Then come the names of Pithioteu and Ön, followed by
âth these ûvòdin all before kati tie vaiumâ. keep may.
The utpol then takes a piece of ragged cloth in which he ties the three stones and hides them in the thatch of the hut. If a buffalo has been lost it will come back the next day, and even if it remains in the wood no tiger would touch it while the stones are in the thatch. When the buffalo returns the stones are taken out and thrown away.
All the remedies so far described resemble one another in that they are applied by one of the people called utkòren. The following remedy is applied by the sufferer himself. If a man is frightened in any way, as by a sudden noise when he is passing along a road, he will go home and put the hoe (kudali) and a stone called neilikal into the fire till the hoe is red hot. He puts the hoe and stones into a brass vessel called terg and pours on water. He then covers himself entirely with his cloak and remains covered till the water in the vessel ceases to bubble, when he opens his cloak, drinks water from the vessel three times, and throws the rest away.
There was some difference of opinion as to the use of the stone called neilikal at ordinary times. It was said first to have been used for making fire before matches were introduced, and there seems to be no doubt that fire was sometimes made in this way. Others said that the neilikal was used for sharpening iron tools. The only neilikal I saw was at Nidrsi and this was a large piece of quartz, and there seemed to be no doubt that this had at one time been used for making fire.
In one of the methods of sorcery which have been described it will be remembered that human hair is used. The Todas take the same kind of precautions about hair and nail-parings which are so widely spread throughout the world, but the reasons for the precautions differed from those usually given. I was told that the Todas do not ordinarily cut their hair, but the heads of children are shaved and adults also shave their heads on special occasions. The hair removed [[269]]at these times is hidden in bushes or hollows in the rocks, and the reason given is that it may not be taken by crows.
Nail-parings are buried in the ground, and this is done in order that they may not be eaten by the buffaloes, for “nails are poisonous to buffaloes,” who will die or become ill if they find them when grazing.
There was some difference of opinion as to what was done with the hair cut off at the ceremony called tersamptpimi (see p. 333). It was clear, however, that care was taken that it should not be eaten by crows, for if crows obtained any of the hair first cut from a child’s head the child would suffer from shaking of some kind.
Both at the first head-shaving and at the tersamptpimi ceremony special bangles are put round the wrist of the child, and these are certainly of the nature of charms, for it is believed that the child would fall ill if they were not used.
The Todas believe in certain injurious influences which they class together under the name of pudrtvuti,[15] but I was able to obtain very little information about them, and I suspect that belief in these influences is largely of recent growth and due to contact with Hinduism.