CHAPTER III
DAIRIES AND BUFFALOES
The milking and churning operations of the dairy form the basis of the greater part of the religious ritual of the Todas. The lives of the people are largely devoted to their buffaloes, and the care of certain of these animals, regarded as more sacred than the rest, is associated with much ceremonial. The sacred animals are attended by men especially set apart who form the Toda priesthood, and the milk of the sacred animals is churned in dairies which may be regarded as the Toda temples and are so regarded by the people themselves. The ordinary operations of the dairy have become a religious ritual and ceremonies of a religious character accompany nearly every important incident in the lives of the buffaloes.
Among the buffaloes held by the Toda to be sacred there are varying degrees of sanctity, and each kind of buffalo is tended at its own kind or grade of dairy by its own special grade of the priesthood; buffaloes and dairies forming an organisation the complexities of which were far from easy to unravel.
Each kind of dairy connected with its special kind of buffalo has its own peculiarities of ritual. The dairies form an ascending series in which we find increasing definiteness and complexity of ritual; increasing sanctity of the person of the dairyman-priest, increasing stringency of the rules for the conduct of his daily life, and increasing elaboration of the ceremonies which attend his entrance upon office. There are also certain dairies in which the ritual has developed in special directions, and there are special features of the organisation of buffaloes and dairies not only in each of the two chief divisions of the Toda people, but also in many of the clans of which each division is composed.
I propose in this chapter to sketch some of the chief features of the buffalo and dairy organisation, and in succeeding chapters there will follow detailed accounts of the different dairies and of the ceremonial which accompanies the daily work of the dairy and the important events of buffalo life.
THE DAIRY ORGANISATION
The first distinction to be made concerns the buffaloes. These animals are divided into those of a sacred character and those which may be called ‘ordinary buffaloes.’ The latter are known as putiir; they may be kept at any village, are tended by the men and boys of the village—in Toda language, they are tended by perol, or ordinary persons—and their milk is churned in the front part of the dwelling-hut. There is no special ritual of any kind connected with these buffaloes or with their milk, and there are no restrictions on the use of the milk or its products.
The classification of the sacred buffaloes is very different in the two divisions of the Toda people. The Teivaliol possess only one class of sacred buffalo and these buffaloes are called collectively pasthir. The Tartharol, on the other hand, have several classes of sacred buffalo, and, so far as I could ascertain, they have properly no collective term for all of them, though they are often spoken of by the Teivali term, pasthir.
Possessing only one kind of sacred buffalo, the dairy organisation of the Teivaliol is comparatively simple. The milk of the pasthir is churned in dairies at the more important villages of each clan. The dairy is, in general, called pali, [15] and the dairyman is called palikartmokh, ‘dairy watch-boy,’ or palikartpol, ‘dairy watch-man,’ [16] according to his age; but, probably owing to the general custom of employing youths or young men to fill the office of dairyman, the term palikartmokh is in far more general use, and is often employed even when the dairyman is an elderly man.
At many of the chief Teivali villages, there are two dairies; a large dairy, called etudpali, and a smaller, called kidpali. Each of these dairies should have its own palikartmokh, and this is still the case when both dairies are used, but at most villages at the present time one of the two dairies has been disused and there is in consequence only one dairyman.
Both ordinary and sacred buffaloes are the property, not of the whole clan, but of families or individuals, and the buffaloes tended at the dairy of a village are, in general, the property of the family living at that village. A large clan with many villages, such as that of Kuudr, has many dairies in working order and a corresponding number of dairymen.
Among the Tartharol the organisation is far more complicated. Most Tarthar clans have more than one kind of sacred buffalo in addition to the ordinary buffaloes or putiir. In every clan there is one kind of sacred herd which may be said to correspond to the pasthir of the Teivaliol. The milk of these buffaloes is churned in a dairy called pali by a dairyman called palikartmokh or palikartpol. There are, however, two grades of dairy corresponding to these buffaloes. The lower grade is called the tarpali, or more commonly tarvali, and is served by a tarvalikartmokh. The higher grade is called kudrpali, tended by a kudrpalikartmokh. There is no distinction of buffaloes corresponding to this distinction of dairies, the same buffaloes being tended sometimes at a kudrpali and sometimes at a tarvali. The distinguishing feature of a kudrpali is the possession of a mani, or sacred bell, and the greater elaboration and stringency of its ritual is due to the presence of this sacred object.
In addition to the buffaloes tended at the tarvali or kudrpali, most Tarthar clans possess other sacred buffaloes called wursulir. These buffaloes are tended by a dairyman called wursol and their milk is churned in a dairy called wursuli or wursulipali. One point which marks off this branch of the dairy organisation from the preceding is that the dairyman, or wursol, must belong either to the Teivaliol or to the Melgars clan of the Tartharol. Both tarpalikartmokh and kudrpalikartmokh are chosen from the Tartharol, either of the same or of a different clan from that of the dairy, but the wursol must be taken either from the members of the other chief division of the Todas or from one special clan of the Tartharol, a clan which has many other peculiar privileges and occupies a position in some ways intermediate between Tartharol and Teivaliol.
The ritual of the wursuli is distinctly more elaborate than that of either tarvali or kudrpali, and the wursol is a more sacred personage, so far as one can judge from his rules of conduct and the elaboration of his ordination ceremonies.
Two Tarthar clans have dairies of especial importance and sanctity, in both of which there are distinctive features of ritual.
The people of Taradr possess a herd of buffaloes called kugvalir which take their name from the dairy, the kugvali or kugpali, meaning the chief or great dairy. The kugvalir are tended by a kugvalikartmokh, who must belong to the Taradrol. The six chief families of this clan take charge of the buffaloes for periods of three years in rotation, and the head of the family in charge selects the kugvalikartmokh.
The other Tarthar dairy which occupies an exceptional position is that of Kanòdrs, which is called a poh, and is tended by a dairyman called pohkartpol. The ritual both of this dairy and of the kugvali of Taradr resembles in some respects that of the most sacred Toda dairies, the dairies of the institution called the ti.
The number and nature of the dairies are different in the different Tarthar clans and in different villages of the same clan. The Melgars clan has only one kind of dairy, the tarvali. The Nòdrs clan now has a tarvali and a wursuli, and at most Kars villages there are both kudrpali and wursuli, but formerly both at Nòdrs and Kars there were three kinds of dairy, tarvali, kudrpali, and wursuli. Some Pan villages have tarvali and wursuli, others kudrpali and wursuli. At Taradr there are both tarvali and wursuli in addition to the special institution of that clan, the kugvali.
All these various kinds of dairy are situated at the villages where the people live. In addition, five Tarthar clans possess dairies where are kept herds of great sanctity, the herds of the ti or the tiir. These buffaloes are kept at special dairies far from any village where people live. A place where such a dairy is situated is called a ti mad, or ti village, and each sacred herd moves about from one ti mad to another at different seasons of the year, and the group of places, together with the herds connected with it, is known collectively as a ti. [17] The ti is thus the name of a special institution comprising buffaloes, dairies, grazing grounds, and the various buildings and objects connected with the dairies.
The ti is presided over by a dairyman-priest called palol, who is assisted by a boy or youth called kaltmokh or, more rarely, kavelol. Formerly it was the custom in most cases that a ti should have two palol, each of whom had his own herd of buffaloes and his own dairy, so that each ti mad had two dairies. This custom now persists in full at one ti only, though in other cases there are still two dairies, of which one is not used, or is only used on special occasions.
Though the ti is, in every case, regarded as the property of a Tarthar clan, the palol must be chosen from the Teivaliol, and in some cases the choice is restricted to certain Teivali clans. The kaltmokh must belong either to the Teivaliol or to the Melgars clan of the Tartharol. The dairy of a ti is always called a poh.
The ritual of the ti reaches a far higher degree of complexity than is attained in any village dairy. The palol is a far more sacred personage than the wursol or the palikartmokh; his life is far more strictly regulated, and the ceremonies attendant on his entrance into office are far more elaborate. The ceremonies connected with dairy or buffaloes are more numerous, and when they correspond to ceremonies performed at the lower grades of dairy, they are much more elaborate and prolonged.
THE DAIRY
There are two forms of Toda dairy. One resembles very closely the ordinary hut, and, but for its situation and the higher wall which surrounds it, it might often be supposed to be one of the huts. The vast majority of dairies are now of this form. The other kind of dairy is circular with a conical roof. There are now only three or four of these buildings in existence, though others have only fallen into ruins in recent times. Breeks, who wrote in 1873, says [18] that at that time there were four, and a fifth in ruins.
The best known of these dairies is that at Nòdrs (the Manboa of Breeks), shown in Fig. 13. It has received the name of “the Toda Cathedral,” and is one of the show places of the Nilgiris. Another (shown in Fig. 25) is at Kanòdrs (the Mutterzhva of Breeks). Both are village dairies of especial sanctity; the Nòdrs building is in full working order, while that of Kanòdrs is only occupied occasionally. A third dairy of the conical form is at the ti place of Anto near Sholur (the Kiurzh of Breeks) and should be regularly visited once a year, though the year in which I was on the Nilgiris was an exception. The fourth dairy of the kind (called by Breeks Tarzhva) is at Tarsòdr on the Kundahs. It is also a ti dairy, but is now falling into ruins, having been disused for about twenty years. The ruined dairy mentioned by Breeks (Katedva) is said to be still in the same condition. It was used as a ti dairy, and is near Makurti Peak.
There is no doubt that conical dairies were at one time more numerous. There was one at the ti place of Enòdr, not far from Ootacamund. There was another at the village of Kars, and the circular wall which once surrounded the dairy still remains, and has been converted into a buffalo pen.
The various names given to the Toda dairies are at first sight very confusing. We have already seen that each kind of dairy is named according to the kind of buffalo connected with it—according to its position in the dairy-series connecting tarvali with ti. Each dairy has also its own special or individual name; thus the kudrpali of Kars is called Tarziolv, and the wursuli of the same village, Karziolv.
In addition to these two sets of names, there is another distinction of a more general kind. There are two general names, poh and pali, and every dairy is one or other of these. The former name is given to every ti dairy, to every dairy of the conical form, [19] and to certain other dairies at the older and more important villages. Some of the latter are ordinarily called pali, but the name poh lingers in the name employed for the dairies in prayer (see