The milking is done by a Melgars man for all the Tarthar clans except that of Kwòdrdoni, where the buffalo is milked by a man of that clan. I do not know why this clan forms an exception to the general rule, but Kwòdrdoni is one of the most remote Toda villages, and it is possible[3] that the difficulty of getting a Melgars man to come to them has led the people to do this part of the ceremony themselves.
For fifteen days after leaving the seclusion-hut, the woman must drink buttermilk procured from a Melgars dairy, and must take food called peritòr,[4] viz., grain or rice which has been cooked in Melgars buttermilk. At the end of the fifteen days she gives up taking the peritòr, but continues to drink Melgars buttermilk for another fifteen days.
For a woman of the Teivaliol, the ceremony of urvatpimi is much more simple. No pülpali is made, and the husband fetches two pieces of reed only, which are called ertatpun. They are half filled with water, which is poured from one over the back of a calf into the other as in the Tarthar ceremony, and the woman drinks in the same way, but this is immediately followed by the hand-burning, and the rite with the two sticks and the invocation of Pirn and Piri is entirely omitted. [[318]]
The Teivali ceremony on coming out of the puzhars takes place in the early morning. A man (not the husband) fetches water from the ars nipa in a brass vessel called achok. He takes the vessel to a pregnant buffalo and tries to milk the buffalo over the vessel of water. Although no milk comes, the attempt is supposed to convert the water in the vessel into milk. The woman then leaves the seclusion-hut and is given two leaves (parsers), of which she makes a leaf cup, and the man pours the water which is supposed to be milk into the cup three times, and the woman drinks each time after raising the cup to her forehead. The woman and her companion then go to another special hut, called aliars, and stay there for a week, or if there is in the village a house of the kind called merkalars (see p. [29]), the woman may go to the hinder part of this house instead of to the aliars, but in this case all the household things have to be removed from the merkalars.
At the end of the week in the aliars or merkalars, there follows the ceremony called marthk maj atpimi. Early in the morning the palikartmokh brings penmaj (i.e., butter and buttermilk) in an earthenware pot and two firebrands (tütkuli) to the front of the hut, puts the brands on the ground, lays the pot on them for a time, and then puts the pot on the raised platform in front of the hut. He then goes away, and a woman brings a brass vessel (terg) and transfers the butter and buttermilk to the terg, and gives it to the woman, who drinks and goes to the ordinary hut.
While the woman is in the aliars or merkalars, she is not confined to the dwelling as when in the puzhars, but may go about. She must not, however, do any household work, nor go to any other village, nor to the ordinary huts of her own village. If in the hinder part of the merkalars, she must not go to the fore part of the house.
Thus the ritual of the Tartharol differs greatly from that of the Teivaliol in these ceremonies. The rite of making an artificial dairy is entirely omitted by the Teivaliol, and, as we shall see later, it is also omitted in a similar ceremony performed after childbirth, though the pieces of reed used to pour water over the calf are named after dairy vessels in both cases. I could obtain no explanation of the difference of [[319]]procedure, nor of the omission of the invocation of Pirn and Piri by the Teivali division. It is possible that this latter ceremony has been borrowed, but if so, there is no obvious reason why it should have been borrowed by one division, and not by the other.
In the ceremonies accompanying the return to ordinary life, it is perhaps natural that the Melgars man should only take part in the proceedings of his own division. The other chief difference in the procedure of the two divisions is that the return takes place in two stages among the Teivaliol, while the Tarthar woman goes directly from the puzhars to the ordinary hut. I was told that the difference was connected with the fact that the Tarthar women drank milk, whilst the Teivali women did not, but I could not discover why this should lead to a difference of procedure.