The Value of the Genealogical Record
In the succeeding chapters I shall show the value of the genealogies in working out the nature of the system of kinship and in providing statistical material for the study of the marriage regulations. The greater part of my work on the social aspect of the life of the Todas is based on material derived from the genealogies; or perhaps I should rather say that most of the information I give has been checked, if not entirely obtained, by means of the genealogies.
I wish, however, to draw attention here to a far wider use of the genealogies in anthropological investigation. They bring a concrete element into anthropological work which greatly facilitates inquiry. The lower one goes in the social or intellectual scale in mankind, the greater difficulty is there in dealing with abstractions. The savage mind is almost wholly occupied with the concrete. Discuss his laws of inheritance with him, and you probably soon become hopelessly entangled in misunderstanding. Take a number of concrete cases, and his memory will enable him to heap instance upon instance showing how property was inherited in given cases. Similarly, in ceremonies, ask the savage to give an account of a given ceremony, and he probably omits many essential points, not because he forgets them, but because they are so familiar to him that he thinks you, like himself, take them for granted. Ask him to tell you exactly what A and B did when they performed a given ceremony, and he forms a mental picture of A and B going through the ceremony, and tells you exactly what they did and how they did it. When another individual comes into the ceremony, he too comes in as a concrete personage, and his sayings and doings are faithfully recorded.
The Todas are so intelligent that the genealogies were not so essential an instrument of investigation as was the case in Torres Straits, but they were nevertheless of enormous value in giving concreteness to the accounts of the Toda ceremonies. The Todas certainly gave fuller and more faithful accounts of their ceremonies when they described actual events, but such descriptions would have been of little value to me if I had [[466]]not had my pedigrees as a guide. An account of a Toda funeral, for instance, with its many dramatis personæ would probably have baffled my powers of comprehension if I had not had my book of genealogies for reference.
I always worked with this book by my side whenever I was investigating any ceremonial in which the social side of life was concerned. I asked for a description of some ceremony recently performed of which the memories were fresh. The chief actors in the ceremony were always mentioned by name; and whenever a name occurred, I looked up the clan and family of the person in question and noticed his relationship to other persons who had taken part in the ceremony. The actors in the ceremony were thus real people to me as well as to my informants, and the account of the ceremony proceeded with the maximum of interest and the minimum of fatigue both to myself and to my informants.
The method had the further advantage that it afforded me the means of checking the accounts which I was given. An informant inclined to be careless soon found that I had the means of checking his narrative on many points; and some of the people, not knowing the source of my information, credited me with more knowledge than I really possessed, and were in consequence extremely careful not to wander from the truth, or perhaps I should rather say, not to tell me anything of which they were not absolutely certain. I have already stated my belief that the Todas are very truthful and that they err far more often from carelessness than intention, but the fact that I had a fund of knowledge of which the source was somewhat mysterious probably saved me from having much of my time wasted by careless or inaccurate information.
I think that my familiarity with the names and circumstances of the people helped me to acquire their confidence. Among the more simple people of Torres Straits, I used sometimes to let a man know, much to his astonishment, that I was acquainted with some of the affairs of his family. Among the more reticent Todas, it seemed to me unwise to do this, but, on meeting for the first time a man with whom I was already acquainted through the genealogies, I often referred to something I knew he had done, perhaps to the skilful [[467]]way he had caught the buffalo at such and such a funeral, and the fact that I knew something of him and his doings often helped to put us at once on friendly terms, and at the same time put him on his mettle to give me the best of the knowledge at his command.