CHAPTER XVIII.
THE INHABITANTS OF THE NEILGHERRIES.
There are five different races now settled upon the Blue Mountains:—
| 1. | Bergers, | the mass of the population; supposed to be about ten thousand. | |
| 2. | Erulars, | } | The wild men dwelling on the woody sides of the hills; about two thousand. |
| 3. | Cooroombars, | } | |
| 4. | Kothurs, | } | The old inhabitants and owners of the land; about three thousand. |
| 5. | Todas, | } |
The Bergers, Vaddacars,[180] or, as the Todas call them, the Marves, are an uninteresting race of Shudra Hindoos, that immigrated from the plains in the days of Hyder or Tippoo. They attempt to invest their expatriation with the dignity of antiquity by asserting that upwards of four centuries ago they fled to the hills from the persecutions of Moslem tyrants. This caste affects the Lingait or Shaivya[181] form of Hinduism, contains a variety of sub-families, speaks a debased dialect of modern Canarese, and still retains, in the fine climate of the Neilgherries, the dark skin, the degraded expression of countenance, and the puny figure, that characterise the low caste native of Southern India. They consider the wild men of the hills as magicians, and have subjected themselves to the Todas, in a social as well as a religious point of view, by paying a tax for permission to occupy their lands. They have been initiated in some of the mysterious practices of the mountaineers, and have succeeded in infecting the minds of their instructors with all the rigid exclusiveness and silly secrecy of their own faith. It redounds, however, to their credit that they have not imitated the debauched and immoral habits which their lords have learned by intercourse with strangers. There is nothing remarkable in their dress, their manners, or their habitations; they employ themselves in cultivating the soil and acting as porters, beater labourers, and gardeners.
The Erulars[182] and Cooroombars[183] are utter savages, very much resembling the Rankaris of Maharatta Land and the Bheels of Candeish. Their language, a kind of Malayalim, proves that they were originally inhabitants of the plains, but nothing more is known about them. They dwell in caves, clefts in the rocks, and miserable huts, built upon the slopes of the mountains, and they support themselves by cultivation and selling wax and honey. In appearance they are diminutive, dark men, distinguishable from the highest order of Quadrumana by the absence of pile upon their bodies, and a knack of walking on their hind legs. Their dress is limited to about a palm’s breadth of coarse cotton cloth, and their only weapon a little knife, which hangs from a bit of string to the side. They are rarely seen. When riding about the wild parts of the hills you occasionally meet one of these savages, who starts and stands for a moment, staring at you through his bush of matted hair, in wonder, or rather awe, and then plunges headlong into the nearest thicket. Man is the only enemy the poor wretches have reason to fear. By the Todas, as well as the Bergers, they are looked upon as vicious magicians, who have power of life and death over men and beasts, of causing disease, and conjuring tigers from the woods to assist them; they are propitiated by being cruelly beaten and murdered, whenever a suitable opportunity presents itself. The way in which this people will glide through the wildest woods, haunted by all manner of ferocious foes, proves how fine and acute the human senses are capable of becoming when sharpened by necessity and habit.
In investigating the origin of the Kothurs, Cohatars,[184] or Cuvs, the usual obstacles,—a comparatively unknown language, and the want of a written character,—oppose the efforts of inquirers. The palpable affinity, however, between the Toda and Kothur dialects, proves that both the races were originally connected, and the great change[185] that has taken place in the languages, shows that this connection was by no means recently dissolved. Why or how the separation took place, even tradition[186] does not inform us; but the degraded customs, as well as the appearance, dress, and ornaments of the Kothurs point most probably to a loss of caste, in consequence of some unlawful and polluting action.
The Kothurs show great outward respect to the Todas, and the latter return the compliment more substantially by allowing their dependants a part of the tax which they receive from the Bergers. They are an industrious and hard-working race; at once cultivators and musicians, carpenters and potters, bricklayers, and artizans in metal as well as in wood. Their villages composed of little huts, built with rough wattling, are almost as uncleanly as their persons. Every considerable settlement contains two places of worship, for the men do not pray with the women; in some hamlets they have set up curiously carved stones, which they consider sacred, and attribute to them the power of curing diseases, if the member affected be only rubbed against the talisman. They will devour any carrion, even when in a semi-putrid state; the men are fond of opium, and intoxicating drinks; they do not, however, imitate the Todas in their illicit way of gaining money wherewith to purchase their favourite luxuries.
As the Toda[187] race is, in every way, the most remarkable of the Neilgherry inhabitants, so it has been its fate to be the most remarked. Abundant observation has been showered down upon it; from observation sprang theories, theories grew into systems. The earliest observer remarking the Roman noses, fine eyes, and stalwart frames of the savages, drew their origin from Italy,—not a bad beginning! Another gentleman argued from their high Arab features, that they are probably immigrants from the Shat el Arab,[188] but it is apparent that he used the subject only to inform the world of the length and breadth of his wanderings. Captain Harkness discovered that they were aborigines. Captain Congreve determined to prove that the Todas are the remnants of the Celto-Scythian race, which selon lui, inhabited the plains, and were driven up to the hills before the invading Hindoo; he even spelt the word “Thautawars,” to sound more Scythic. He has treated the subject with remarkable acuteness, and displayed much curious antiquarian lore; by systematically magnifying every mote of resemblance,[189] and, by pertinaciously neglecting or despising each beam of dissimilitude,[190] together with a little of the freedom in assertion allowed to system-spinners, he has succeeded in erecting a noble edifice, which lacks nothing but a foundation. The metaphysical German traced in the irreverent traditions[191] of the barbarians concerning the Deity, a metaphorical allusion to the creature’s rebellion against his Creator; the enthusiastic Freemason warped their savage mystifications into a semblance of his pet mysteries. And the grammar-composing Anglo-Indian discovered unknown niceties in their language, by desiring any two Todas to do a particular thing, then by asking them how they expressed such action, and, lastly, by recording the random answer as a dual form of the verb.
When every one theorises so will we. The Todas are merely a remnant of the old Tamulian tribes originally inhabiting the plains, and subsequently driven up to the mountains by some event,[192] respecting which history is silent. Our opinion is built upon the rock of language.
It has been proved[193] that the Toda tongue is an old and obsolete dialect of the Tamul, containing many vocables directly derived from Sanscrit,[194] but corrupted into