The palol now unties his hair, sees to anything necessary in connexion with his food, fills the uppun with buttermilk, and then leaves his dairy and goes to sit on the seat called pohvelkars on one side of the door of the dairy, viz., on the opposite side to that on which the mani is placed. At Mòdr he sits on the stone on the right side of the door when going [[97]]in (K in [Fig. 26]), and the fact that he does so is one of the reasons which make it probable that the arrangement of the poh of that place is as I have given it in the plan.
When the palol has seated himself on the pohvelkars, he calls out to the kaltmokh “Kaizhvatitva,” “Come here and pour buttermilk!” When the kaltmokh comes, the palol gives the uppun to the boy, who says three times “Kaizhvatkina”, “Shall I pour buttermilk?” and the palol replies each time, “Vat!” The kaltmokh pours from the uppun into a cup made of the leaf called kakuders held by the palol, who drinks after raising to his forehead. This is repeated till the palol is satisfied, when the leaf-cup from which he has been drinking is thrown away,[3] and he goes again into the outer room to get food. He gives food to the kaltmokh, who eats it in the sleeping-hut, while the palol himself eats sitting on the pohvelkars. If any mòrol (see p. [107]) are present, they are fed at this stage with buttermilk and food by the kaltmokh, who gives them the buttermilk out of the mòrpun, pouring it into leaf-cups as when giving to the palol.
The rest of the morning is passed in looking after the buffaloes, cutting firewood, plucking leaves used as cups and plates, or doing any other work connected with the ti.
In the afternoon the palol returns to his dairy and goes through the same operations as in the morning, except that he fetches water from the kwoinir early in the proceedings, usually bringing enough for the work of that afternoon and of the next morning. He churns the milk drawn in the morning, and when the time for milking has arrived, the buffaloes will have returned to the milking-place, and as soon as they arrive their calves are let out from the house (karenpoh) in which they have been kept.
When the churning and milking are over, the buffaloes are shut up in the tu for the night. The palol then takes buttermilk as in the morning, and both he and the kaltmokh take their food. The latter eats his food in the sleeping-hut as in [[98]]the morning, and the palol does not enter till the boy has finished. As the palol enters, the kaltmokh says “Oñ” thrice, takes the horn or horns, and standing at the door blows three times (if there are two horns, three times on each horn), and then re-enters the hut and all go to rest.
In the afternoon the palol prays three times; when lighting the lamp, and after milking and filling the three persin as in the morning, and again after shutting up the buffaloes in the tu for the night, when he stands in front of the entrance to the pen. In each case he uses the whole of the ordinary prayer of the dairy. He also utters a few clauses of the prayer when going out to milk. These prayers will be given in [Chap. X].
The Palol
The palol, who must belong to the Teivaliol, is chosen by the members of the Tarthar clan to which the ti belongs. He may hold office for as long as he pleases up to eighteen years, and, according to some accounts, he might continue in office even after this period, though there is no case known in which this has happened.
The usual duration of office seems now to be only two or three years, though a man may often be reappointed either to the same or another ti. At the time of my visit, one palol had been continuously in office for sixteen years, another for six years, and the rest for shorter periods. At the present time the office of palol is vacant at several dairies owing to the difficulty of obtaining qualified occupants.