Rest Days; A Sociological Study 47 



taken from one place to another, or the people to migrate from 

 one village to another.-'-* It will be noticed that though not all 

 work is prohibited, yet the regulations are extensive enough to 

 affect most of the customary occupations. 



Among the Teivaliol, one of the two endogamous divisions of 

 the Toda people, the madnol is the only sacred day of the week. 

 With the other division called Tartharol there is also a dairy day 

 or palinol, the regulations for which have much the same char- 

 acter as for the madnol. 



Toda ingenuity has devised various recognized ways of evad- 

 ing the rules for the holy days and so of avoiding the incon- 

 venience which might otherwise be entailed on the people. For 

 instance, the rule that nothing may be taken from the village 

 on the madnol has the unpleasant consequence that nothing may 

 be bought on the madnol, since buying implies the departure of 

 money from the village. This rule is circumvented when neces- 

 sary by taking money out of the village on the day before the 

 madnol and burying it in some spot where it can be found on 

 the following day. In this way a purchase can be completed 

 even on the holy day. Again, the rule forbidding women to 

 leave the village on the madnol is evaded in an ingenious fashion. 

 Women who wish to leave the village on a holy day, do so before 

 daybreak. " They wait outside the village till the sun is up, then 

 return to the village, have their meals and do any necessary work, 

 and may then leave. Having left the village before davbreak, a 

 woman is apparently regarded as ceremonially absent during her 

 return to the village, and by making this false start she is held 

 to be keeping the law."^" 



With these possibilities of evasion, it follows that the rules are 

 rarely broken. When a breach of them does occur the culprit 

 may have to perform a propitiatory sacrifice similar to that 

 which follows the commission of various other ceremonial sins 

 against the Toda moral code. "' It seemed quite clear, however, 

 that this only happened if some misfortune should befall the 



^'Rivers, op. cif., 405 sq. 

 ''Ibid., 407. 



47 



