239 



Report on the Psychology and Sociology of the Todas and other 



Indian Tribes. 



By W. H. R. Rivers, M.D., Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. 



(An Abstract of Work carried out by the aid of the Gunning Fund of the Royal 

 Society for the year 1901-1902. Communicated by the Secretaries of the 

 Royal Society. Received October 18, — Read December 14, 1905.) 



Six months were spent in India, the greater part of the time being 

 devoted to the investigation of the Todas of the Nilgiri Hills. The senses 

 of these people were examined experimentally on the same lines as those 

 followed by the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits.* The general 

 result was to confirm the chief conclusion of this expedition that there are 

 no great differences between the senses of savage and civilised races. In 

 pure sense-acuity little difference was found, and the observations lend no 

 support to the view that the sense-acuity of savage or barbarous races is 

 superior to that of civilised man, the apparent superiority in some cases 

 being due to the training of observation in special directions. 



In two senses only is there distinct evidence of difference between Todas 

 and Englishmen in sensory endowment. The Todas are distinctly less 

 sensitive to pain than the average educated Englishman, and they show 

 the same kind of deficiency in the colour-sense which has been found in 

 other races of low culture, especially in the Papuan f and the Egyptian 

 peasant.^ 



The Todas are distinctly less sensitive to blue than the average educated 

 Englishman, though differing little in sensibility to red or yellow. This 

 defect in the sensibility for blue is associated with the deficient nomen- 

 clature for this colour which is almost universal in races of low culture ; 

 and the observations on the Todas strengthen the conclusion reached by 

 previous work that physiological insensitiveness is one, though only one, 

 of the factors upon which the defect in language depends. 



The most striking feature of Toda colour-vision, however, is the great- 

 frequency of colour-blindness. About five hundred individuals were tested, 

 and over 12 per cent, of the males were found to suffer from typical red- 

 green blindness, the proportion in European races being about 4 per cent. 

 In most races of low culture colour-blindness is less frequent than in 



* ' Eeports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits.' Cambridge, 

 vol. 2, Part I, 1901, and Part II, 1903. 

 f Loc. cit., p. 48. 



X ' Journ. Anthrop. Inst.,' 1901, vol. 31, p. 229. 



