The pohkartpol of Kanòdrs has to take his food with very special precautions. He sits on the wall of his dairy and his hand must not touch his mouth nor the leaf-cup his lips. At the ti the drinking of buttermilk has become a definite ceremony in which the kaltmokh pours out drink for the palol with prescribed formulæ, but, strangely enough, the palol does not suffer from the same restrictions against touching his mouth as the pohkartpol of Kanòdrs, though the latter holds an office which in most ways is distinctly less sacred than that of the palol.
The clothing of each grade is also regulated. Perhaps the most important feature here is the use of the garments called tuni. These are made of dark grey cloth of a quite different kind from that of the ordinary clothes worn by the Todas. [[237]]The garments are procured from the Badagas, and cloth of the same kind, called än, is used to enwrap the corpse in the funeral ceremonies. It is mentioned as the ordinary clothing of a woman in the legend of Kwoten, and is almost certainly the ancient clothing of the Todas still persisting in ceremonial in connexion with the dead and in the dairy ritual.
The tuni is only worn by the higher grades of the dairyman-priesthood and by the palikartmokh of the Teivaliol. The palol wears tuni only, both his loin-cloth and his mantle being of this material. The kaltmokh has no need for a tuni, for when he is engaged in his work at the ti he has to be naked, and when away from the ti and in the sleeping hut he wears a small piece of tuni, the petuni, in his girdle, the piece of cloth marking the difference between the full kaltmokh and the perkursol.
The wursol, the kugvalikartmokh, and the Teivali palikartmokh only wear the tuni when actually engaged in the dairy work and leave it inside the dairy at other times. I am doubtful whether the pohkartpol of Kanòdrs resembles the palol or the lower grades in this respect.
Although the palikartmokh of the tarvali and the kudrpali never wear the tuni, a small piece of this cloth is put in the girdle during the ordination ceremonies, and this may be a relic of a time when every dairyman wore the tuni.[2] In the secret language (see [Chap. XXV]) the word petuni is used in one place as the equivalent of ‘uniform,’ and this seems to indicate that the petuni is regarded as the badge of a dairyman.
The use of the leaves and bark of the sacred tudr tree is another feature which distinguishes different dairies. In the tarvali it is, so far as I know, not used at all. In the kudrpali it is only used in the pepeirthti ceremony. The wursol uses tudr in his ordination ceremonies, but not in the ordinary ritual of his dairy, nor is it used in the daily ritual of the ti dairy, though largely used in the purification of the dairy and of the dairy vessels, and in the ordination ceremonies of the palol. [[238]]
The use of tudr in the ordination ceremonies is only allowed to the members of the Teivali division and of the Melgars clan of the Tartharol.
Special kinds of dairy or special dairies may have features peculiar to themselves; thus the pepeirthti ceremony, in which the dairyman beats on the patat with a piece of tudr bark, is only performed at the kudrpali; the prescription of nakedness when milking is confined to the kudrpalikartmokh; the special method of wearing the putkuli open in front when going to the buffaloes is only practised by the wursol, and the method of taking food sitting on the wall of the dairy and throwing the food into the mouth is peculiar to the pohkartpol of Kanòdrs.
One feature of interest in the dairy organisation is the existence of different names at different dairies for the dairy products, and for the various objects used at the dairy or in connexion with the dairy ceremonies. The chief differences are found on comparing the village dairy with the ti, nearly every object having a different name in the two places, though occasionally a peculiarity of nomenclature may be confined to one dairy, as at Kanòdrs, where milk is called persin, the name of the churning vessel of the ti. As a general rule it seems that the name used in the village dairy is the same as that in ordinary use; thus, the dairy vessels used in the house for the milk of the ordinary buffaloes are known by the same names as those of the village dairy.
The use of special names in the more sacred dairies is probably connected with their high degree of sanctity. The names of the dairy vessels of the village are in common use, and it would doubtless seem sacrilegious that the names of the vessels of the ti should be thus in everyone’s mouth. Consequently nearly every object used in the ceremonial of the ti dairy has a special name, and in the ordinary life of the Todas these words are probably never uttered.