CHAPTER XX

GENEALOGIES AND POPULATION

The preceding chapters have dealt with the ceremonies and religious aspect of the life of the Todas. This and succeeding chapters will deal with the social organisation and the more secular side of the life of the people.

The social organisation has been studied largely by means of the genealogical record which is given in Appendix V. Before going to India I had worked out the details of the system of kinship, of the regulation of marriage, and of the social organisation generally of two Papuan communities on the basis of the pedigrees preserved by those communities.

It is a familiar fact that, both in ancient writings and in the memories of peoples to whom writing is unknown, long lists of ancestors may be preserved, going back in some cases to mythical times. Among existing peoples good examples of such genealogies are found in Polynesia and Uganda, but such a genealogical record is of little value for the investigation of social organisation.

The records which I obtained in Torres Straits were of a different kind; they only extended back for three or four generations, but included all collateral lines, so that a man was able to tell me all the descendants of his great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather, and knew the descent of his mother, his father’s mother, his mother’s mother, and his wife as fully as that of his father. By this means I was able to collect [188] a record of the great majority of marriages which had taken place in the community for the last three or four generations, was able to work out the laws which had regulated these marriages and to study in detail the system of kinship.

On going to the Todas, one of my first objects was to discover if their pedigrees were preserved with the same completeness and fidelity as among the Papuans of Torres Straits.

It seemed at first as if I was to be disappointed. Those to whom I first broached the subject professed not to know the names of their own fathers and mothers. Some said they had forgotten them, but their demeanour excited the suspicion that reticence, and not ignorance, was the cause of the failure, and it soon became clear that this suspicion was correct.

There was a taboo on the names of the dead, and especially on those of dead ancestors. No Toda liked to speak of the dead by name, but to utter the name of a dead elder relative was strictly forbidden, and to the end of my visit I never heard the name of a dead man from one of his descendants. Thus the last piece of genealogical information which I collected was that of the names of the father and mother of Kòdrner, my constant attendant. The fact that he was always with me had prevented my inquiries into his parentage.

Having discovered the cause of failure it soon became evident that the Todas preserved their pedigrees almost, if not quite, as fully as the natives of Torres Straits. As in the islands, certain men had especial reputations as repositories of genealogical lore, and I began my investigations with the aid of one of the most famous of these, Parkurs (8), an old man almost blind as the result of cataract and so feeble that he had to be carried when he came to see me. With his aid and that of many others I compiled the records given in Appendix V.

Throughout my visit, the collection of this genealogical material was regarded as something which should not be done. I never carried on this branch of my work during what I may call my public hours when I was visited by anyone who chose to come. At these times I sometimes obtained from a man the names of his wife and children, but always left any further inquiries till the time reserved for my investigations into more esoteric matters, when only one man was alone with me and was not subject to the restraints imposed by auditors who might disapprove of the utterance of the names of the dead.

One result of the taboo on the names of dead ancestors was that the record of a man’s family was never obtained from one of that family; but this was no disadvantage, for the genealogical knowledge of those from whom I obtained my data was so wide that it covered the families of the whole or nearly the whole of the Toda community. I have no doubt that I could have obtained the whole of the material given in the tables from two men, one of whom would have given me the genealogies of the Tartharol, and the other those of the Teivaliol, and if I had chosen my informants wisely, I believe that their information would have been as full and accurate as that obtained from my many sources of information. Further, I found that the Teivaliol had a wide knowledge of Tarthar genealogies, and vice versâ, though a man of one division usually refused to guarantee the accuracy of anything he told me about the other division, and would often disclaim knowledge which some chance observation later showed that he possessed, at any rate in some measure.

Although certain Todas had special reputations for their knowledge of pedigrees and were undoubtedly more proficient in this respect than the general mass of the community, I believe that the knowledge was very widely spread throughout the people. My guide Kòdrner never professed to any special knowledge of genealogies, and yet chance observations would often show that his acquaintance with the pedigrees of the community was far more extensive and accurate than his professions would have led one to expect.

The results of the inquiry are given in Tables 1–72. This large accumulation of genealogical material was obtained from people who professed at first not to know the names of their own fathers and mothers. It would have been quite easy for me to have come away from the Todas and reported them as a people who did not preserve their genealogies.

The pedigrees are recorded in exactly the same manner as those which I have published in the Reports of the Torres Straits Expedition, with the modifications rendered necessary by the presence of polyandry and infant marriage among the Todas. In any one table the descendants in the male line only are given, descendants in the female line being recorded in the genealogies of the husbands. Thus, if one wishes to ascertain the descendants of Pilivurch in Table 1, it is necessary to turn to Table 20 recording the genealogy of Teithi, the husband of this woman. The names of males are in capital letters, those of females in ordinary type, and the name of a wife always follows the name of her husband or husbands. Under the name of each individual is placed, in italics, the name of the clan to which the individual belongs, or, in the case of a married woman, of the clan to which she had belonged before marriage. The names of those now living are given in Clarendon type, of which Mudrigeidi and Savdur in Table 1 are examples. The abbreviation i.m. stands for “infant marriage.” The abbreviations d.y. and d.n.n. stand for “died young” and “died before being named” respectively. The latter implies that the child died within a few weeks of birth.

When the names of men are enclosed in square brackets, polyandry, and when the names of women are so enclosed, polygyny, is indicated.

In the Torres Straits Reports I have shown that there are definite reasons why the people should have preserved their pedigrees so fully. The pedigrees are not preserved for amusement nor out of idle interest in the doings of ancestors or neighbours. In Torres Straits the complex and far-reaching nature of the marriage regulations form the chief motive for the preservation of the pedigrees, while the transmission of property is perhaps of almost equal importance.

Among the Todas we shall see that the marriage regulations are far simpler than among the Papuans of Torres Straits, and in their case the chief motive is probably connected with the inheritance of buffaloes, the only form of property in which the Toda takes much interest. In the succeeding chapters we shall find several examples of social transactions in which the knowledge derived from the genealogical record has determined the issue.

THE VALUE OF THE GENEALOGICAL RECORD

In the succeeding chapters I shall show the value of the genealogies in working out the nature of the system of kinship and in providing statistical material for the study of the marriage regulations. The greater part of my work on the social aspect of the life of the Todas is based on material derived from the genealogies; or perhaps I should rather say that most of the information I give has been checked, if not entirely obtained, by means of the genealogies.

I wish, however, to draw attention here to a far wider use of the genealogies in anthropological investigation. They bring a concrete element into anthropological work which greatly facilitates inquiry. The lower one goes in the social or intellectual scale in mankind, the greater difficulty is there in dealing with abstractions. The savage mind is almost wholly occupied with the concrete. Discuss his laws of inheritance with him, and you probably soon become hopelessly entangled in misunderstanding. Take a number of concrete cases, and his memory will enable him to heap instance upon instance showing how property was inherited in given cases. Similarly, in ceremonies, ask the savage to give an account of a given ceremony, and he probably omits many essential points, not because he forgets them, but because they are so familiar to him that he thinks you, like himself, take them for granted. Ask him to tell you exactly what A and B did when they performed a given ceremony, and he forms a mental picture of A and B going through the ceremony, and tells you exactly what they did and how they did it. When another individual comes into the ceremony, he too comes in as a concrete personage, and his sayings and doings are faithfully recorded.

The Todas are so intelligent that the genealogies were not so essential an instrument of investigation as was the case in Torres Straits, but they were nevertheless of enormous value in giving concreteness to the accounts of the Toda ceremonies. The Todas certainly gave fuller and more faithful accounts of their ceremonies when they described actual events, but such descriptions would have been of little value to me if I had not had my pedigrees as a guide. An account of a Toda funeral, for instance, with its many dramatis personæ would probably have baffled my powers of comprehension if I had not had my book of genealogies for reference.

I always worked with this book by my side whenever I was investigating any ceremonial in which the social side of life was concerned. I asked for a description of some ceremony recently performed of which the memories were fresh. The chief actors in the ceremony were always mentioned by name; and whenever a name occurred, I looked up the clan and family of the person in question and noticed his relationship to other persons who had taken part in the ceremony. The actors in the ceremony were thus real people to me as well as to my informants, and the account of the ceremony proceeded with the maximum of interest and the minimum of fatigue both to myself and to my informants.

The method had the further advantage that it afforded me the means of checking the accounts which I was given. An informant inclined to be careless soon found that I had the means of checking his narrative on many points; and some of the people, not knowing the source of my information, credited me with more knowledge than I really possessed, and were in consequence extremely careful not to wander from the truth, or perhaps I should rather say, not to tell me anything of which they were not absolutely certain. I have already stated my belief that the Todas are very truthful and that they err far more often from carelessness than intention, but the fact that I had a fund of knowledge of which the source was somewhat mysterious probably saved me from having much of my time wasted by careless or inaccurate information.

I think that my familiarity with the names and circumstances of the people helped me to acquire their confidence. Among the more simple people of Torres Straits, I used sometimes to let a man know, much to his astonishment, that I was acquainted with some of the affairs of his family. Among the more reticent Todas, it seemed to me unwise to do this, but, on meeting for the first time a man with whom I was already acquainted through the genealogies, I often referred to something I knew he had done, perhaps to the skilful way he had caught the buffalo at such and such a funeral, and the fact that I knew something of him and his doings often helped to put us at once on friendly terms, and at the same time put him on his mettle to give me the best of the knowledge at his command.

THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE GENEALOGIES

Before using the genealogical record as a means of studying the details of the social organisation, it may be well to consider what guarantee we have that the genealogies form a truthful record of the past. In Torres Straits, where I gained my first experience in these matters, I was so incredulous of the accuracy of the record that I obtained almost every particle of information from two or three different and independent sources, and it was only when I had finished that I found the whole mass of material to furnish a record so consistent in itself that it could hardly have been other than veracious.

Further, on investigating kinship and the regulation of marriage, both on the basis of the genealogical record, it was found that the results of one investigation closely corroborated the results of the other, and that the combined investigations gave so consistent and coherent a result that it was incredible that the genealogies on which the investigations were based should have been other than faithful and accurate records.

The Toda community is considerably larger than either of those with which I worked in the islands of Torres Straits, and when I found that the memories of the people extended back as far or nearly as far as in those islands, it became obvious that I was confronted with a task of considerable magnitude, and the question arose whether it was necessary to obtain separate accounts of every family from independent witnesses, as I had done previously, or whether I might not rely on the account of a family given by one witness and only seek corroboration occasionally. I began by following the same procedure as in Torres Straits, but soon found that the accounts obtained independently showed a close agreement, and I therefore contented myself in my later work with one account, though every now and again I went over a piece of a pedigree with a second witness. When I had finished, the consistency of all the parts of the record with one another seemed to afford conclusive evidence that I had obtained what is, on the whole, a veracious record.

Of course, in so large a mass of material there are mistakes. [189] In one family no doubt a child has been omitted, especially when it died young and had no posterity to make its name important; in another case perhaps a child has been added to a family who was really the offspring of another mother. That there are such mistakes is certain, but they are probably few in number, and I have no doubt that, with one exception to be presently considered, such mistakes as have crept in do not appreciably impair the value of the genealogies as a record of the working of social regulations.

There is one deficiency of the record, however, of the existence of which I have little doubt—a deficiency entirely due to my own carelessness. To me the chief interest of the genealogies is that they are a record of the past—a record of the working of social regulations which at the present time may be already affected by the new influences coming into the lives of primitive people all over the world. In my absorption in the records of the past, I have often neglected the present and have omitted to ascertain carefully the children of families at present in process of growth. In several cases I have failed to obtain the names of children of people now living, and I have very little doubt that I have in several or many cases omitted the names of other children of growing families. I had one excuse for this in the fact already mentioned, that I had to obtain my information about a given family from people of some other family. A man would often know all about the members of the given family in the past, but, living perhaps at some distance from the family in question, he was often hazy as to the exact number and names of the children recently born, and it is the record of children under five years of age which I know to be deficient.

If the number of the Todas now living and recorded in the genealogies be counted, it will be found that there are 736 individuals, 419 males and 317 females. In the census of 1901 the total population is given as 805,451 males and 354 females. My record falls short of that of the census by 69 individuals, 32 males and 37 females.

Further, when I arrange the people now living according to age, it is found that there is a distinct deficiency in children under five years of age. Thus, my records of age come out as follows:—

Males. Females. Above 65 years. 9 3 61–65 ,, 4 7 56–60 ,, 19 9 51–55 ,, 20 17 46–50 ,, 26 21 41–45 ,, 26 18 36–40 ,, 26 27 31–35 ,, 40 25 26–30 ,, 40 33 21–25 ,, 38 28 16–20 ,, 32 31 11–15 ,, 41 20 6–10 ,, 54 33 5 and under 44 45 --- --- Total 419 317

The ages upon which this table is based could only be obtained very roughly, and the figures must be taken merely as rough approximations to the truth. The irregularities of the table may be due partly to this defect, but it is very improbable that there are about the same number of children of five and under as of children between six and ten, and we may be fairly confident that but for omissions the numbers of the youngest group, especially of boys, would have been larger.

I have reason to believe, further, that I have not omitted any appreciable number of adults or children over five years of age. I tested 320 males and 183 females for colour-blindness, and as I was anxious to test every member of the community who was old enough, I obtained towards the end of my visit the names of all those who had not been tested. I only attempted to test children when over five years of age, and I have therefore an independent record of the living Todas above this age, so that it is fairly certain that the greater part of the deficiency in the genealogical record is of children about or below the age of five, though it is possible that I may also have missed a certain number of women.

This deficiency does not in the slightest degree affect the value of the pedigrees as a record of marriages or of the working of social regulations, but it does impair the value of the statistics concerning the average size of a family and other matters of biological interest, though only for the last generation.

On looking through my genealogical tables, it will be seen that different clans and families differ very greatly in the fulness of their record. In some cases I have pedigrees going back to the great-grandfathers of men now in middle life; in other cases I have only the names of the fathers of such men. The briefness of the record is especially marked in the case of the outlying clans, such as Kwòdrdoni, Pedrkars, and Päm, which I only visited for short periods. During these visits there was so much to be done that something had to suffer and the genealogies were usually the victims. If I had had more time, I have little doubt that I could have obtained much fuller records in many cases.

BUFFALO PEDIGREES

Marshall has stated that the Todas preserve the pedigrees of their buffaloes in the female line, and when I had found how carefully the Todas preserved their own pedigrees my next step was to endeavour to ascertain if the pedigrees of their buffaloes were preserved with the same amount of care and completeness. I returned to this subject again and again, but with very imperfect success. The Todas always treated my inquiries on this subject as if they were trifling and ridiculous. It is possible that this was one of the points on which they were reticent, but I am inclined to think that I was told all there was to tell.

To a certain extent it is correct to say that the pedigrees of the buffaloes are preserved, and in the female line only. If any given buffalo were taken as the starting-point, the owner could usually tell me the names of the mother of the buffalo and of the mother’s mother, and occasionally I obtained the names of the immediate ancestors in the female line for four generations. Thus, Nertiners of Taradr (24) had a buffalo named Kârstum who was the daughter of Idrsh. Idrsh was the daughter of Persud, who was the daughter of Nerûv, who was the daughter of Kiûd. Another of his buffaloes, Keien, was descended from Koisi, Nerûv, and Kâsimi in the order named.

I could not ascertain that the Todas kept any record of the collateral lines of descent, nor was there, so far as I could find, any idea of kinship between buffaloes descended from the same recent ancestor. Two buffaloes born of the same mother would be known, of course, to be sisters, but no importance seemed to be attached to the relationship.

An obvious reason for the limitation of the pedigrees of the buffaloes to the female line is the fact that only female buffaloes are named, so that there are no means of recording male parentage. We shall see later that among themselves the Todas attach little importance to paternity, and the same indifference is found in their attitude towards their buffaloes. The essential reason for the nature of the record of buffalo-descent is the complete absence of desire to maintain the purity of the breed, even of the most sacred herds, and the complete lack of attention to ties of consanguinity between buffaloes mated together.

THE TODA POPULATION

The chapters on kinship and marriage will furnish object-lessons on the method of application of the knowledge derived from the genealogies to the study of social regulations. In the remainder of this