The Todas

by W. H. R. Rivers

On going to the Todas, one of my first objects was to discover if their pedigrees were preserved with the same completeness and fidelity as among the Papuans of Torres Straits.

It seemed at first as if I was to be disappointed. Those to whom I first broached the subject professed not to know the names of their own fathers and mothers. Some said they had forgotten them, but their demeanour excited the suspicion that reticence, and not ignorance, was the cause of the failure, and it soon became clear that this suspicion was correct.

There was a taboo on the names of the dead, and especially on those of dead ancestors. No Toda liked to speak of the dead by name, but to utter the name of a dead elder relative was strictly forbidden, and to the end of my visit I never heard the name of a dead man from one of his descendants. Thus the last piece of genealogical information which I collected was that of the names of the father and mother of Kòdrner, my constant attendant. The fact that he was always with me had prevented my inquiries into his parentage.

Having discovered the cause of failure it soon became evident that the Todas preserved their pedigrees almost, if not quite, as fully as the natives of Torres Straits. As in the islands, certain men had especial reputations as repositories of genealogical lore, and I began my investigations with the aid of one of the most famous of these, Parkurs (8), an old man almost blind as the result of cataract and so feeble that he had to be carried when he came to see me. With his aid and that of many others I compiled the records given in [Appendix V].

Throughout my visit, the collection of this genealogical material was regarded as something which should not be done. I never carried on this branch of my work during what I may call my public hours when I was visited by anyone who chose to come. At these times I sometimes obtained from a man the names of his wife and children, but always left any further inquiries till the time reserved for my investigations [[463]]into more esoteric matters, when only one man was alone with me and was not subject to the restraints imposed by auditors who might disapprove of the utterance of the names of the dead.

One result of the taboo on the names of dead ancestors was that the record of a man’s family was never obtained from one of that family; but this was no disadvantage, for the genealogical knowledge of those from whom I obtained my data was so wide that it covered the families of the whole or nearly the whole of the Toda community. I have no doubt that I could have obtained the whole of the material given in the tables from two men, one of whom would have given me the genealogies of the Tartharol, and the other those of the Teivaliol, and if I had chosen my informants wisely, I believe that their information would have been as full and accurate as that obtained from my many sources of information. Further, I found that the Teivaliol had a wide knowledge of Tarthar genealogies, and vice versâ, though a man of one division usually refused to guarantee the accuracy of anything he told me about the other division, and would often disclaim knowledge which some chance observation later showed that he possessed, at any rate in some measure.

Although certain Todas had special reputations for their knowledge of pedigrees and were undoubtedly more proficient in this respect than the general mass of the community, I believe that the knowledge was very widely spread throughout the people. My guide Kòdrner never professed to any special knowledge of genealogies, and yet chance observations would often show that his acquaintance with the pedigrees of the community was far more extensive and accurate than his professions would have led one to expect.

The results of the inquiry are given in Tables 1–72. This large accumulation of genealogical material was obtained from people who professed at first not to know the names of their own fathers and mothers. It would have been quite easy for me to have come away from the Todas and reported them as a people who did not preserve their genealogies.

The pedigrees are recorded in exactly the same manner as those which I have published in the Reports of the Torres [[464]]Straits Expedition, with the modifications rendered necessary by the presence of polyandry and infant marriage among the Todas. In any one table the descendants in the male line only are given, descendants in the female line being recorded in the genealogies of the husbands. Thus, if one wishes to ascertain the descendants of Pilivurch in Table 1, it is necessary to turn to Table 20 recording the genealogy of Teithi, the husband of this woman. The names of males are in capital letters, those of females in ordinary type, and the name of a wife always follows the name of her husband or husbands. Under the name of each individual is placed, in italics, the name of the clan to which the individual belongs, or, in the case of a married woman, of the clan to which she had belonged before marriage. The names of those now living are given in Clarendon type, of which Mudrigeidi and Savdur in Table 1 are examples. The abbreviation i.m. stands for “infant marriage.” The abbreviations d.y. and d.n.n. stand for “died young” and “died before being named” respectively. The latter implies that the child died within a few weeks of birth.

When the names of men are enclosed in square brackets, polyandry, and when the names of women are so enclosed, polygyny, is indicated.