Perhaps the nearest approach to an appeal to gods in the prayer is in the words at the end, in which the names of certain gods are mentioned, followed by the words âtham idith emk tânenmâ, “for their sake may it be well for us.”
There is little doubt that the Todas offer prayers to their gods in their ordinary daily life, altogether apart from the dairy ritual. I was told by one man that when anyone leaves an etudmad he should pray that he may return safely, and in this case my informant said that he prayed to Teikirzi. Unfortunately I did not ask the exact form of the prayer, and do not know whether the goddess was invoked by name or whether kwarzam were uttered of the same form as in the prayer of the dairy. We may, however, be confident that the idea of supplication to the gods is not foreign to the Toda mind.
We shall see later that in the formulæ used in Toda sorcery, the names of gods are mentioned, followed by the same word idith which is used in the dairy formulæ. In the magical formulæ the evidence of appeal to deities is somewhat stronger than in the case of the dairy formulæ, [[230]]which are certainly of a religious character. It seems most likely that the word idith was at one time used especially in connexion with the names of gods, and carried with it some idea of supplication. Gradually other sacred objects were included in the prayer, the same form being used for them as for the gods, this inclusion being prompted by the belief that the mention of any sacred object might help to promote the efficacy of the prayer. Later, when any mysterious and seemingly miraculous incident occurred at a village, it seems to have become the custom to commemorate it in the prayer.
It is quite clear that at the present time the earlier portion of the prayer, consisting of the kwarzam, is regarded as more important than the latter portion, which reads like the actual prayer. I suspect even that in practice the prayer proper is often omitted, or that only the first two words, tanenma, tarmama, are said. There certainly seemed to be no very rigorous laws as to the exact number or order of the clauses of this part of the prayer. The earlier portion, on the other hand, is very strictly regulated, and the order in which the kwarzam are to be uttered is definitely prescribed. Certainly there is far more reticence in connexion with the kwarzam, and this may safely be taken to indicate that a higher degree of sanctity attaches to them than to the words of the prayer proper.
It is probable that the alteration in the relative importance attached to the two parts of the prayer would have to go little further in order to produce a state of things in which the Toda dairyman would use the first parts of the formulæ only, and an anthropologist visiting the Todas at this stage would find them using formulæ which would not be recognisable as prayer.
If, at the same time, the process of forgetting their mythology should also have advanced, the Todas would then provide an excellent example of a people using in their religious ritual meaningless forms of words, and the Toda kwarzam seem to furnish one way in which people may come to use such meaningless forms. [[231]]
[1] Erd means two, and this translation is a free rendering of the Toda words, though it probably conveys the proper meaning. [↑]