oo8 MANUAL OF THE NJLAGIRI DISTRICT. 



CHAP. XIII, compeiiMttion, not quit-rent or " goodoo " should be paid, demanded 

 PART I that the claims of the Todas to sovereign rights in the soil should 

 Ee^ue be repudiated. 



History . Lord Elphinstone would not move, and it was not till the 



Marquis of latter part of 1842 that his successor, the Marquis of Tweeddale, 



reTers'^thl^ took up the matter. The Collector of Malabar was called on 



questions to to explain the delay in making a final settlement with the 



Directors* °^ Todas. In December 1842 he reported that the T6das had 



after further agreed to Substitute the word " compensation" for *' goodoo " in 



th^°c'^lle°tor ^^® agreement made with them in 1840, and that accordingly he 



of Malabar, had paid them Rupees 300, or two years' indemnity, leaving 



arrears to be settled later. In reporting the area " actually in 



the occupation of the Todas," he defines it as the land lying 



between Doddabetta and the Paikare river and Segur and the 



Melur cultivated lands. In February 1843 the Government 



submitted the question of the Todas' rights for the decision of the 



Court of Directors. After pointing out that the chief difficulty 



in disposing of claims to land on the Nilagiris arose from the 



circumstance that the rights of the inhabitants in the soil had 



never been defined, and that the resolution of the Government 



in 1835 had been held virtually to apply to the Ootacamaud 



settlement only, they proceed thus : — 



*' An attentive examination of the whole subject did not enable us to 

 discover that the rights of the Todas in the laud differed from those 

 of the people of India generally in their relation to the existing 

 Government. They seem always to have paid a land tax, and this was 

 a light pasture tax only, because the Todas are a pastoral tribe in the 

 lowest stage of civilization. Other classes of the hill population, we 

 observed, of more settled habits, were not exempted from the payment 

 of the usual agricultural tax. It is true we found that the latter were 

 in the habit of offering certain gratuities or allowances of grain to the 

 Todas under the name of " goodoo," the exact import of which is 

 unknown, but similar payments are made to other rude tribes of the 

 mountains without any acknowledgment of superiority claimed or 

 service rendered." 



The despatch goes on to state that Todas had been maintained 

 in possession of the lands occupied by them, but that the 

 Government had been of opinion that these rights could not be 

 suffered to bar the progress of improvement over the large tracts of 

 land constituting the Nilagiris, nor to hinder the application of 

 lands to more beneficial purposes, considering it sufficient that the 

 Todas should receive in such cases a compensation, eras Mr. Conolly 

 had proposed with reference to the tenures of Malabar, a share of 

 15 per cent, on the net profits. On this point they desired to 

 be furnished with the early orders of the Court, observing thnt 

 the question in issue really was whether the Todas were to have 



