FIG. 47.—SINTAGARS DRINKING AT THE ‘MARTHK MAJ ATPIMI’ CEREMONY. THE BOY, PONGUDR, IS SITTING BEHIND HER.
After being in the aliars or merkalars for a week there follows the ceremony of marthk maj atpimi, which is the same as that after the urvatpimi ceremony, with the addition that a representation of a hut is made with five or six sticks of [[329]]the kind called kwadrikurs. A boy goes within the imitation hut with a brass vessel (achok), and coming out gives this to the woman, who bows down (nersatiti) with her child at the threshold of the imitation hut. She then takes butter and buttermilk which have been placed by the palikartmokh on fire-brands (see p. [318]). After taking the mixture the woman goes to the dwelling-hut and resumes her ordinary duties.
It is the custom for everyone present on this occasion to give the child a four-anna piece (panm), and near relatives may often give more. A small loincloth (tadrp) provided with a pocket called terigs is put round the child, and into this pocket the money is put, this action receiving the name of terigs katpimi, or “we tie the terigs.” I did not hear of this pocket in any other ceremonies, and, so far as I know, it is only made in the tadrp used on this occasion, or if a constant feature of the tadrp, it has no other ceremonial use. So far as I am aware, the representation of a house is only used by the Teivaliol, while the imitation dairy made on going to the seclusion-hut after hand-burning and childbirth is only made by the Tartharol.
It is tempting to suppose that the water poured in these ceremonies from an imitation dairy vessel over the back of a calf is regarded as milk, and if this is so, the drinking of milk, real or fictitious, would be the essential feature of all these ceremonies. Further, the conjecture is natural that the drinking is designed to promote the formation and flow of milk in the woman. It is perhaps in favour of this that in the ceremony after childbirth, when this motive would be especially important, the water is poured over the hind-quarters of the calf and not over the middle of its back, as in the earlier ceremony. But if the promotion of lactation is the leading motive of the ceremonies, it is difficult to see why a buffalo in full milk should not have been chosen instead of a two-year-old calf.
It is possible that there is some reason why an adult buffalo should not be used on such an occasion, and that a calf is used as a substitute, and, on the whole, the view that some features of the ceremonies had their origin in the motive [[330]]suggested is the most probable one; but this can only be conjecture, for it is, I think, quite clear that the ceremonies have now become purely ritual, and are performed with no other reason than that they are prescribed by custom.
The use of an artificial dairy among the Tartharol, however, has almost certainly a deeper meaning. It is a striking fact that a pregnant woman and one soon after childbirth should have relations with a dairy, even if only artificial, when in ordinary life they have nothing to do with it or its ceremonial. Still more remarkable is the fact that a Tarthar woman after childbirth puts round her waist threads from the garment worn only by dairymen, a garment which has a distinctly sacred character. If this were done only in the case of a male child, it might be supposed that the idea is one of initiation into the life connected with the dairy, but the artificial dairy after the hand-burning ceremony is made when the sex of the child is unknown, and, so far as my information goes, the use of the dairy and the threads from the tuni occurs after the birth of either a boy or girl. It is possible that the ceremonial observances are relics of a time when women had more to do with the dairy and its ritual than they have at present; or it may be that contact with the sacred objects, real or fictitious, is held to neutralise in some way the dangerous nature of pregnant and parturient women.
There is some reason to believe that the material of which the tuni is made is the same as that of the ancient clothing of the Todas, the cloth called än. As we shall see later, the än is still used in the funeral ceremonies, and it is possible that the threads of tuni are used in these ceremonies as relics of the ancient clothing of the Todas, and that they are obtained from the madtuni because it is the most convenient way of obtaining the ancient material. If this had been the motive, however, I think the word än would almost certainly have been used, as it still is in the funeral ceremonies. Nevertheless, this remains as a possible alternative explanation of the use of a sacred dairy garment by a woman after childbirth.
A further mysterious feature of these ceremonies is that [[331]]the two rites which seem to bring women into special relation with the dairy are limited to the Tartharol. If these rites be regarded as relics of a time when women had more to do with dairy operations than at present, the possibility follows that this former function of women was limited to one division of the Todas.
I could obtain no explanation of the meaning of the word pülpali, used for the imitation dairy made in the Tarthar ceremonies. Püli means tamarind, and in a ceremony of the Nairs of Malabar called pulikati, performed in the ninth month of pregnancy, the woman drinks tamarind juice.[18] It is possible that the two ceremonies have a common origin, the only indication of which in the Toda ceremony lingers in the name of ‘tamarind dairy.’ It is, however, possible that the dairy is so called because it is made on the outskirts of the village, though I do not know definitely that the word pül would be used for outskirts in this special sense.