The Todas

by W. H. R. Rivers

The description of Toda life to be given in this book is the outcome of an attempt to apply rigorous methods in the investigation of sociology and religion. In the brief time which was at my disposal, it was essential to employ methods of investigation which would enable me to tell with some certainty whether I was obtaining accurate and trustworthy information. Two great sources of error in anthropological investigation are the dependence on the evidence of only a few individuals and the necessity of paying for information.

The first source of error was easily avoided, and I was able to obtain my information from a large body of witnesses, usually independently of one another. As regards the second source, the Todas are inveterate beggars, and are now thoroughly accustomed to receive payment for every service rendered to the European, even of the most trivial kind. Payment for information was inevitable, but I [[8]]minimised the danger by arranging that every man who came to me for work should receive a definite stipulated sum as a recompense for his time and trouble. I paid, not for the information, but for the trouble taken in giving a day or half a day to my service. As a general rule, anything like payment by results was carefully avoided. The sum paid was for coming to me, and if anyone was reluctant to talk about one subject, we passed on to another. Only at the end of my visit did I depart from this rule on a few occasions, and offered rewards to one or two individuals for certain items of information; but by this time I was in a position to judge the value of the information I received, and I only employed this procedure in cases where I knew the degree of trustworthiness of my informant.

Definite methods for the verification of the evidence obtained were the more necessary in my work among the Todas, in that I was obliged throughout to depend on interpreters. I was, however, very fortunate in my assistants. I first worked with a forest ranger, Albert Urrilla, who knew the Todas very well, though he had no special knowledge of their customs. He translated faithfully, and, owing to his wide knowledge of the hills, he was extremely useful in helping me to become familiar with the names and positions of the many Toda villages. After about six weeks’ work, Albert had to return to his forest duties, and, except for a week towards the end of my visit, the interpreter for the rest of my work was P. Samuel, a catechist who had been endeavouring for ten years to convert the Todas to Christianity, under the auspices of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society. When he began to work with me, Samuel had a very limited acquaintance with Toda ceremonies, but he was very familiar with the general life of the people, and was especially acquainted with the actual working of many of their social customs. Some of the Todas at first objected strongly to his helping me, probably on account of his missionary efforts, but he soon overcame this initial difficulty and gained the general confidence of the people. He was well acquainted with the Toda language, and soon became a very careful inquirer into customs and beliefs, and I owe much to [[9]]his help. He often obtained independent information about customs, and I was put by him on the track of much that might otherwise have escaped me. I had hoped that he would have continued to make inquiries for me after I had left the hills, and soon after my departure, he forwarded to me a very valuable account of a ceremony which I had not been able to witness and other important material. While with me he had discovered, however, how little progress he had made with the people during his ten years’ work among them, and how little he had known of their beliefs, and, soon after my departure, he asked to be given a new sphere of work and was removed to the Wainad, so that I have not had the opportunity for which I hoped, of making further inquiries into the many doubtful points which always arise in working up the notes of anthropological investigation.

One of the chief dangers arising from the use of interpreters is that they will often transmit, not what they are told, but their own versions of what they are told. They interpret the meaning as well as the words of the informants. I think I can be certain that this danger was avoided with both my interpreters, and that they gave me as accurate an account as possible of what the Todas told them. We always used the Toda names for all specific objects, individuals, and places, so that the information transmitted to me by the interpreters was often in such a form that nearly every noun was Toda in a setting of English verbs, adverbs, and pronouns. Thus, referring to one of my notebooks at random, I find the following: “After cleansing the poh in this manner, each palol puts salt in the ponmukeri, and takes it and the karpun to the upunkudi, taking also five pieces of tudrpül, five sprigs of puthimul, and a bundle of taf.” In fact, we habitually used so many Toda words that the Todas sometimes obviously knew the general drift of my questions before they were interpreted to them, and, similarly, I could often understand the general drift of the answer.

The first principle of my investigation was to obtain independent accounts from different people; I then compared these independent accounts and cross-examined into any discrepancies. The general result of this method was highly [[10]]satisfactory from the point of view of Toda veracity. The general agreement of the accounts obtained from different individuals was very striking, and, whenever discrepancies occurred, it was nearly always found that they were due either to misunderstanding or to differences in the practices of different sections of the Toda people. These differences are so great that in many cases it made a rigorous application of the method of direct corroboration impossible. There are distinct differences in the ceremonial and social customs of the two chief divisions of the Todas and some differences in the practices of different clans. In the investigation of the dairy ritual, there were found to be great differences in the practices of different dairies, and, for the practice of any one dairy, I had sometimes to be content with the information of one native only; but I did not content myself with such independent accounts till I had satisfied myself of the trustworthiness of the witness, and had learnt enough of the customs in question to be in a position to weigh the evidence. As regards the differences in the customs of different sections of the community, many of my informants were able to describe the practices not only of their own section but also of others.

After a time I managed to put myself on such terms with my chief informants that they were always ready to confess any deficiencies in their knowledge and would refer me to others whose special experience would make them more satisfactory informants. Occasionally, however, they carried this a little too far and pleaded ignorance of a subject when they were really only reluctant to reveal the more esoteric knowledge.

Still more important than this method of direct corroboration of independent accounts is what I may call the method of indirect corroboration. By this I mean the method of obtaining the same information in different ways. Often this indirect corroboration occurred accidentally. The whole of Toda ceremonial and social life forms such an intricate web of closely related practices that I rarely set out to investigate some one aspect of the life of the people without obtaining information bearing on many other wholly different [[11]]aspects, and the information so gained often afforded valuable corroboration of what I had been told on other occasions and by other individuals. Thus, in obtaining a prayer, various matters would arise which would confirm the accuracy of a legend obtained weeks earlier, or the investigation of a funeral custom would lead to the indirect corroboration of evidence concerning the regulation of marriage.

The most important way in which this method of indirect corroboration may be intentionally applied is by obtaining the same information first in an abstract form and then by means of a number of concrete instances. As an example of what I mean I may cite the method by which I inquired into the laws of inheritance of property. I first obtained an account of what was done in the abstract—of the laws governing the inheritance of houses, the division of the buffaloes and other property among the children, &c. Next I gave a number of hypothetical concrete instances; I took cases of men with so many children and so many buffaloes, and repeating the cases I found that my informant gave answers which were consistent not only with one another but also with the abstract regulations previously given. Finally I took real persons and inquired into what had actually happened when A or B died, and again obtained a body of information consistent in itself and agreeing with that already obtained.

By far my most valuable instrument of inquiry was that provided by the genealogical method.[6] The Todas preserve in their memories the names of all their ancestors and relatives extending back for several generations. In the tables given at the end of this book, I have recorded the pedigrees of seventy-two families, including the whole of the Toda community. Whenever the name of a man was mentioned in connexion with ceremony or social custom, his name was found in the genealogical record and the relation was ascertained in which he stood towards others participating in the ceremony or custom. By this means a concrete element was brought into the work which greatly facilitated inquiry. [[12]]Customs and rites were investigated by means of concrete examples in which the people taking part were real people to me as well as to my informants. In a later chapter I shall consider more fully the rôle of the genealogies in anthropological investigation. I mention them here to give a preliminary indication of the extensive part they played in my investigations. In order to give my readers the opportunity of following my method in some measure for themselves, I have given after the name of any individual mentioned in the book the number of the genealogical table in which his name occurs; thus “Kòdrner (7)” means that Kòdrner is a member of the family of which the pedigree is recorded in Table 7.

I have already referred to the trustworthiness of the evidence given by the Todas. I must now speak of the great differences in this respect shown by different individuals. Some would give full and elaborate accounts of ceremonial which close investigation showed to be, so far as one could tell, thoroughly accurate. Others gave careless and slovenly accounts, full of omissions and inaccuracies of detail, though they rarely said anything which was distinctly untrue.