Chap. XXII. TODARS. 363 



people, tall, well-proportioned, and athletic, and utterly 

 unlike all other natives of India. They have Jewish features, 

 with aquiline noses, hazel eyes, thick lips, bushy black beards, 

 and immensely thick clusters of glossy hair cut so as to stand 

 in dense masses round the sides of the head, a very necessary 

 protection from the sun, as they never wear any other head- 

 covering. The old men are very handsome, with long white 

 beards and upright gait, looking like tlie patriarchs of the 

 Old Testament, with their strongly marked Jewish features : 

 but the expressions of the younger men are less agreeable to 

 look upon. The women are very careful of their hair, which 

 hangs down in long glossy ringlets ; and both sexes wear 

 nothing but a long piece of coarse cotton cloth, with two 

 broad red stripes round the edges, worn by the men like a 

 Roman toga, ^vhich sets off their well-shaped limbs to advan- 

 tage, and exj)oses one leg entirely, up to the hip ; and by the 

 women so as to form a short petticoat and mantle. They 

 never wash either their persons or their clothes from the day 

 of their birth to the day of their death. They live in small 

 encampments called munds, which are scattered over the 

 Mils, and consist of five or six huts, and a larger one used as 

 a dairy. The families are in the habit of migrating from one 

 mund to another, at certain seasons of the year ; so that we 

 often came upon a mund apparently abandoned. A Todar's 

 hut is exactly like the tilt of a waggon, very neatly roofed, 

 with the ends boarded in, and a single low entrance. They 

 are generally surrounded by a stone wall, and the dairy, a 

 larger and more important building, is always a little apart. 

 The only occupation of this singular people is to tend then- 

 large herds of fine buffaloes ; they live on milk, and on the 

 grain which they collect as a due or goodoo from the other 

 hill tribes, and pass the greater part of theii* time in idleness ; 

 lolling about and gossiping in their munds, or strolling over 

 the liills. We passed tlirough one of these munds, about a 



