# Life in India/Todars of the Nilagiri

Todars of the Nilagiri.
The Neilgherries, though till lately unoccupied by the English, have not been uninhabited. They were found to be the home of several quite distinct races, numbering in all some thirteen or fourteen thousand souls. Of these ​tribes, the most ancient and interesting are the Todars. Their number is small, not exceeding seven hundred; but their entire distinctness in many respects from the Hindus of the plains, makes them worthy of special notice. In appearance they are very striking, being tall and athletic, and of a bold, independent bearing. They wear no head-dress but their jet-black hair, which is parted in front, and curled in a bushy mass all over their heads, and meets in heavy black whiskers and beard beneath the chin. Their eyes are black, and the nose aquiline. Their clothing consists of a short under-garment fastened about the middle, and an upper mantle wrapped about the body and thrown over the left shoulder. The right arm is exposed, and usually grasps a staff. The feet are always bare. They carry no weapons, and, in fact, have no weapons whatever, beyond a staff. Of war they know nothing.
The women wear their hair curled in long tresses on each side of the face, and have a self-possession with strangers quite unknown among the Hindus of the plains. They are ready to chat with the stranger, and have smiles almost constantly on their faces.
Todar house, and family. p. 446.
​and are built with two semicircular ends of upright planks, and an arched roof thatched with straw. They are usually placed three or four together on the skirt of a piece of woodland, with a sloping pasture before them, and form a picturesque addition to the scenery of the hills. They are poor places for residence, however, as they are but about twelve feet deep by eight feet wide, without any chimney for the escape of smoke. The door, which is the only mode of entrance both for air and light, as well as for the family, is but thirty inches in height, and less in width. It is well that the Todars are not given to corpulence, or they might find it difficult to enter their homes, or, when once in, to get out again.
Near the house in which a Todar family lives always stands another of the same construction, used as a dairy, and surrounded by a stone wall; and, close by the dairy, a stone enclosure for the herd of buffaloes. This herd constitutes the whole property of the Todar patriarch, (for they will not even keep cows, so highly reverenced by the Hindus,) and to tend and milk the buffaloes, and churn their milk into butter and ghee, is his sole occupation. Their mode of life is exceedingly simple, as they eat no ​meat, living on the produce of their herds and the grains paid to them as the lords of the soil by another class called Badagas or Burghers. It has been a matter of much curiosity, among those interested in the origin of the Hindu races, to ascertain the language and religion of this apparently aboriginal tribe. Their language is evidently a form of the primitive stock from which the old Tamil and Canarese were drawn, and not at all based on the Sanscrit. Many of their words are Tamil words, pronounced with a deep pectoral enunciation. This would tend to show that the Tamil and Canarese races, allied to one another, dwelt in Southern India before the Brahmins introduced Sanscrit, and that these mountaineers are a part of the same race, who, separated from contact with the modern Hindu nations, have retained the ancient language of the land. This is still further shown by the interesting fact that they know nothing whatever of the Brahminic religion, now spread all over India. Of the great Hindu triad, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, they know nothing; nor of Ganesha, Kali, Lachmy, and the thousand other gods of the modern Hindus. Nor have they idols as objects of worship. They offer some slight homage to ​an unknown being, but have little religion of any kind. So far as they have any worship, it is connected with the dairy in which the milk is kept and churned. Into this the women are not allowed to enter; nor the men, until after performing certain cleansing ceremonies.
They have also temples built in a circular form, with a conical thatched roof, terminating in a point, capped by a stone; but in these also there is the same absence of Hindu idols. On one occasion I had an opportunity of entering one of these temples, and of making an examination as to the presence of idols. The Todars, not wishing to seem unlike their neighbours, always tell you that there is an image within; and to deter intruders from entering, inculcate the idea that to approach the temple would be attended with danger. I found, however, no such object of worship. With some difficulty I managed to remove the heavy slab of wood which served as a door and played in a groove within, and squeezed my body through the narrow opening. The apartment was small, and contained nothing but the dairy implements; it was separated by a partition of upright planks from an inner room. The door to the second room was, if any thing, still smaller, ​but turning upon my side I effected an entrance. It was totally dark, except as the rays of light traversed the two doorways; but my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, and for further assurance I passed my hands around the wall. I found, however, no object of worship. In one corner was a stone on which was laid a pile of buffalo-butter, doubtless with some vague notion of worship; it is said that libations of milk are offered to a lighted lamp upon this stone. But of Hinduism, it may be asserted, they are quite ignorant; it must have entered Southern India since this ancient tribe took up their abode—perhaps driven hither by invasion from the north—upon these mountains. Early travellers, charmed with the simple character and patriarchal mode of life of these mountain herdsmen, isolated for centuries in their highland homes while revolutions raged below, gave so glowing a description of their habits and morals, that a distinguished modern historian in Germany expresses the hope that missionaries will not be permitted to enter this Eden and disturb its happy state of tranquil virtue and contentment. But alas! the Todars are not exceptions to the universal stain of human depravity. Here, as elsewhere, man is found ​to be sinful and to need a Saviour. The Todars, though in many respects pleasing and simple, are, nevertheless, slothful, given to lying, and, in their social relations, degraded. They have been in the habit of killing their female infants, and of making amends for the difference in the number of the sexes by allotting one wife to several husbands. Their views of a future state are dark, and their sense of responsibility for their acts to a higher power very dull. The historian need have no apprehension of the Todars receiving injury from Christian ministers, though they may lose their simplicity by contact with thoughtless and godless Europeans.
A hill, partly covered by a dense wood, and in part bare of trees, but clothed to its summit with grass, rose at the back of the house in which we lodged while at Ootacamund. Between it and us was a deep valley, through which a little stream found its way towards the lowlands. About half-way up this hill, and in a bray in the forest, was a Todar mund which I often passed in my morning rambles. By means of my Tamil, I managed to form an acquaintance with the family, whose herd of buffaloes was pastured on the hill-side. The head of the ​household calling on me one morning, told me that there was to be a funeral ceremony for a deceased member of his tribe, on a hill some five miles distant, and offered to be my guide to the place. Having never witnessed a scene of the kind, I accepted his invitation, and in company with one or two companions started for the place chosen for the funeral rites.
It was a lovely day, the sun shining brightly on hill and valley, and our guide strode rapidly on to point out the way, while we followed up hill and down on horses. The mound-like eminences which we crossed were mostly destitute of wood and of animal life. Though in the forests there are deer, elk, jackals, leopards, and other beasts, you see but little of them in passing over the hills by day. Occasionally, on a sunny slope, we would see the mund of some Todar family, with a herd of a hundred or a hundred and fifty buffaloes feeding near it. As we approached them, the ungainly creatures would raise their heads, snuff the air, and rolling their wild black eyes, draw together as if to attack us. A charge upon them with shouts, however, always put them to flight. On many of the hill-tops ancient burial-places, in the form of circular stone-walled cairns, are found; ​but of their occupants or builders even the Todars have no tradition.
At length, passing through a little stream, and climbing a steep hill, we came in sight of the mourners. They were assembled to the number of two hundred, as is their custom, about midway up a gently-sloping hill, and near a pretty wood. A single house, built for the purpose, contained the females and chief mourners of the family. The others were gathered in groups in the open air. Many of the men were most patriarchal in their appearance, and carried the imagination back to the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Not far off sat a company of Kohaters, another of the hill tribes, with filthy robes and tangled locks, waiting like vultures for the flesh of the sacrifices. These degraded creatures are the artisans of the Neilgherries, the smiths and potters of the other tribes; they also cultivate the soil, but they are, in their habits of life, far below the Todars. They are not only flesh-eaters, but eaters of carrion. If a bullock dies of disease, they mark the spot, and returning when the owner has left it to rot, cut the flesh from its bones and carry it to their homes. I have met a company of them bearing a load of meat ​hung upon a pole between two men, when its smell even in passing was most offensive.
The deceased had died a month before, and had then been burned, with the offering of sacrifices and o'her rites, so that this was a second funeral. A few fragments of the bones of the dead had been preserved, and now, wrapped in a mantle, were laid on the ground in front of the house of mourning. On the preceding day the company had mourned and fasted; on this day they met to continue the ceremonies. When all were assembled, a number of young men, each with a heavy staff on his shoulder, forming themselves into platoons and holding hands, commenced a peculiar marching dance, going round and round in a circle, with loud guttural cries of “Haugh! haugh! haugh! haugh!" until they were exhausted. Others then took their places and continued the club-dance. The mantle containing the relics of the dead was now brought forward and spread upon the ground, and some thirty or forty of the younger men, throwing aside their upper garments, moved to a stonewalled pen hard by, in which a number of buffaloes were confined. With their staves in their hands they leaped into the enclosure, and ​with loud shouts marched, as before, around its area, driving the buffaloes with blows before them. Suddenly, two of them sprang upon one of the buffaloes, and each seizing it by a horn, threw their whole weight upon its neck, hanging with one hand to the horn, while, with the other, they grasped the cartilage of its nose. The half-maddened and powerful beast plunged and tossed its head, but others leaped upon it, while others still, with loud yells, beat it with their clubs. The buffalo drove among the herd and against the stone wall, plunging and tossing its head to disengage its assailants; but it was in strong hands, and finally was led and driven without the enclosure to the place where lay the relics of the dead. Forcing its nostrils down to the mantle, they held it while the sacrificer, with the blunt end of a small axe, struck it in the forehead. The huge beast quivered and fell, breathing out its life upon the relics of the dead, whose spirit it was supposed to accompany into the future world.
One after another, seven buffaloes were thus overpowered and slain before the dead. While the slaughtered beasts were lying thus upon the green, the mourners drew near, and seating themselves upon the ground, began to wail. ​Seated in pairs, they laid their foreheads together and sobbed aloud; the tears rolled down their cheeks in streams, and they presented the appearance of the deepest anguish. Two, who had thus been weeping on each other's shoulder, would separate and unite themselves to other mourners, saluting one another in a style peculiar to these mountaineers: the man stretching out a foot, the female applied her forehead to it, and then did the same with the other foot; after this they united their tears and sobs. Gradually the number of the mourners increased, the wail swelling and deepening until the beautiful hill-side became a very Bochim–a place of tears. Although we knew that this burst of grief was but a working up of excited feelings in many, and a feigned thing with others, it could not be beheld without emotion. I turned homeward with a heart full of sadness for these mourning families. These funeral rites, so vain, so meaningless, so void of all power to help the soul, were but an index to the darkness that reigned within the assembled multitude. Oh, why has God made me to differ from these heathen? Why is it that I know Jesus to be the resurrection and the life, while darkness broods on their minds? ​Why is it that when friends depart, I sorrow not as those who are without hope? May we, who have been enlightened from on high, understand the gift of God, and not sink to a more hopeless grave by turning from the proffers of eternal life in Jesus Christ!