MANUAL OF THE NILAGIRI DISTRICT. 183 



PART I. 

 The Todas. 



Origin. — Derivation of Name. — Physical characteristics.— Dress. — Census. — 

 Divisions. — Mode of life. — Dwellings. — The mand — Situation. — Family and 

 inheritance. — Pastimes. — Music and Song. — Salutation. — Religion — Priests. — 

 Temples.— Rites and ceremonies.— Birth. — Marriage.— Funerals, green and 

 dry. — Traditions. — Language. 



It has become the custom to consider this people as lords of CHAP. IX, 

 the soil, not only on account o£ their self-assertion and indepen- PAM I. 

 dent bearing, but also on account of their practice of levying Ethnology. 



guclu, or tribute in kind, from the other tribes. The Government ' .- 



have, in a measure, countenanced this claim of lordship over the 

 lands of the plateau by paying to them quit-rent for certain lands 

 within the towns of Ootacamand and Coonoor.^ 



The Todas have probably inhabited the Nilagiris for many 

 centuries, their occupation being anterior to that of any other of 

 the tribes now dwelling thereon; but there are not sufficient 

 reasons for considering them to be the earliest inhabitants of the 

 hills. 



Some remains of villages in no way resembling Toda mands, as 

 well as the cairns and barrows, are possibly the work of a race or 

 races who preceded them, but of whom the Todas can give no 

 account. If Dr. CaldwelPs theory is correct, that the Todas are 

 a Dravidian race of Scythian origin, they would seem to have left 

 the plains after the Aryan invasions, but befoi'e the tenets of the 

 Brahmans had taken any hold upon the minds of the people, and 

 before there had been any extensive mixture of races. 



But the date of their coming and their previous history are alike 

 uncertain. Some think that they migrated to the Hills ^ about 

 800 years ago from the Kanarese country, and those who hold this 

 theory, of the grounds of which I am ignorant, look upon them 

 as a people who have degenerated from isolation, their religion 

 containing only here and there some fossil remains of a former 

 faith, and their language having dwindled to a mere skeleton. 

 Colonel Marshall's researches have led him, on the contrary, to 

 look on them as a primitive race still in its infancy. The Todas 

 themselves say that they came from the jungle tract of inferior hills 

 situated between the Kanarese and Tamil Districts, in the direc- 

 tion of the Hasanilr Pass in the Eastern Ghats, north-east of the 



^ The history of the action of Government in regard to the land rights of the 

 Todas will be found in the chapter on the Revenue History of the District. 

 * Dr. Pope's Tudci Qrammar ; Mr. Metz's Tribes inhabiting the Nilgherries. 



