About the seventh month of pregnancy a ceremony is performed, which is called pursütpimi, “bow (and arrow) we touch.” This ceremony begins on the evening before the day of the new moon. The pregnant woman goes into a wood about a furlong from the village at which she is living. She is accompanied by her husband, or if she has several, by the husband who is to give the bow and arrow. The husband cuts a triangular niche in a tree,[5] of which the Toda name is kers. The niche is large enough to contain a lamp, and is made a few feet above the ground, so that it is about on a level with the eyes of the woman when she is sitting on the ground. Ghi is then put in an earthenware lamp, which is lighted and placed in the niche. Some sort of arrangement is made on the tree to provide a covering under which the woman is later to sit, but I could not satisfy myself exactly how this is done. Husband and wife then go to find the wood called puv,[6] and the grass called nark.[7] A bow (purs) is made from the wood by stripping off a piece of bark and stretching it across the bent stick so as to [[320]]form the string of the bow.[8] The grass is put in the little artificial bow so as to resemble an arrow.
The husband and wife return to the tree with the bow and arrow, and the relatives of the pair come to the spot. The father of the woman promises a young female calf, the offspring of a given buffalo, which he names, saying after the name pòl todein, or “calf I have given”; thus, Kemars pòl todein would mean, “I have given a calf, the daughter of Kemars.”[9] Then husband and wife salute certain people by bowing before them and raising their feet to the forehead (kalmelpudithti). The wife salutes in this way all her male relatives and those of her husband older than herself—i.e., she salutes those whom she would salute in this way under normal circumstances (see [Chap. XXI]). The husband salutes all the male[10] relatives of his wife, irrespective of their being older or younger than himself.
The wife then sits down beneath the tree in front of the lamp, and the husband gives her the imitation bow and arrow. In doing so he says the kwarzam of his village followed by the words “Teikirzi Tirsk, pursvat!”—i.e., “To Teikirzi and Tirshti, hold the bow and arrow!” The wife replies, “purs iveru?”—“What is the name of the bow and arrow?”—and the husband then gives the name of the bow and arrow, which is different for each clan. The question and answer are each time repeated so that they are said three times. The formulæ repeated on this occasion differ for each clan in the kwarzam of the village and in the name of the bow. For the Kuudrol the latter was pursgârûv, so that a Kuudr man would first say, “Atthkar Teikirzi Tirsk pursvat,” and in answer to his wife’s question he would answer, “Pursgârûv”. The only clan which does not say the kwarzam of the village is that of Nòdrs, where only the names of the gods are mentioned.
I only obtained the special names of the bow from three clans—those of Kuudr, Kars and Taradr. That of [[321]]Kuudr has already been given; the name of the Kars bow is pulkiûkhm and that of Taradr pursüdsk. When the husband gives the bow and arrow to his wife, she raises it to her forehead and then, holding it in her right hand, turns to gaze at lamp in the tree. She looks for an hour or until the lamp goes out, and then all present[11] go to the village for food, except the husband and wife. The man makes a fireplace, lights a fire and cooks jaggery and rice in a new pot, using only ghi, and not butter, to mix the rice, and while he is doing this his wife ties up certain kinds of food in a cloth and puts the bundle under the tree. This food includes rice, ragi, barley, wheat, the grain (?) called kirsi (see p. [266]), some jaggery and salt. Some pieces of honeycomb are also placed on leaves, which are then thrown away. When the food cooked by the man is ready both husband and wife eat together.
Later the relatives return from the village and all pass the night in the wood, the relatives keeping at some distance from the married pair. At daybreak on the following day, the day of the new moon, all return to the village and feast, food being given to all visitors.
Several of those who have described this ceremony have included in the description an account of “tying the tali.”[12] So far as I could ascertain nothing of the kind is done. I inquired into the point many times and all agreed that it formed no part of the Toda ceremony and that its equivalent was the giving of the bow and arrow. More than one man spoke of the pursütpimi ceremony as “tying the tali,” but the latter expression is merely the equivalent of “marriage ceremony,” and the very man who used this expression denied vehemently that tying the tali or anything else round [[322]]the neck of the woman formed any part of the Toda ceremony.
It seemed, however, that after pursütpimi the woman is allowed to resume her ornaments, which she has been prohibited from wearing up to this time, and it is possible that this resumption of her ornaments may have been mistaken for “tying the tali.” It seemed clear, however, that the ornaments were not put on by the husband, nor did the resumption of the ornaments partake in any way of a ceremonial character.
As I hoped to have a chance of witnessing this ceremony during my visit, I did not thresh out the details of pursütpimi as thoroughly as those of most other ceremonies and my account is not as complete as I could wish.
The ceremony of pursütpimi is of the greatest importance from the social point of view and, as we shall see later, the fatherhood of the child depends entirely upon it. The man who gives the bow and arrow is the father of the child for all social purposes, and is regarded as such even if he has had nothing to do with the woman before the ceremony.
The ceremony must always be performed during the first pregnancy of a woman and it takes place in any succeeding pregnancy only when it is desired for any reason to alter the fatherhood of the children. One of the most serious scandals in Toda society is the birth of a child when the mother has not been through this ceremony.