The term was chiefly used when the Todas were speaking of certain families as being noted in certain ways or as having certain privileges. Thus, some families are noted for their powers as sorcerers, and these are called pilikudupel; others are known as manikudupel, or chief families, whose members are important in government and can hold the office of [[546]]monegar and serve on the naim. Other families important in government whose members can serve on the naim or council are called tinkaniputitth kudupel or tinkani kudupel and palutth kudupel. The members of certain other families have certain duties of a lower order in connexion with the naim. They take messages and act generally as servants at the meetings, and the families with these functions are called kavòdiputipol kudupel, or servant families. They are also sometimes called armanol or palace people, because at one time the Rajah of Nelambur in the Wainad put his buffaloes into their charge.
Laws of Descent
Descent among the Todas is always reckoned in the male line. A man is always of the same clan as his father, if by his “father” we understand the man who has given the bow and arrow to his mother at the pursütpimi ceremony. In the case of the offspring of a mokhthoditi union, there is at first sight an appearance of female descent. The child of a Teivali mother and a Tarthar father belongs to the Teivaliol and vice versâ, but on further inquiry it is found that the child does not belong to his mother’s clan, but to that of her legal husband. The child of a Teivali mother in such a case is not Teivali because his mother is of this division, but because a Teivali man only is allowed to perform the pursütpimi ceremony with a Teivali woman and become the legal father of her child. If, in such a case, the pursütpimi ceremony had not been performed, the child would belong to the division and clan of neither father nor mother, but would be a padmokh, of no division and of no clan.[2] I did not definitely inquire into the point, but from my general knowledge of the position of such an individual, I have little doubt that he would not be allowed to perform the pursütpimi ceremony, and could therefore never become the legal father of a child.
In this as in all cases the clan to which a child belongs [[547]]is determined entirely by the pursütpimi ceremony. If in a polyandrous marriage the husbands belong to different clans, a child belongs to the clan of the husband who has last performed this ceremony, and, as we have already seen, in the case of the death of one of the husbands, the dead man may become the legal father of several children, if the surviving husband does not perform the ceremony of giving a bow and arrow to the wife.
Again, in the case of a woman becoming pregnant while still unmarried, the father of the child is the man who is called in to give the bow and arrow, although he may have had nothing to do with the woman before the ceremony. Further, if for any reason the husband of a woman should be prevented from performing the pursütpimi ceremony, some other man is called upon to give the bow and arrow and he becomes the father of the child. Lastly, in the numerous cases of transference of wives from one man to another by the terersthi custom, one man may be the real father of a child, but another will become the legal father if the transference should take place in time for him to perform the essential ceremony.
The Todas show few traces of mother-right. In some communities there is little reason to doubt that such acts as are performed by a Toda towards his sister’s son are survivals of a condition of society in which the mother’s brother was responsible, largely or altogether, for the welfare of the child. Among the Todas, however, the mun stands in two relations to a child. He is the mother’s brother, and he is also the prospective or actual father-in-law, and we have no means of telling in which of these two rôles he performs his duties. If the duties of a man towards his sister’s son among the Todas be a relic of mother-right, there can be little doubt that this condition must have been very remote.
The Todas have a special name for the village of a man’s mother—viz., karuvnòdr, or “honoured place,” and when a manmokh gives a buffalo or other contribution on the occasion of a funeral, he speaks of it as a gift to his karuvnòdr. When a man visits his karuvnòdr, he goes to the door of the dairy [[548]]and bows down with his head to the ground at its threshold, and then goes to the huts, where he is greeted with the appropriate greeting, but this differs in no way from the procedure of a visitor to any etudmad.
Marshall in his book[3] on the Todas has suggested that the existence of female succession among the buffaloes of the Todas may be a relic of female descent among the people themselves. He suggests that at one time the scheme of descent and kinship was the same for the Todas and for their buffaloes, and that with the introduction of polyandry there came in inheritance through males among themselves, while they continued to reckon the descent of the buffaloes in the female line.
We have seen (see p. [471]) that the method of reckoning descent among the buffaloes is due superficially to the absence of names for male buffaloes and more deeply to the lack of interest in paternity. Nevertheless, Marshall’s suggestion, wild as it may seem, should not be utterly scouted. The Todas regard their buffaloes so much as fellow creatures that any of their ideas concerning the relations of their buffaloes to one another should not be without interest to the student of social regulations.