Chap. XXII. ANTIQUITIES. 365 



beaten to death with clubs ; but the Government has recently 

 prohibited the immolation of more than two beasts for a rich, 

 and one for a poor Todar. The burial-places are like gigantic 

 extinguishers, twelve feet high, and thatched with grass. The 

 bodies are burnt, and the ashes collected and put into 

 chatties, which are deposited in the extinguisher. The 

 Todars have no other ceremonies, care for nothing but their 

 buffaloes, and leave prayers to the palaul in his lonely retreat, 

 or to the palikarpal or dairyman of each mund, who covers 

 his nose with his thumb when he enters the sacred dairy, and 

 says " ]\[ay all be well ! "^ 



The Todar language is a very rude dialect of the old 

 Canarese, and similar to that of the Badagas, another hill 

 tribe. It is very poor in words conveying abstract ideas, as 

 they have few notions beyond their buffaloes ; their verbs 

 have generally but oue tense, and they express the future 

 and past by means of adverbs of time.^ 



There are many ancient cairns and tumuli on the peaks of 

 the Neilgherries, and it has been objected that they cannot be 

 assigned to the ancestors of the Todars, because agricultural 

 implements have been found in them, and these people never 

 cultivate the gromid. But it must be remembered that the 

 Todars now extort goodoo or tribute of grain from the other 

 hill tribes, and that it is their only food. It must be inferred, 

 therefore, that, before they discovered this easy mode of pro- 

 curing food, and previous to the arrival of these Aveaker agri- 

 cultural tribes on the hills, the Todars must have been their 

 own cultivators. The hill people attribute all ancient ruins, 

 of the origin of which they know nothing, to the Pandus, 

 the famous heroes of Hindu tradition ; and all that can be 



^ Tribes inhabiting the Neilgherry by the Todars of the Nilagiri Mountains, | 



Hills, from the rough Notes of a German , by the Rev. F. Metz, of the German 



Missionary. (Madras, 185(J.) Evangelical Mission. (Madras, 18.57,) 



' Vocdbuhmj of the Dialect spoken | 



