It is perhaps significant that the number seven should be a sacred number to a people who have so highly developed the cult of different days of the week. It is possible that the purificatory drinkings of the ordination ceremonies were at one time performed seven times with the idea that the candidate was sanctifying himself for each day of the week, but at the present time it is clear that the act is performed seven times because this number is prescribed by custom. It would be interesting to ascertain whether the sanctity of the number seven occurs predominantly in the religious cults of peoples who have a seven-day week.
Nine.—This number only occurs in the dairy ceremonial during the ordination of the palol when the seven-fold purification with tudr is performed nine times.
Twelve.—I only met with this number once, in the prayer at the pilinörtiti ceremony, when the expression “12 years” is used as if it were equivalent to “for ever.”
Sixteen and Eighteen.—The chief interest of these numbers is that they are used in connexion with the gods. There are said to be 1600, 1800 gods, and these numbers are mentioned in the prayer of the Kanòdrs dairy and in the legends. The numbers are probably used in the way in which we should use the word ‘infinite,’ but there must be some reason why they should have been chosen.
The number 18 occurs in another connexion in the rule that the palol should perform a certain ceremony after eighteen years of continuous office.
I have one possible clue to the choice of the number eighteen. The Todas say that a species of Strobilanth growing on the Nilgiris as a shrub only flowers once in eighteen years. They call this shrub püvkat, and it was in flower during the year of my visit. Albert, my interpreter, had only seen it in flower once or twice, but had not paid special attention to the duration of the flowering period. The number of times that several Todas had seen the flowers agreed approximately with their probable ages. Thus, Kutadri saw the flowers in 1902 for the third time, having seen them for the first time when he was twelve years old. This would make his age forty-eight, which seemed from other sources of information to be [[416]]approximately correct. The Todas use the flower as a record of age, and some Todas are reputed to have seen the flowers seven times, which, taking five years as the age when they were first seen, would make them over 110 years.
There is another Strobilanth called tirparikat which is said to flower every twelve years, and another every six. I do not know of any confirmation of the flowering periods of these plants except the last, which probably refers to Strobilanthes sexennis.
Whether the Toda belief in the eighteen-year period of the plant they call püvkat is correct or not, it seems probable that it may have furnished the suggestion for the special position taken by the number eighteen in Toda lore. [[417]]