The body of a woman is kept in the hut in which she has died till the day of the funeral, and, with special exceptions, this is also done with the bodies of men.
When a man dies at the village of Nòdrs, his body is taken into the three roomed tarvali and placed on the right-hand bed (meitün) of the outermost room. While the body is lying here, the building is still used as a dairy, but women are allowed to enter the outermost room except when the palikartmokh is actually engaged in the business of the dairy. It is only when it is being used as a funeral hut that women are ever allowed to enter a dairy, and then they may only sit on the left-hand bed—the kitün.
On the day appointed for the elvainolkedr, the body is carried to the funeral place. In some cases certain ceremonies are performed at the village at which the death has taken place; thus, at Kars, the body of a man is first laid in front of the kudrpali and then on one of the two eminences called imudrikars (see [Fig. 21]), which stand near the dairy, and from this it is taken to the other imudrikars, and after lying here for a while it is borne to the special funeral village of Taradrkirsi. At Kuzhu, another village of the Karsol, the body is taken from the hut and laid by the side of the stone called menkars; then it is taken to a stone called imudrikars in front of the kudrpali, and laid with the head at the stone and the feet towards the dairy. A buffalo of the ordinary kind (putiir) is then milked; the milk is put into a vessel and from this poured into a leaf cup of kakud leaves, and [[343]]from this cup milk is poured three times into the mouth of the dead man.
In other villages at which there is no imudrikars, the body is laid in front of the dairy and fed with milk in the same way.
The body is borne from the village to the funeral place on a wooden bier, called mänpedrkudr (wood bier). It is taken by a specially appointed route, and in some cases certain ceremonies are performed by the way. Thus, when the body of a man is taken from Kars to Taradrkirsi, earth is thrown at two places. We shall see shortly that one of the most important features of the funeral of a man is that earth is dug at the entrance of a buffalo pen at the funeral place and thrown on the corpse and into the pen. On the way to Taradrkirsi this is also done at two places, which are probably the situations of the old buffalo pens of villages which have now disappeared. I did not hear of any similar practices for any other clan, but Kars is probably not exceptional in this respect.
Before the body arrives at the funeral place the people will have begun to assemble, and when the funeral procession reaches its destination all those present go one by one to the corpse, bow down by the side of the bier, and touch the body with their foreheads. Those older than the deceased and those related in certain ways (see [Chap. XXI]) bow down at the head of the corpse. Those younger and those related in certain other ways bow down at the foot. When all those present have saluted, the body is placed in the funeral hut, or in the dairy if the funeral is being held at one of the places where funeral dairies still exist, and late-comers enter the hut or dairy to perform their salutations. As soon as the body is placed in the hut or dairy, the female relatives and friends of the dead person collect round the hut and lament together in the characteristic Toda manner, arranging themselves in pairs and pressing their foreheads together while they wail and weep ([Fig. 48]).
While this is going on the men are busied in making preparations for the cremation. A place is cleared in a wood near the funeral place—the methkudi—and here a pyre is [[344]]built of wood, some of which has been brought by the funeral party, while the rest is found near the burning ground. The wood used on this occasion must be of the kind called kers[2] and the pyre is built of an oblong shape, rising about three feet above the ground.
The first of the funeral ceremonies is different for the two sexes. At the funeral of a male the ceremony of puzhutpimi, “earth we throw,” or kedrpuzhutpimi, “funeral earth we throw,” is performed, while the corresponding ceremony for a woman is to place certain leaves in the armlet on the right arm of the corpse.