The Todas regard with some reverence a Hindu temple at Nanjankudi in Mysore, and visit it to pay vows, and there is little doubt that they have done this for a long time. Further, Nòdrs, one of the oldest and most sacred of the Toda villages, is close to the present road from Mysore and may have been near the most convenient route from Mysore in ancient times. I think, however, that, though not recent, the relations with the Hindu temple at Nanjankudi are not of very great antiquity, and I am inclined to ascribe the Toda reverence for it to their association with the Badagas, who almost certainly came from Mysore. I have not been able to find many parallels to Toda customs in Mysore. In one case, however, the resemblance is very close. Among the Gollavalu of Mysore[21] a woman after delivery is turned out into a leaf or mat hut, about 200 yards from the village, and on the fourth day a woman of the village pours water over her. In this case the woman lives in the hut for three months, her husband also living in a special hut. Again, among the Kadu (or forest) Gollas of Mysore[22] the mother and child remain in a small shed outside the village for seven to thirty days.
The other district which has customs especially resembling those of the Todas is Coorg. Among the people of Coorg cloth-giving appears at one time to have formed the essential marriage ceremony, and there still exist what are called ‘cloth-marriages’ in which a man becomes the husband of a woman merely by giving her a cloth. There is also some evidence that polyandry has been practised in Coorg, and I have already referred to the resemblance between the pursütpimi ceremony of the Todas and the Coorg custom of giving a little bow and arrow to a newly born boy. The bow is made of a stick of the castor-oil plant and for the arrow [[706]]the leaf-stalk of the same plant is used. In Coorg the imitation bow and arrow is put into the hand of the newly born child, but this custom is not widely removed from that of the Todas in which the bow and arrow is put into the hand of the mother shortly before the child is born.
The Todas know the people of Coorg, which they call Kwûrg, and have a tradition of an invasion of their hills by these people, but it is very improbable that there has been any direct borrowing, and it seems more likely that some of the customs of the Todas and Coorgs have had a common source.
The resemblance with the customs of Coorg are perhaps more striking than with those of Mysore, and the former region is much more likely to have been influenced by Malabar than the latter. The links with Coorg do not weaken, and perhaps even strengthen, the conclusion that the Todas owe much to Malabar.
If we accept provisionally the view that the Todas migrated to the Nilgiris from Malabar, we are next confronted with the problem as to whether they are directly derived from any of the races now living in that district. The most diverse views have been held by those who have considered the racial affinities of the Todas. Leaving on one side the conjectures of those who have supposed them to be Scythians, Druids, Romans, or Jews, we find that the Todas have been supposed by several writers to be of Aryan or Caucasic origin. De Quatrefages[23] grouped the Todas with the Ainus of Northern Japan and Keane[24] follows him in putting the two peoples together, and regards both as witnesses to the widespread diffusion of Caucasic races in Asia. Deniker[25] suggests that they belong to the Indo-Afghan race, with perhaps an admixture of the Assyroid race.
Previous writers have found no special reason to link the customs of the Todas with those of Malabar, and, so far as I am aware, no one has considered how far the Todas may be of the same race as any of the inhabitants of [[707]]this district.[26] In considering this matter, we may anticipate that even if the Todas and any of the tribes or castes of Malabar had the same origin, marked differences would have been produced by the long sojourn of the former on the Nilgiri plateau. How long the Todas have been on the Nilgiri Hills no one can say, but we may safely conclude that a very long time must have been necessary to produce the wide divergence in custom and belief which is found to separate them even from those other inhabitants of India whom they most closely resemble. If the Todas came from Malabar, they came from a country differing enormously in temperature and in general physical and climatic characters from the Nilgiri plateau. Life on the hills must almost certainly have altered the physical characters of the people, and it is perhaps now hopeless to expect that any exact resemblance would be found with the existing races of Malabar even if the Todas are an offshoot of one of them. Nevertheless, in comparing the physical measurements of the Todas, which we owe to Mr. Thurston, with those of various Malabar races taken by Mr. Fawcett, it would seem that the differences are not very great, and in the measurements to which anthropologists attach most importance, those of the head and nose, they are very slight.
In the table on the following page I give the chief measurements in centimeters for Todas, Nairs, and Nambutiris.
The average dimensions of the heads and noses of the Todas correspond very closely with those of the Nairs, and the differences from the Nambutiris are nowhere great. It must be remembered that the measurements on the Todas were taken by one observer, and those on the Nairs and Nambutiris by another,[27] and this may partly account for [[708]]the large divergence in the case of the maxillo-zygomatic index, which is calculated from the bigoniac and bizygomatic measurements, in both of which there is considerable scope for differences between different observers. The only other measurements which show any decided divergence are the stature and the length from the middle finger to the patella, and the greater stature of the Todas may well be the result of their more healthy environment. The cubit of the Todas also differs very decidedly from that of the Nambutiris, though little longer than this dimension of the Nairs.
| Todas.[28] | 182 Nairs. | 25 Nambutiris. | |
| Stature | 169·8 | 165·6 | 162·3 |
| Span | 175·9 | 175·1 | 170·0 |
| Chest | 82·0 | 80·6 | 83·7 |
| Middle finger to patella | 12·0 | 10·1 | 10·5 |
| Shoulders | 39·3 | 40·0 | 40·7 |
| Left cubit | 47·0 | 46·2 | 44·2 |
| Left hand, length | 18·8 | 18·5 | 18·0 |
| Left,, hand,,, width | 8·1 | 8·3 | 7·8 |
| Hips | 25·7 | 26·0 | 26·2 |
| Left foot, length | 25·0 | 25·4 | 24·5 |
| Left,, foot,,, width | 9·2 | 8·8 | |
| Cephalic length | 19·4 | 19·2 | 19·2 |
| Cephalic,, width | 14·2 | 14·1 | 14·6 |
| Cephalic,, index | 73·3 | 73·1 | 76·3 |
| Bigoniac | 9·6 | 10·4 | 10·6 |
| Bizygomatic | 12·7 | 13·1 | 13·2 |
| Maxillo-zygomatic index | 75·7 | 80·1 | 80·4 |
| Nasal height | 4·7 | 4·8 | 4·9 |
| Nasal,, width | 3·6 | 3·6 | 3·7 |
| Nasal,, index | 76·6 | 76·8 | 75·5 |
We do not know the probable errors of these different groups of measurements, but the agreement between the Todas and the two castes of Malabar is so close as to suggest strongly a racial affinity between the three.[29]