258 MANUAL OF THE NILAGIRI DISTRICT. 



CHAP. XI. if f(jllowed up, may throw light on the past of this people. 

 Early 'i^^^^^^ traditions and their speech show them to be a Kanarese 

 History, or Telngu people who approached the Nilagiris from the north, 

 and this view is supported by the Brahman tradition, mentioned 

 by Mr. Metz, that they came with Rdma from the north. ^ Also 

 by the fact that they call the south-western portion of the district 

 Pirgiir, which Mr. Metz interprets as the land of Feringis, i.e., 

 of strangers. The absence of any Toda settlements on the 

 southern slopes of the Hills also points the same way. They 

 further call their grazing grounds (the uplands of Todanad) 

 Melur, but have no name, Mr. Metz states, for the western 

 portions of the Kundas, though thoy call the eastern portion 

 Meurur, or the land of rain. A people who lived from time imme- 

 morial on the uplands would not naturally call these uplands 

 Melur; but a people coming from the lowlands would. It is also 

 curious to observe that though the Todas have settlements in 

 Waindd near the Nilagiris, and even have a special reverence 

 for a shrine there, where their hunting god Betakan resides, yet 

 they have not extended their settlements thither. It may be that 

 incursions from Malabar drove them hillwards. Their presence 

 in Waindd must, however, date back many centuries, for the 

 absence of Lingayats in Waindd is an evidence that, for the last 

 eight centuries at least, Kanarese dominion in that tdluk, though 

 the tract geographically is a part of Kdrndta, must have been very 

 fitful. That they came from the north may then be admitted, but 

 with what people were they connected there ? Their religion may 

 help us to find an answer. What is there unique in it ? Veneration 

 for the buffalo, adoration of the sun, moon, and fire — in a word, 

 light — and the hermit character of their priests. These traits apper- 

 tain to a race having a fire cult and to a land where the bufialo 

 was held in special honor. Again, their marriage customs would 

 connect them with a race of polyandrists. A race possessing seve- 

 ral of these characteristics seems at one time, in the dim twilight 

 of history, to have ruled in part of the Dekhan. There is men- 

 tion 2 of a Mdhishamati — city (?) of the buffalo — on the Nerbadda; 

 again in the Mahabharata, of a town of the same name situated 

 apparently further south, — south probably of the Godavari, on 

 a tributary of the Kistna; — and again in Buddhist history 

 (240 B.C.) of a Mdhisha-mandalam, or buffalo country, probably 



1 This legend, though conflicting with the Toda stoiy, is noteworthy, as both 

 legends would place them in close relation with great kings. It may indicate 

 that they were a tribe adopted by the conquerors. I have noted elsewhere the 

 presence of caste distinctions existing among them in a far more marked degree 

 than in other aboriginal races. 



-See Lassen's Inchon AUerflun», Vol. 1 , i)p. o67-fi9 and noto. Tlip coninion 

 interpretation of Mihisha — buffalo — in this name is not universally adniitted. 



