TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION B. 811 



divided take their names from certain important villages. The people of a clan 

 are known as madol (village people), and a man is not allowed to marry one of 

 his own madol. 



Marriage is also regulated by kinship. A man may not marry the daughter of his 

 father's brother. As there is paternal descent, she would be of his own clan. He is 

 also prohibited from marrying the children of his mother's sisters, though they will 

 usually not be members of his clan. There is thus a prohibition of marriages be- 

 tween the children of brothers on the one hand and between the children of sisters 

 on the other hand. Between the children of brother and sister there is not only 

 no such prohibition, but the orthodox marriage is of this Iciud. A man normally 

 marries the daughter of his mother's brother or of his father's sister. Infant 

 marriage is a well-established Toda custom, and children married to one another 

 are very often cousins — the children of brother and sister. There is, however, a 

 very general custom of transferring wives from one man to another (or from one 

 set of men to another), and the unions which ensue are not necessarily examples of 

 the marriage of cousins. 



The Todas have long been noted as a polyandrous people, and the institution of 

 polyandry is still in full working order among them. When a girl becomes the 

 wife of a boy it is usually imderslood that she becomes also the wife of his 

 brothers. 



In nearly every case at the present time and in recent generations the husbands 

 of a woman are own brothers. In a few cases though not brothers they are of 

 the same clan. Very rarely do they belong to different clans. 



One of the most interesting features of Toda polyandry is the method by which 

 it is arranged who shall be regarded as the father of a child. For all social and 

 legal purposes the father of a child is the man who performs a certain ceremony 

 about the seventh month of pregnancy, in which an imitation bow and arrow is 

 given to the woman. 



When the husbands are own brothers the eldest brother usually gives the bow 

 and arrow, and is the father of the child, though so long as the brothers live 

 together the other brothers are also regarded as fathers. 



It is in the cases in which the husbands are not own brothers that the cere- 

 mony often becomes of real social importance. In these cases it is arranged that 

 one of the husbands shall give the bow and arrow, and this man is the father, not 

 only of the child born shortly afterwards, but also of all succeeding children, till 

 another husband performs the essential ceremony. Fatherhood is determined so 

 absolutely by this ceremony that a man who has been dead for several years is 

 regarded as the father of any children borne by his widow if no other man has given 

 the bow and arrow. 



There is no doubt that in former times the polyandry of the Todas was asso- 

 ciated with female infanticide, and it is probable that the latter custom still exists 

 to some extent, through strenuously denied. There is reason to believe that women 

 are now more plentiful than formerly, though they are still in a distinct minority. 

 Any increase, however, in the number of women does not appear to have led to 

 any great diminution of polyandrous marriages, but polyandry is often combined 

 with polygyny. Two or more brothers may have two or more wives in common. 

 In such marriages, however, it seems to be a growing custom that one 

 brother should give the bow and arrow to one wife, and another brother to another 

 wife. It seems possible that the Todas are moving from polyandry towards mono- 

 gamy through an intermediate stage of combined polyandry and polygyny. 



3. The Toda Dairy. By W. H. R. Rivers, M.D. 



The Todas of the Nilgiri Hills practise an elaborate religious ritual which is a 

 development of the ordinary operations of the dairy. The dairy is the temple and 

 the dairyman is the priest. 



There are several kinds of dairy-temple, of different degrees of sanctity, cor- 

 responding to the different degrees of sanctity of the buffaloes tended at each. 



