192 



MANUAL OF THE NILAGIRI DISTRICT. 



CHAP. IX, 

 PART I. 



Mode of 

 salutation. 



Tenure of 

 land. 



Religion and 



religious 



beliefs. 



Their mode of saluting one another is peculiar to themselves. 

 A woman when she meets a man^ lifts his feet^^ first one and then 

 the other, to her head as she crouches before him. In the case of 

 an old woman, the ceremony is reversed, and she places her foot 

 on the head of the man., 



Badagas are called mdv, or fathers-in-law, by the Todas in token 

 of respect. A Badaga greets a Toda by laying his hand on the 

 head of the latter. 



The Todas hold the lands on which their mands are built and 

 the surrounding grazing lands on grazing puttas or leases. They 

 pay two annas an acre. Further particulars will be found in the 

 Revenue chapter. 



Of the religion of the Todas, as of their origin, very little 

 remains to be said when the bare facts of the case, as far as they 

 can be ascertained in one instance, and as far as they exist in the 

 others, are divested of the hypothetic and romantic dress with 

 which their chroniclers have adorned them. Their religion is 

 either wholly rudimental, owing its few forms and ceremonies to 

 recent contact with Hindus and others, or it is only the skeleton 

 of an ancient but more developed cult. 



Following the Toda through the peaceful but monotonous 

 course of his life, from the quaint ceremonies which herald his birth 

 to his death-bed, surrounded by relatives who moxirn, as orientals 

 only can, we find no trace of any guiding or restraining power — 

 apparently no sense of religious obligations or supernatural fears. 

 He is too strong and fearless, or perhaps too dull and unimagi- 

 native, for superstitious horrors. His simple life presents few 

 problems of good and evil, right and wrong. Hence he has 

 little conscience or sense of wrong doing. It is startling, then, 

 to find that after death he has a heaven^ for the good and a hell 

 for the bad, where, as they charitably aver, Badaga sinners at least 

 must expiate their offences, and that the grim ceremonial of his 

 funeral contains some words of prayer for the forgiveness of sins. 



It is significant that such words as God, sin, ghost (Dev, 

 Pdpum, and Bhiit) are almost pure Sanscrit, whilst the words 



^ This salutation is called A'dabuddiken, " I seize the foot." 



^ Aninor, heaven. — Dr. Pope. Mr. Rice (Gazetteer of Mysore and Coorg) thinka 

 this is a confusion, and that Amnor is a corruption of Marriamma or Amunna- 

 dd.ru, the mother or village goddess. Mr. Breeks, however, gives Ammundd^ 

 heaven ; Colonel Marshall says, " The Toda has Papum for sin, but I morq 

 than doubt if he has any word for hell." 



" All Todas go to Amnor." — Marshall. ' 



Mr. Breeks remarks : " The Todaa, as we have said, believe in a heaven and a hell, A 



the latter being a swamp full of leeches" called Pufferingen, from PuJ'a, a leech, ( ' 



and en, a place. May not Amndr or Ammun&d, after all, be simply the village '. 



or country of the goddess Marriamma P 





