The Todas

by W. H. R. Rivers

It will thus be seen that there is definite reciprocity between the two divisions as regards certain funeral duties, while the differences between the procedures of the two divisions are largely, if not altogether, connected with the use of the mani among the Tartharol and of the tudr tree among the Teivaliol, and each of these are points at which the funeral ceremonies come into relation with the dairy ritual. The differences in funeral rites would seem to be chiefly due to the different organisation of the dairy and its ritual in the two divisions.

There are other ceremonies in which the duties of the two divisions are reciprocal. In the ceremony of ear-piercing, a Tarthar man pierces one ear of a Teivali boy and a Teivali man performs the same service for a Tarthar boy, and in the ceremony called putkuli tâzâr ütiti (see p. [503]), a man [[685]]belonging to one division acts when the girl undergoing the ceremony belongs to the other.

One of the most obscure of Toda ceremonies is that called tersampipimi which is performed together with or later than the ceremony of name-giving when a child is about three months old. The chief feature of the ceremony is that a lock of the child’s hair is cut by the maternal uncle of the child, the hair of a Tarthar child being cut with a piece of sharpened iron called kanab, while the hair of a Teivali child is cut with an ordinary knife. The special interest, however, for our present purpose lies in the fact that this ceremony must be performed on the day after the second funeral of a Tarthar man, and this whether the child be Tarthar or Teivali.

This ceremony points to the existence of a belief in the influence of the spirit of the dead man, and I have already (p. 404) given reasons why it is probable that this influence should be regarded as good rather than bad. But, whether good or bad, we are left wholly without a clue why this influence should be exerted by the ghosts of the Tartharol and not by those of the Teivaliol.

In the ceremonies connected with childbirth the ritual of one division differs from that of the other more widely than in any other case. The most striking difference is that the ceremonial of the artificial dairy is limited to the Tartharol, and here again it is possible that the difference is a secondary consequence of the difference in dairy organisation. In the chapter dealing with these ceremonies, I have thrown out the conjecture that the use of an artificial dairy, and of threads from the madtuni, or sacred dairy garment, may be a survival of a time when women had more to do with the dairy ritual than they have at present; and if there is anything in this conjecture, it would point to this connexion of women with the dairy having been limited to the Tartharol, or to its having persisted longer in this division.

The fact that a Tarthar woman drinks milk drawn by a Melgars man, while a Teivali woman drinks water which is assumed to be the milk of a pregnant buffalo, again brings the differences into relation with the dairy ritual, but another [[686]]difference between the two divisions in the hand-burning ceremony is entirely foreign to this ritual. This is the ceremony of invoking Pirn and Piri, and there is no evident reason why this rite should be practised by the members of one division and not by those of the other. Similarly, the ceremony of offering to Namav by a Teivali woman when going to the seclusion-hut after childbirth stands entirely apart from the dairy ritual.

Both of these ceremonies are unlike the ordinary run of Toda ritual, and it is, on the whole, most probable that they have been borrowed.

We have thus seen that a large number of the ceremonial differences between the two divisions may be regarded as secondary consequences of the differences in the dairy ritual and that the few ceremonies which stand in no relation to the dairy ritual may have been borrowed.

Taking the differences of ceremonial as a whole, it is tempting to surmise that some of them may have arisen owing to differences of environment during some past stage of Toda history. The Todas now form so small a community, living in so small a space and knowing so much about each other, that it seems improbable that the differences can have come altogether into existence while they have been on the Nilgiri Hills. In so far as they can be explained as secondary consequences of the dairy organisation, it is possible that they may have arisen since the Todas have been on the Nilgiris, but when the practices have no relation to the dairy ritual it seems improbable that one division would have adopted a custom quite independently of the other.

Such a view would involve the consequence that at some time in their history the two divisions of the Toda people have had a different environment, and if the Todas are derived from one tribe or caste, this could only have come about if the two divisions came to the hills at different times, the interval having been sufficiently long to enable differences of ceremonial to have arisen. The differences would perhaps be still more readily explicable if we suppose the Tartharol and Teivaliol to have been derived from two different castes or tribes which reached the hills at different times, and I will [[687]]now proceed to give some evidence which points to this having really happened.