184 



ANUAL OF IHE NILAOIRI DISTRICT. 



CHAP. IX. 

 PART I. 



Ethnology. 



Nilagiris. In making this assertion, they are probably repeating 

 parrot-like the Badaga tradition regarding the latter's advent to 

 the hills, as is their wont, not being gifted with sufficient imagina- 

 tion to evolve a mythic history of their own. Another theory is 

 that they came from the West Coast, The similarity of some of 

 their customs to those of the Malayalams and the position of their 

 mands, which are mostly in the western uplands of the plateau, 

 whilst some are even in the Wainad, seem to lend colour to the 

 view that their country lay to the west of the Nilagiris. 



On the other hand, Dr. Caldwell remarks : — 



"It has not been noticed by writei'S on the Nilgherries, but it is 

 nevertheless a fact that, notwithstanding the long residence of the 

 Tudas in a cold, cloudy mountain region, the color of their skin is 

 considerably darker than that of the more modern hill race, the Bada- 

 gas, a race of people who immigrated from the Canarese country not 

 many centuries ago, and is many shades darker than that of the 

 majority' of the natives of the Malabar Coast. The darkness of the 

 complexion of the Tudas tends to prove that they came originally 

 from the eastern or sun-burnt side of the range of Ghats ; and that, 

 long before they took up their abode in the hills, they had formed a 

 constituent portion of the low country population." 



The mode of wearing the hair also seems to point the same way. 

 The luxuriant crop or mop of hair, which is their pride, differs but 

 little from the rough, shaggy and unkempt hair of many of the 

 Pareiya and wandering castes of the Carnatic and Dekhan, except 

 that it is oiled and combed. This pride in " these redundant locks, 

 robustious to no purpose " is shared in an eminent degree by 

 the women, whose desire to curl their hair, which has little natural 

 wave in it, may be a point deserving the attention of the ethno- 

 logist, for this fashion is perhaps but an imitation of the mode 

 of some superior race with whom their ancestors were familiar. 

 The hazel or brown eye common to the Toda, Kurumbaand Kota, 

 is also met with in the wild castes of the eastern plains.^ 



Nor does this view altogether militate against the notion that 

 they approached the hills from the western side through the 

 old Carnatic country. A race of drovers of semi-amphibious 

 buffaloes is more likely to have gradually pushed forward its 

 herds through the rich moist flats of Wainad to the grassy downs 

 of the Nilagiris, than through the dry plains of Coimbatore and 

 Salem, The fine species of buffalo which they possess may 

 perhaps be found more nearly allied to the race of buffaloes 

 known in Mysore as the Chokatti buffalo, which comes from the 



' One tribe, the Puleiyas, in Malabar are very black. 



* See Fergusson's Tree and Serpent Worship, x>age 224- ; also Dr. Caldwell, 

 Appendix, Gram. Drav. Lang., page 566. 



