In addition to the definite taboos, there is often much reluctance in uttering personal names. The Todas dislike uttering their own names, and a Toda, when asked for his name, would often request another man to give it. Sometimes my guide was obviously reluctant to give me the names of the people who came to see me, and it seemed to me that this was especially so when the people were related to him by marriage, i.e., men who had married into his clan; but I could not satisfy myself definitely that it made him more uncomfortable to utter the names of such relatives than those of other people.
In some parts of the world the taboo on the names of the dead involves also a taboo on the names of the objects which correspond to the names of the dead or to parts of these names. If such restrictions existed among the Todas, they would have on the death of Nirveli and Panmkudr to find other names for water and for a four-anna piece. It was quite clear, however, that there were no such restrictions, and that this frequent cause of change of vocabulary has not been at work in the case of the Toda language. [[628]]
[1] This name also occurs in the story of Kwoten. [↑]
[2] Mopuvan is named after the hill Mopuvthut, which is mentioned in the legend of Puzi (193). [↑]
[3] It will be noticed that, in these two cases, the old names are those which occur in the genealogies. My informant probably remembered these better than the new names, which had been assumed only late in life. [↑]
CHAPTER XXVII
RELATIONS WITH OTHER TRIBES
In this chapter I propose to put together the chief facts with which I am acquainted which throw light on the very difficult problem of the relations between the Todas and the other tribes of the Nilgiri Hills. The chapter could only be written with any degree of completeness by one who had studied the question from the point of view of each of the Nilgiri tribes separately. I have only been able to do so, and that incompletely, from the Toda point of view. My information is derived almost wholly from the Todas themselves, and gives their way of regarding the relations between themselves and the other tribes.