The Todas

by W. H. R. Rivers

There is always one buffalo-pen, or tu,[1] for ordinary use, and at some places two others, called pon tu, or festival pens, used on the ceremonial occasions of migration from one place to another and of salt-giving.

The surroundings of the dairy are called pül, and there is a special part of the pül to which alone the ordinary Toda is allowed to go, and he may only go there by a special path. Each ti dairy which I visited was by the side of a wood and the place for ordinary Todas was in the wood.

At a little distance from the dairy there is the source from which the water for sacred purpose is drawn. This source is called kwoinir, and at Mòdr, where there was a kwoinir for each palol, it was a spring built in with stones, and not a stream as at most villages. In addition to the kwoinir there is also a stream from which water is taken by the kaltmokh, who is not allowed to go to the sacred spring.

There are various stones and other objects of ceremonial importance at most ti places, but the description of these may be given with that of the ceremonies in which they play a part. [[86]]

At Mòdr, the dairy place I know best, all the buildings and objects of the ti mad are shut off from the outer world either by walls or by the natural configuration of the ground or forest. Within this screen, partly natural and partly artificial, there is the large milking-ground which may be entered by the buffaloes from two directions, and on one side of this are the three pens, the two dairies, and other buildings.

The more important of the two dairies has situated close to it the sleeping-hut and two huts for the calves, and this small group of buildings, shown in [Fig. 27], is surrounded by a wall like that round the ordinary village dairy, leaving little space between the wall and buildings. These buildings, being within the outer boundaries of the ti mad, are already well screened from the world, and in consequence the surrounding wall is low. The other dairy is situated on the boundary, so that it can be seen by anyone outside the ti mad, and the wall around it is therefore high, so that a person standing outside can see nothing of the proceedings of the dairyman. At Mòdr the water springs are at some distance from the dairies and there is a special path by which the palol goes from the dairy to fetch water.

At another dairy, that of Anto, there is one path by which the palol goes to fetch water and another by which he returns, but I do not know if this is so at all dairies.

Although I visited Mòdr on many occasions, I never had an opportunity to investigate the buildings closely. I was never allowed to go within the walls enclosing the dairies, much less to go inside these buildings. If the annual programme of the ti had been carried out, the buffaloes would have left this place before the end of my visit, and I intended to make a thorough inspection after they had gone; but owing to various causes I mention elsewhere (see [Chap. VI]) the herds stayed at Mòdr till after my departure, and I had no opportunity of ascertaining the exact plan of the dairies and their surroundings.

The dairy of a ti always has two rooms, an inner room, the ulkkursh, and an outer room, the pòrmunkursh. These are divided from one another by a screen, or patun, which stretches [[87]]about two-thirds of the way across the breadth of the building and is about three feet high. The palol stands in the outer room and performs the dairy operations proper to the inner room leaning over the top of the screen. The object of the screen is to keep the sacred objects of the dairy from the gaze of anyone who may look in, and especially from that of the kaltmokh; but in the only dairy of the kind into which I had the chance of looking, the screen was made of vertical sticks with wide intervals between them, so that I could easily see through. This dairy was, however, unoccupied, and if dairy vessels had been there, it is possible that they would have been screened from view in some way. In this dairy the screen extended from the right-hand wall as one looked in, but at Mòdr I was told that the screen was attached to the left-hand wall, and there were certain facts which make it almost certain that this statement is correct, though I had not the opportunity of confirming it by actual observation.