Chapter XXIV

. It will be sufficient to say here that when showing reverence, a Toda bares his right arm, this method of wearing the cloak so that the arm is exposed being called kevenarut. It is shown in Figs, 1 and 10.

THE DAILY LIFE OF THE TODAS

The daily life of the Toda men is largely devoted to the care of their buffaloes and to the performance of the dairy operations. As we shall see later, much of the dairy work is the duty of certain men set aside to look after the sacred buffaloes and the sacred dairies connected with them. A large proportion, however, of the Toda buffaloes are not sacred, and their care falls on the ordinary Todas. The milking and churning is chiefly the duty of the younger men and boys, but the older men also take their part, while the head of the family exercises a general superintendence.

On rising in the morning, the men salute the sun with the gesture called kaimukhti, shown in Fig. 10, and then they turn to their work of milking the buffaloes and churning the milk.

When the dairy operations of the morning are over, the buffaloes are driven to the grazing ground, the people take their food and go about any business of the day. Some may collect firewood and procure the leaves used as plates and drinking vessels; others may carry out any necessary tendance which the buffaloes require, or may go to fetch grain or rice from Badaga villages or from the bazaar. The chief men of the village may perhaps have to attend a meeting of the naim, or council, which holds very frequent sittings to adjudicate upon the many disputed points which arise in connexion with the intricate social organisation of the people.

While the men are doing their work, the women will have been seeing to their special tasks, of which three, represented in Fig. 11, have come to be regarded as pre-eminently woman’s work.

They pound the grain with the wask in a hole situated in the middle of the floor of the hut, [11] and when the pounding is finished the grain is sifted with the murn, or sieve, and the hut is swept with the kip. It seemed that pounding grain is normally performed wearing the tadrp only.

Though these are the three operations which are regarded as pre-eminently woman’s work, the women have other things to do. They rub the seats or beds both inside and outside the hut with dried buffalo-dung, and use the same material to cleanse the various household utensils. They mend the garments of the family, and some women devote much time to the special embroidery with which they adorn their cloaks.

The ordinary routine of the day is often broken by the visits of people from other villages, who may have come to talk over a proposed marriage or transference of wives; to announce some approaching ceremony; to discuss some business connected with the buffaloes, or perhaps, but probably rarely, to pay a friendly call. Such a visit will probably give the opportunity of observing the characteristic Toda salutation shown in Fig. 12. [12] This is essentially a salutation between a woman and her male relatives older than herself. If a man visits a village in which he has any female relatives younger than himself, these will go out to meet him as he approaches the house, and each bows down before the man, who raises his foot, while the woman places her hand below the foot and helps to raise it to her forehead, and the same salutation is repeated with the other foot. This mode of greeting is called kalmelpudithti, [13] or “leg up he puts.” It is usually a salutation in which women bow down before men, but it may also take place between two men or between two women, while on certain occasions a male may bow down and have his forehead touched by the feet of a woman.

In the evening the buffaloes again find their way to the milking-place, and the operations of the morning are repeated. When these are finished the buffaloes are shut up in the enclosure, or tu, for the night; the lamp is now lighted and saluted by the men who use the same gesture as that with which the sun had been saluted in the morning. The people then take their food and retire to rest.

SKETCH OF SOCIAL ORGANISATION

I shall consider the social organisation in detail at a much later stage, but it is necessary to give here a brief sketch in order to make its main features clear before going on to describe the Toda ceremonial, which often shows differences according to the division or clan with which the ceremony is connected. The fundamental feature of the social organisation is the division of the community into two perfectly distinct groups, the Tartharol and the Teivaliol. As we shall see more fully later, there is a certain amount of resemblance between these two divisions and the castes of the Hindus. There is a certain amount of specialisation of function, certain grades of the priesthood being filled only by members of the Teivaliol. Further, marriage is not allowed between members of the two divisions, though certain irregular unions are permitted; a Tarthar man must marry a Tarthar woman, and a Teivali man a Teivali woman. The Tartharol and Teivaliol are two endogamous divisions of the Toda people.

Each of these primary divisions is subdivided into a number of secondary divisions. These are exogamous, and I shall speak of them throughout this book as ‘clans,’ using this word as the best general term for an exogamous division of a tribe or community.

Each clan possesses a group of villages and takes its name from the chief of these villages, the etudmad, and the people of a clan are known as madol, or village people.

The Tartharol are divided into twelve clans, which take their names from the villages of Nòdrs, Kars, Pan, Taradr, Keradr, Kanòdrs, Kwòdrdoni, Päm, Nidrsi, Melgars, Kidmad, and Karsh. [14] The people of each clan are known as Nòdrsol, Karsol, Panol, &c. The Kidmadol and Karshol are much less important than the other ten clans, having split off from the Melgarsol in comparatively recent times. The original number of Tarthar clans appears to have been ten, and I have no record that any clan of this division has become extinct.

The Teivaliol are divided into six clans, or madol, taking their names from the villages of Kuudr, Piedr, Kusharf, Keadr, Pedrkars, and Kulhem. The people of Kuudr are called both Kuudrol and Kuurtol, and similarly the people of Piedr and Keadr are often called the Piertol and Keartol.

Here again two clans, the Pedrkarsol and the Kulhemol, are less important than the others. They are offshoots of the Kuudrol, but the separation is of very long standing.

There was some doubt as to the existence of another clan, the Kwaradrol, but it seemed certain that these people, who have now died out, formed a subdivision of the Keadrol.

One Teivali clan has become extinct, its last member having died, it was said, about a hundred years ago. This clan took its name from the village of Kemen, which was near Kiudr, but no trace of this village exists at present and I think it probable that the Kemenol have been extinct longer than the Todas suppose.

The villages of each clan are usually situated in the same part of the hills, though there are very often outlying villages far from the main group. At any one period of the year, only some of the villages of the clan are occupied. The people may move about from one village to another according to the need for pasturage, and the villages in the Kundahs and other outlying parts of the hills appear only to be visited during the dry season before the south-west monsoon sets in.

Each clan is further subdivided, these subdivisions being of two kinds. One, called the kudr, is only of ceremonial importance, and we shall meet with it first in the chapter dealing with offerings. The other, called the pòlm, is of more practical importance, and is the basis of the machinery for regulating any expenses which fall on the clan as a whole.

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