CHAPTER XVII

SACRED DAYS AND NUMBERS

We have seen that nearly every Toda ceremony has its appointed day or days, and that the choice of these is often dependent on another Toda institution, the sacred day, either of the village or of the dairy. Every clan has certain days of the week on which people are restricted from following many of their ordinary occupations, although they are not the occasions of any special ceremonies. These sacred days are the madnol or village day, and the palinol or dairy day. Another occasion to which the same kinds of restriction apply is the arpatznol, the day of the week corresponding to that on which the father of a man has died.

THE MADNOL AND PALINOL

The madnol is literally the village day. Each village has its madnol, and in some cases it would seem that different villages of a clan might have different madnol, but in general the madnol is the same for the whole clan.

Certain things may not be done on the madnol:—

(i) ponkisthògadi, a feast may not be given (lit. feast may not divide, i.e., food must not be shared out).

(ii) kêdrvîtògadi, funeral ceremonies may not be performed.

(iii) kwadrtògadi, nothing may be given (from the village). Since buying implies the departure of money from the village, a secondary consequence is that nothing may be bought on the madnol, but if anything is given to an inhabitant of the village, he may bring it into the village on this day.

(iv) Women may not leave the village, nor may women from other places come to the village.

(v) The people may not bathe nor cut their nails on the madnol, and the men may not shave. Clothes may not be washed, nor may the usual cleansing of the house with buffalo-dung be done. The ordinary meals may be prepared, but the people must not cook rice with milk.

(vi) The stone called tukitthkars may not be touched.

(vii) The dairyman may not leave the village, and the ordination ceremonies of a dairyman may not take place on this day.

(viii) The people may not migrate from one village to another, nor may the buffaloes be taken from one place to another.

Among the Teivaliol the madnol is the only sacred day of the week, but among the Tartharol there is also a dairy day or palinol, and if there is more than one dairy there may be one such holy day for each kind of dairy, each named after the dairy, the wursulinol, the kudrpalinol, or the tarvalinol. Similarly, Taradr has a kugvalinol and Kanòdrs a pohnol.

On these days milk and ghi may not be given out from the dairy, nor may they be sold. Butter and buttermilk may be distributed, but only to the people of the village. Buffaloes may not be driven on these days. Women may not leave the village, though women of other villages are allowed to come. Cleansing with buffalo-dung must not be done. There was some difference of opinion as to whether money might leave the village on these days. Some said not, but it seemed clear that at Kars money might be taken from the village on the palinol. The rules were said to be the same for the holy days of all kinds of dairy.

There are various recognised methods of evading the rules for the holy days, and of avoiding the inconvenience which the regulations might entail on a village.

Money may be taken out of the village on the day before the madnol and buried or left in some spot where it can be found on the following day, so that if there is an urgent reason why a purchase should be completed on the holy day this can be done.

Similarly, women who wish to leave the village on a holy day do so before daybreak. They wait outside the village till the sun is up, then return to the village, have their meals and do any necessary work, and may then leave. Having left the village before daybreak, a woman is apparently regarded as ceremonially absent during her return to the village, and by making this false start she is held to be keeping the law.

If there is an urgent reason why a woman from another village should come on a madnol, she must arrive after sunset.

If any of these rules are broken, the culprit may have to perform the ceremony of irnörtiti or one of the other allied rites. It seemed quite clear, however, that this only happened if some misfortune should befall the offender, his family, or his buffaloes. It would seem that a man might habitually and notoriously desecrate the madnol, but no steps would be taken by himself or the community so long as things went well with the man. If he should become ill or if his buffaloes should suffer in any way, he would consult the diviners and they would then certainly find that his misfortunes were due to his infringement of the laws connected with the sacred days.

As a matter of fact, it does not happen, so far as I could find, that anyone habitually infringes the laws, and breaking the madnol or palinol rarely forms an occasion for the irnörtiti ceremony.

THE ARPATZNOL.

Another sacred day is the arpatznol or arpasnol. This is the day of the week on which the father of a man has died. The father of Kutadri and Kòdrner died on a Friday, and every Friday is the arpatznol of these men. I could not learn definitely what are the restrictions for this day, but they seem to be of the same kind as those for the madnol, though I am doubtful whether they are very strictly kept. Kutadri and Kòdrner once drove their buffaloes from Kars to Isharadr on a Friday; the buffaloes were sick, and they moved them without thinking that it was their arpatznol. Soon after Kòdrner fell ill and one of the buffaloes died, and the teuol found that the desecration of the arpatznol was one of the causes, though they had also bought things on a Monday, the madnol of Kars.

There is much variety in the days appointed as the madnol or palinol of different villages and clans. My records are very incomplete, but they show the most frequent days to be Wednesday and Friday, which are sacred in six clans. Sunday is sacred in five clans, Monday and Tuesday in three, and Thursday in two, while in no clan, so far as my records go, is Saturday a holy day.

It will have been noticed that funeral ceremonies may not be held on a madnol, and it seems to be exceptional that funeral ceremonies should take place on one of the dairy days. There is very little doubt that it is the prohibition of funerals on village and dairy days which chiefly determines the choice of funeral days. Thus, at Nidrsi, Wednesday is the madnol, Monday is the wursulinol, Friday is the tarvalinol, while the funeral of a male is held on Saturday or Sunday and that of a female on Tuesday or Thursday. Similarly, the village and dairy days of Melgars are Monday and Friday, while the funeral days for males are Sunday and Tuesday, for females Thursday and Saturday. At Kwòdrdoni, the village and dairy days are Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, the funeral days Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

In a few cases, it would seem that funerals may be held on dairy days; thus, at Kars Monday is the madnol, Tuesday the wursulinol, and Thursday the kudrpalinol, while the funeral days for males are Sundays and Tuesdays, for females Thursdays and Saturdays. If a mani is used, however, a male funeral must be held on Sunday, and I suspect that the holding of a male funeral on Tuesday is an innovation, and probably the same holds good for the choice of Thursday as a funeral day for females.

The funeral rites are not the only ceremonies which have their appointed days. Nearly every ceremonial occasion among the Todas has its prescribed day, and of these ceremonial days Sunday seems to occupy an especially favoured position. As many ceremonies are appointed for this day as for nearly all the other days of the week put together. It is also the most frequent day for the funerals of males, and it seemed to me that whenever it was possible this day was chosen.

Several clans, however, have Sunday as the madnol, and if the laws of this day are observed ceremonies of which feasts form a part could not be performed on this day in these clans; thus, though I have no definite information on the point, I have no doubt that the irpalvusthi ceremony could not be performed.

It so happens that the clans which have Sunday as their madnol or palinol are Pan, Kanòdrs, Päm, Kwòdrdoni, and Pedrkars, all clans seated in outlying parts of the hills about which my information is less complete than in other cases. None of the larger and more important central clans about whose customs I obtained the fullest information had either madnol or palinol on a Sunday, and I have very little doubt that in those clans which have Sunday as a madnol, ceremonies, at any rate of a festive nature, would not be performed on this day. There is little doubt that the great prominence of Sunday as a feast day would have come out less strongly if my information about the outlying clans had been more complete.

I must leave this point uncertain, but I have little doubt that with fuller information about the customs of different clans we should find that the choice of days for ceremonies is chiefly, if not entirely, determined by the necessity of holding these on some day other than the madnol or palinol.

At the same time, there can be no doubt that Sunday is one of the days appointed for a festival or ceremony very frequently, and this is especially the case at the ti, the procedure of which is to a large extent uninfluenced by considerations concerned with the madnol and palinol. Even here, however, these days are not altogether without influence, for certain ceremonial days at the ti are feast days for the clan to which the ti belongs, and this would make it necessary that the ceremonies should not be held on the madnol of the clan. Certain days were said to be feast-days throughout the whole Toda community, but I have no knowledge as to how these days would be kept by those clans on whose madnol they might fall.

Several previous writers, when recording the choice of certain days for the funeral ceremonies, have ascribed to the Todas a belief in lucky and unlucky days, in days of good or evil omen. One man, when telling me that Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday were days on which the irpalvusthi ceremony might be performed at the tarvali, referred to them as lucky days.

I think it is extremely doubtful whether the Toda in general has any such belief, and if he has, it is probable that the idea is a recent importation borrowed from the Hindus, among whom the belief in lucky or unlucky days is of course very prevalent. The distinction among the Todas is rather into feast and fast days, using the latter term in a wide sense.

It is possible that the institutions of madnol and palinol have grown out of the belief in unlucky days; that certain things were not done on these days because they were unlucky days, and that so there came into existence a code of rules prescribing what might and what might not be done.

The chief difficulty in the way of this view is the fact that the different clans of the Todas have different sacred days. One would expect lucky and unlucky days to be the same for the whole community. The sacred days place very definite restrictions on the intercourse between different clans, and this inconvenience must be increased by the fact that the different clans have different madnol, and there is no obvious reason why this difference in the choice of sacred days should have come about.

The distinction between madnol and palinol is, again, one which can hardly have grown out of the belief in unlucky days, though perhaps, given a village day, it is not an unnatural step for the Todas to have decided that they would have a dairy day also.

Whatever the origin of the laws regulating Toda custom in this respect, I think there is little doubt that when at the present time a given act is done or not done on a given day, the action is not based on a belief in lucky or unlucky days, but, as nearly always among the Todas, on custom prescribing that the act shall or shall not be done on that day.

There are, however, other restrictions or relaxations connected with certain days of the week which have probably arisen out of a belief in lucky and unlucky days.

There is a regulation (now almost a dead letter) that the Todas must not cross the Paikara and Avalanche rivers on Tuesdays, Fridays, or Saturdays. Sundays and Wednesdays, on the other hand, are the days on which the wursol is allowed to sleep in the hut with ordinary people, and Mondays and Thursdays are the days on which the palol is visited by Todas other than the mòrol. Such facts suggest that the three days on which the rivers should not be crossed are unlucky days, but, on the other hand, the days which I was once told were lucky days included Saturday. The evidence at our command is conflicting, and does no more than suggest that the restrictions or relaxations common to the whole community may be connected with the belief in lucky and unlucky days.

Attention may here be called to the fact that the Todas evidently regard the first half of the month as most auspicious for their ceremonies, and it would seem that in most cases the first appropriate day of the week after the new moon is the proper day for nearly every Toda ceremonial. I met with no case in which any ceremony was appointed for the period of the full moon or for the second half of the moon’s period. At the present, it seems that such ceremonies as those connected with the migrations of the buffaloes may take place in the second half of the month, but I have no doubt that this is only a result of modern laxity.

The definite values assigned to different days of the week is a very special feature of Toda custom, and in the madnol we have an institution very closely resembling that of the Sabbath. In a busier community than that of the Todas, the existence of different madnol for different clans of the community would soon become a serious obstacle to carrying on the business of life, and such a community would probably agree that all clans should have the same holy day. At present the madnol is undoubtedly more sacred than the other sacred days, and if the latter were then to be neglected, we should have a community in which various activities were prohibited on one day of the week, and the institution so arising would differ very little from the Hebrew Sabbath. It is possible that the Todas show in an early stage the institution of a Sabbath in which the whole community has not yet settled on a single and joint holy day.

SACRED NUMBERS

Certain numbers recur with great frequency in the dairy ceremonial, and may be regarded as having a special sanctity on this account. There seems to be a general preference for uneven numbers, and this preference comes out very strongly in the tesherst ceremony, in which an uneven number of men must take part on any one occasion. The number of men performing this ceremony together must be three, five, seven, nine, &c.

In the dairy ritual the numbers which occur chiefly are three, seven and nine, but other numbers have also been singled out in other branches of Toda lore. The numbers which occur in ceremonial may now be considered in detail.

Three.—A large proportion of the ritual acts of the dairy are performed three times, usually with the accompaniment of the sacred syllable Oñ uttered thrice, once with each performance of the act. This three-fold performance is especially marked in the ceremony of putting milk or curds on the sacred bells and in the ceremonial drinking of buttermilk. In the ordination ceremonies, the number occurs less frequently. The purificatory drinking is always done seven times or some multiple of seven, but after drinking, the candidate rubs himself three times with the shoots or bark, and, at the ordination of a palol, the candidate drinks three times seven on several occasions. Other acts during the ordination of the palol are also performed thrice, and the same number occurs in the ordination of the kaltmokh.

Acts are performed thrice with special frequency in the ceremonial of the ti, and, at the ordinary dairy, this number is especially connected with the ‘feeding’ of the sacred bell, and there is no doubt that it is a number regarded as especially sacred. Whenever the sacred syllable Oñ is used, it is nearly always uttered thrice, and there seems to be a special association between the number three and this word.

In the erkumptthpimi ceremony three branches of tudr leaves are used, and they and the log with which the calf is killed are passed round the body of the animal thrice. Later in the ceremony three pieces of wood are thrown over the fire.

In the ceremonies connected with childbirth, the woman drinks thrice on various occasions, in the pursütpimi ceremony the name of the bow is asked and the answer given three times, and in the ceremony of name-giving three grains of barley are put into the mouth of the child and three into his hair.

At the funeral ceremonies, earth is thrown three times on the corpse and three times into the pen, the body is swung on the fire three times, and at the final scene of the azaramkedr the man who rings the bell goes round the burial place of the ashes thrice. Three oviônikârs are thrown by the man who crosses the pathway of the dead. The number three is not limited to the dairy ritual, but is of frequent occurrence in the whole of Toda ceremonial.

The number three also appears in connexion with magical or semi-magical practices. The various methods of treatment used by the utkòren are carried out three times and never more frequently than this, and the sufferer who drinks hot water to allay the effects of fright also does this thrice. A remedy is probably held to be more potent if repeated the same number of times as in the case of so many sacred acts.

Five.—This number does not occur in the dairy ceremonial except in certain ceremonies at the Nòdrs ti which are repeated five times because there are five groups of buffaloes belonging to this dairy. The number in this case has, however, no ceremonial significance, and is merely a consequence of the fact that one palol at this ti has three groups and the other two groups of buffaloes. The only other occurrence of the number is at the Kars ti, where the ancient lamp probably had five cavities, but even this is doubtful.

The number five comes in one place into Toda magic. The sorcerer, who wishes to injure one who has not granted his request, hides five stones tied together with hair in the thatch of his enemy’s hut.

Six.—This number does not occur in the dairy ceremonial, but it seems to be regarded as an auspicious number in some ways. In Teitnir’s lament for his wife, reference is made to the hope that they might have had six children and six buffaloes, and in the prayer on the occasion of the ear-piercing ceremony, one clause runs “may he have six sons.”

Six sticks are used to make the artificial dairy of the hand-burning ceremony, but this is an obvious result of the fact that the dairy has to have two rooms.

Seven.—This number is especially prominent in the ordination ceremonies. The purificatory drinking out of leaf-cups is always done seven times or some multiple of seven, the palikartmokh drinking seven times only, the wursol seven times seven, and the palol three times seven, seven times seven and nine times seven at different periods of his prolonged ordination ceremonies. At the dairies of Taradr and Kanòdrs, the number occurs in a different form, seven different kinds of leaf being used in the purificatory ceremonies.

The number occurs again in connexion with the lamp. At the Nòdrs ti and at the Pan ti, and possibly at other dairies, there used to be lamps, each of which had seven cavities and seven wicks. Some of these lamps have been lost, but two remain at the dairies mentioned. I have already referred to the fact that some of the ancient lamps were said to have had five wicks, but it seems clear that in the only two examples which survive there are seven wicks, and it is possible that this was the number in all.

Another occurrence of the number seven is in the old dairies of the Nòdrs clan which had seven rooms. The funeral dairies, which are undoubtedly very ancient institutions, have three rooms, and the Nòdrs dairies, also undoubtedly ancient, had seven, but I heard of no case in which a dairy had four, five, or six rooms.

Outside the dairy ceremonial, the only occurrence of this number is in the lament of Teitnir for his wife, in which he speaks of their visiting seven courts and seven ships.

It is perhaps significant that the number seven should be a sacred number to a people who have so highly developed the cult of different days of the week. It is possible that the purificatory drinkings of the ordination ceremonies were at one time performed seven times with the idea that the candidate was sanctifying himself for each day of the week, but at the present time it is clear that the act is performed seven times because this number is prescribed by custom. It would be interesting to ascertain whether the sanctity of the number seven occurs predominantly in the religious cults of peoples who have a seven-day week.

Nine.—This number only occurs in the dairy ceremonial during the ordination of the palol when the seven-fold purification with tudr is performed nine times.

Twelve.—I only met with this number once, in the prayer at the pilinörtiti ceremony, when the expression “12 years” is used as if it were equivalent to “for ever.”

Sixteen and Eighteen.—The chief interest of these numbers is that they are used in connexion with the gods. There are said to be 1600, 1800 gods, and these numbers are mentioned in the prayer of the Kanòdrs dairy and in the legends. The numbers are probably used in the way in which we should use the word ‘infinite,’ but there must be some reason why they should have been chosen.

The number 18 occurs in another connexion in the rule that the palol should perform a certain ceremony after eighteen years of continuous office.

I have one possible clue to the choice of the number eighteen. The Todas say that a species of Strobilanth growing on the Nilgiris as a shrub only flowers once in eighteen years. They call this shrub püvkat, and it was in flower during the year of my visit. Albert, my interpreter, had only seen it in flower once or twice, but had not paid special attention to the duration of the flowering period. The number of times that several Todas had seen the flowers agreed approximately with their probable ages. Thus, Kutadri saw the flowers in 1902 for the third time, having seen them for the first time when he was twelve years old. This would make his age forty-eight, which seemed from other sources of information to be approximately correct. The Todas use the flower as a record of age, and some Todas are reputed to have seen the flowers seven times, which, taking five years as the age when they were first seen, would make them over 110 years.

There is another Strobilanth called tirparikat which is said to flower every twelve years, and another every six. I do not know of any confirmation of the flowering periods of these plants except the last, which probably refers to Strobilanthes sexennis.

Whether the Toda belief in the eighteen-year period of the plant they call püvkat is correct or not, it seems probable that it may have furnished the suggestion for the special position taken by the number eighteen in Toda lore.

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