The Todas

by W. H. R. Rivers

The Todas seem to believe that Teikirzi was at one time a person living among them, giving laws and regulating the affairs of the people. At the present time she is believed to be all-pervading; and, though she has her special hill, she does not dwell there only, as in the case of all but one of the other Toda deities.

There seem to have been many other gods contemporaneous with Ön and Teikirzi, and certain of these are believed to have been related to these deities and especially to Teikirzi. The gods are believed to be very numerous: the Todas speak of the 1,600 gods, the 1,800 gods, but it would seem that these expressions are used in the sense of “an infinite [[444]]number.” The gods are believed to have held their councils, meeting on some special hill, to which each god came from his own hill-top. The hill of Pòlkab, near Kanòdrs, and the village of Miuni are both renowned as meeting places of the gods.

There is a very definite association between the Toda gods and the hills of the Nilgiri plateau. Nearly every one of the gods has his hill where he dwells, and often when speaking of the gods the Todas seem to identify the god with the hill. There are two river gods, Teipakh and Pakhwar, associated with the two chief streams of the district, but there is some reason to believe that even these gods have their hills where they sometimes live, while at other times they inhabit or are identified with their streams. In the case of Teipakh, the god and the natural object seem to be very closely identified, and Kuzkarv, growing up in the river Teipakh, is said to be sitting in the lap of his maternal uncle. Again, one god is associated with a bubbling pool, but he also has his hill-top and is believed only to visit the pool on certain occasions. There can be little doubt that most of the Toda gods are hill-deities and that the association of the gods with hills is so strong that even the gods of streams and pools may be assigned their hills in general belief.

There is one important feature which is said to be common to all the hills inhabited by deities. They all have on their summits the stone circles which the Todas call pun. My informants were very definite about this and fully understood that these stone circles corresponded to the cairns and barrows opened by Breeks and others.

I was not able to examine into the question for myself and ascertain whether the circles called pun were actually present on the god-inhabited hills, but I have no reason to doubt that this was usually the case. Most writers on the Todas have been inclined to suppose that the cairns and barrows, with their contents, were in no way connected with the Todas, and they have based this opinion largely on the indifference of the Todas to these monuments. The people who are so jealous of their dairies that they will not allow anyone to enter or even view their contents, will allow any stranger to open the [[445]]cairns and take their contents, and will even assist in the demolition. When I asked the Todas what they thought of the rifling of the pun they showed just the same indifference. They did not seem to think the matter any concern of theirs, and yet they believe in a definite association between the presence of a pun and the abode of a deity.

There seem to be three chief possibilities. One, that the cairns are Toda remains and that the association of the stone circles above them with the presence of a god is the last surviving relic of the fact. The second is that when the Todas came to the Nilgiri hills they found mysterious stone circles on certain hills, which marked out these hills as possessing features out of the common, and that this gave them a sanctity which led to the idea that they were inhabited by gods. A third possibility is that the same peculiarities which led the original builders of the circles to choose certain hills also led the Todas to choose them as the abodes of their deities, and that it was only later that they came to recognise the association between the circle and the presence of a god.

Whichever possibility may give the true explanation, one would have thought that the Todas would have objected to the disturbance and excavation of the cairns. There is little doubt that they were ignorant of the fact that objects were buried beneath the stone circles, but they are quite intelligent enough to know that there is a connexion between the stones and the objects beneath them when once these have been found.

I have very little doubt that the true explanation of the indifference of the Todas towards these monuments is that they have no definite traditional injunction against interfering with the circles. The Todas are the slaves of their traditions and of the laws and regulations which have been handed down to them by their ancestors. Till the Europeans came to the hills, it had never occurred to anyone to meddle with these stones or explore the soil beneath and around them. In consequence there was no reason why injunctions against interference should be handed down, and when the European arrived with his spade and pickaxe the Todas found nothing in their traditional laws telling them that it was wrong to [[446]]interfere with these places, and they exhibited the indifference which led the explorers to suppose that there was no connexion of any kind between the Todas and the monuments.[1]

Although the Toda deities seem to be in general a development of hill-spirits, there can be little doubt that some of the gods are deified men. In the case of Kwoten, the account of his life is so circumstantial as to leave little doubt that he was a real man who was deified after a mysterious disappearance, believed to have been due to intercourse with a female deity, and around whose life there have clustered certain miraculous incidents. Similarly, his servant Erten, and his relatives Teikuteidi and Elnâkhum are probably deified men.

Another possible instance of a deified man is Kwoto or Meilitars. The account of his life is again so circumstantial that it seems most likely that he was an exceptional man who was deified while various incidents in his life acquired a miraculous setting. It is perhaps in favour of the comparatively recent origin of these gods that objects belonging to them, or which come into their lives in some way, are still preserved, and perhaps a still more cogent argument in favour of the recent deification of Kwoten is the fact that the prohibition against marriage between the clans of Pan and Kanòdrs, believed to be due to the murder of Parden by Kwoten, still persists.