Chapter IX

the stories of the Toda gods, giving them in this place because they were necessary for the proper understanding of the dairy formulæ, and I can now discuss more fully than was then possible the essential nature of these deities.

THE GODS

The Toda gods are definitely anthropomorphic beings, who are believed to have lived in this world before man existed. Both man and buffalo were created by the gods, and the Todas seem to picture a time when gods, men, and buffaloes lived together on the Nilgiri Hills, and the gods ruled the men. At this time the gods seem to have lived much the same kind of life as the Todas themselves. Ön was palol to the buffaloes of the Nòdrs ti, his son Püv was palikartmokh at Kuudr, and other gods are believed to have filled dairy offices. From the earliest times, however, the gods were connected with the hills—i.e., they were believed to dwell on the summits of the hills of the Nilgiri plateau. At first they seem to have mixed at times in human society and at other times to have retired to their hill-tops. The earliest of the gods was Pithi, who was born in a cave, and the Todas and many of their buffaloes were created by his son Ön and his wife. Later death came to the gods in the person of Püv, the son of Ön and Ön followed Püv to the world of the dead, called Amnòdr, of which he has since been the ruler. He left behind him as predominant among the deities Teikirzi, a goddess, who ruled over the Todas. It is to her that the origin of most of the Toda institutions is ascribed, and there is some reason to think that she was predominant among the gods even before Ön went to Amnòdr.

The Todas seem to believe that Teikirzi was at one time a person living among them, giving laws and regulating the affairs of the people. At the present time she is believed to be all-pervading; and, though she has her special hill, she does not dwell there only, as in the case of all but one of the other Toda deities.

There seem to have been many other gods contemporaneous with Ön and Teikirzi, and certain of these are believed to have been related to these deities and especially to Teikirzi. The gods are believed to be very numerous: the Todas speak of the 1,600 gods, the 1,800 gods, but it would seem that these expressions are used in the sense of “an infinite number.” The gods are believed to have held their councils, meeting on some special hill, to which each god came from his own hill-top. The hill of Pòlkab, near Kanòdrs, and the village of Miuni are both renowned as meeting places of the gods.

There is a very definite association between the Toda gods and the hills of the Nilgiri plateau. Nearly every one of the gods has his hill where he dwells, and often when speaking of the gods the Todas seem to identify the god with the hill. There are two river gods, Teipakh and Pakhwar, associated with the two chief streams of the district, but there is some reason to believe that even these gods have their hills where they sometimes live, while at other times they inhabit or are identified with their streams. In the case of Teipakh, the god and the natural object seem to be very closely identified, and Kuzkarv, growing up in the river Teipakh, is said to be sitting in the lap of his maternal uncle. Again, one god is associated with a bubbling pool, but he also has his hill-top and is believed only to visit the pool on certain occasions. There can be little doubt that most of the Toda gods are hill-deities and that the association of the gods with hills is so strong that even the gods of streams and pools may be assigned their hills in general belief.

There is one important feature which is said to be common to all the hills inhabited by deities. They all have on their summits the stone circles which the Todas call pun. My informants were very definite about this and fully understood that these stone circles corresponded to the cairns and barrows opened by Breeks and others.

I was not able to examine into the question for myself and ascertain whether the circles called pun were actually present on the god-inhabited hills, but I have no reason to doubt that this was usually the case. Most writers on the Todas have been inclined to suppose that the cairns and barrows, with their contents, were in no way connected with the Todas, and they have based this opinion largely on the indifference of the Todas to these monuments. The people who are so jealous of their dairies that they will not allow anyone to enter or even view their contents, will allow any stranger to open the cairns and take their contents, and will even assist in the demolition. When I asked the Todas what they thought of the rifling of the pun they showed just the same indifference. They did not seem to think the matter any concern of theirs, and yet they believe in a definite association between the presence of a pun and the abode of a deity.

There seem to be three chief possibilities. One, that the cairns are Toda remains and that the association of the stone circles above them with the presence of a god is the last surviving relic of the fact. The second is that when the Todas came to the Nilgiri hills they found mysterious stone circles on certain hills, which marked out these hills as possessing features out of the common, and that this gave them a sanctity which led to the idea that they were inhabited by gods. A third possibility is that the same peculiarities which led the original builders of the circles to choose certain hills also led the Todas to choose them as the abodes of their deities, and that it was only later that they came to recognise the association between the circle and the presence of a god.

Whichever possibility may give the true explanation, one would have thought that the Todas would have objected to the disturbance and excavation of the cairns. There is little doubt that they were ignorant of the fact that objects were buried beneath the stone circles, but they are quite intelligent enough to know that there is a connexion between the stones and the objects beneath them when once these have been found.

I have very little doubt that the true explanation of the indifference of the Todas towards these monuments is that they have no definite traditional injunction against interfering with the circles. The Todas are the slaves of their traditions and of the laws and regulations which have been handed down to them by their ancestors. Till the Europeans came to the hills, it had never occurred to anyone to meddle with these stones or explore the soil beneath and around them. In consequence there was no reason why injunctions against interference should be handed down, and when the European arrived with his spade and pickaxe the Todas found nothing in their traditional laws telling them that it was wrong to interfere with these places, and they exhibited the indifference which led the explorers to suppose that there was no connexion of any kind between the Todas and the monuments. [184]

Although the Toda deities seem to be in general a development of hill-spirits, there can be little doubt that some of the gods are deified men. In the case of Kwoten, the account of his life is so circumstantial as to leave little doubt that he was a real man who was deified after a mysterious disappearance, believed to have been due to intercourse with a female deity, and around whose life there have clustered certain miraculous incidents. Similarly, his servant Erten, and his relatives Teikuteidi and Elnâkhum are probably deified men.

Another possible instance of a deified man is Kwoto or Meilitars. The account of his life is again so circumstantial that it seems most likely that he was an exceptional man who was deified while various incidents in his life acquired a miraculous setting. It is perhaps in favour of the comparatively recent origin of these gods that objects belonging to them, or which come into their lives in some way, are still preserved, and perhaps a still more cogent argument in favour of the recent deification of Kwoten is the fact that the prohibition against marriage between the clans of Pan and Kanòdrs, believed to be due to the murder of Parden by Kwoten, still persists.

Of these deified mortals one became associated with a definite hill while the other was not assigned any special hill, but it was believed that all places should form his province.

There is little doubt that these mortals were deified as heroes and not as ancestors, and there is little to indicate that ancestor-worship has played any part in the evolution of the Toda religion. When a person dedicated a buffalo on account of some fault committed, it seemed that the action might be spoken of indifferently as dedication to the gods or to the ancestors of the dedicator. Thus, when Teitnir gave a buffalo after the death of his wife, some said it was given to the gods, while others said it was given to Teitnir’s grandfathers, and when I tried to inquire more definitely into this point the two things were said to be the same. The ideas of the Todas seemed to me, however, to be so indefinite and vague on this point that I am inclined to attach little importance to this one piece of evidence.

Against the identification of gods with ancestors is the fact that the dead go to another world, and are believed to return to this world after a long interval as ordinary mortals, while most of the gods belong to this world and are believed to have belonged to this world before death came to either gods or men.

There is little to support the idea that the gods are personifications of the forces of nature. There is no evidence whatever that any of the gods are personifications of the sun, of other heavenly bodies, of thunder, lightning, or other elemental forces.

We have already seen that there is evidence that light is reverenced, and that this reverence extends to the sun, and it is probable that definite worship of the sun may at one time have formed a prominent part of the religion of the Todas. But there is not the slightest evidence which would lead to the identification of any one of the Toda deities with the sun.

There is no evidence of phallic worship among the Todas. One of the ti villages in the Kundahs is known to the European inhabitants of the Nilgiris as “Ling mand,” but the supposed Ling stone at this place is evidently a neurzülnkars. [185]

In the last chapter we have seen that it has been supposed that divinity attaches to some of the sacred objects of the Todas, and especially to the dairy and the mani or bell. I cannot say definitely that the dairy and the bell are not regarded as gods, but I do not believe that they are so, and, as I have endeavoured to show in the last chapter, I think it probable that the sanctity of the bell has arisen by a gradual process of transference of sanctity from the buffalo to the object worn by it, and I think it not unlikely that this transference may have reached its full development in comparatively recent times.

If my view be accepted, it would still leave open the religious status of the buffalo, and especially of the bell-buffalo, and here, scanty as the evidence is, it seems to me probable that the buffalo was never regarded as a god in the same sense in which this word is used for the anthropomorphic beings of the hill-tops. In the oldest legends, in which the buffaloes spoke like men, it is clear that they were in subjection to the gods, and were in no way regarded as themselves divine.

Some writers on the Todas have supposed that the palol is regarded as a god, but at the present time it is certain that he is in no way divine. He is treated with respect, but nothing of the nature of worship or adoration is paid to him. His position among the Todas is exactly that of a priest upon whom it is incumbent to maintain a very high degree of ceremonial purity. That his isolation is not a sign of divinity is, I think, shown by the results of infringement of his isolation. If the palol is touched by an ordinary man he loses his office and at once ceases to be a sacred personage, but the person who touches incurs no penalty. The sacrilege, according to Toda ideas, would attach not to him, but to the palol who, in spite of being touched, should persist in performing the duties of his office.

Whether the palol may ever have been more sacred in the past I cannot say. An indication that he may at one time have been regarded as divine is to be found in the special clauses of the Kiudr prayer which are uttered on the occasion of the migration of the buffaloes of the Nòdrs ti. Here the kwarzam of the palol is eupalol, which stands for teupalol, or “god palol,” but in the next kwarzam the same prefix is given to his garment, the tuni, and I have little doubt that these kwarzam simply refer to the sanctity which attaches to the palol and his garment as part of the sacred institution of the ti. There is no doubt, however, that, according to tradition, the gods held the office of palol and that the palol of the Nòdrs ti is the direct successor of the god Ön, but to whatever extent Ön may have passed on his divine character to his immediate successors, there is little doubt that at present the palol has lost any divinity which may at one time have been ascribed to him.

It is very difficult to ascertain how far at the present time, according to Toda belief, the gods intervene in human affairs. Each clan is believed to have its nòdrodchi, or ruling deity, but I could not learn what he is supposed to do. In general the nòdrodchi of a clan is a god dwelling on a hill near the chief village of the clan, and two clans living near one another may have the same ruler. Thus Teipakh is connected with both Piedr and Kusharf, Atioto with both Kwòdrdoni and Pedrkars, while Etepi, who is the nòdrodchi of Keradr, and Kuzkarv, the nòdrodchi of Keadr, are almost certainly one and the same deity. In the two latter cases a Tarthar clan has the same god as a clan of the Teivaliol.

Little can be said about the nature of these connexions between gods and clans, but it is possible that when a clan or a member of a clan is said to incur the anger of the gods it is the nòdrodchi who is chiefly offended and inflicts punishment in the form of death or disease to man or buffalo. The Todas certainly believe that misfortunes are due to the anger of the gods. It is clear that the various offerings described in

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