that the methods of wearing the clothes or the hair are quite as much influenced by ceremonial as by æsthetic considerations. In their amusements again we shall find that the influence of ceremonial is so great, that many of the games are merely imitations of ceremonial occupations.
I have included in this chapter an account of the ideas which are held about the heavenly bodies, the primitive astronomy of the people. To the Todas, though in a less degree than to many people of low culture, it is the sun, moon, and stars which are the chief objects of those observations and speculations which are the beginnings of science. [[571]]