Indian Antiquary Vol 36

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 91

MARO, 1907.]
THE OHUHRAS.
Chuli Bálé pir di aggá Dané dé dissé, Control him-and shut him up indoors.' Chashreái dá pîr hai vich Nishauré de vassé, They tried Chhattré bakre koh lai, mullái nú na puchhe. To hold him, but he cast them off and railed Dana kahe sipahidi nii Uth karð laiyari, Against priest Bâlâ, saying to Dâna, He, đauần hô sảô gôrêái khoe lộ tutearin.
The Chuhras' priest, lives in Naughera. Ho Pể di ga aru na đếa ni phi d •jit tarỉ. Kills rams and goats himself, and disregards Aithé pakar léd und, piri vélhdiga sari,
The Muslim priests. Thus spake he. Dina Chhattré kőhid vékh idi, vaddå bilkári.
gave Chele siftán jöridi, Rabb paij savári.
His soldiers orders to prepare to mount Sau asvár tur péya ghorián té charhké.
Their horses, ride away, and draw their swords, Nor let the priest resist by even a word. He must not have their leave to atter word.
Ge bring him here in chains, his priesthood I Will provo. I'll see if he kills rams himself, The headstrong man.' His own disciple wrote This song of praise. May God vouchsafe us
peace. (To be continued.)
BOOK-NOTICE. THE TODAD. BY W. 1. R. RIVER, Fellow of about 800 people. With the help of two St. John's College, Cambridge. With Illustrations, interpreters -
interpreters-a catechist and a forest ranger -
osate London: Macmillan & Co., 1903, pp. xviii, 755, 40he extracted from them a vast mass of valuable Tables and Map
items of information, which he checked and EVERY visitor of Ootacamund has met the
verified by cross-examination and independent sturdy, shock-headed aborigines of the soil, who
statements. He found these uncultured savages first greet him with a merry salam' and then
extremely intelligent, veracious, and far from naively and confidently ask him for his tribute
reticent except on certain tabooed watters. in the shape of an 'illam' (as the Arabic word in'am is pronounced by them). Their little colonies The Todas are a purely pastoral race and do of barrel-shaped huts are scattered all over the not possess any wealth or means of subsistence Nilgiri plateau. Two of them are on the very except their fine, fierce-looking buffalo-cows, to ontakirts of the summer capital: one near Sylk's the care of which their daily life is devoted. No Hotel and another close to the Government wonder that in their belief milk has become Gardens. Othere occupy some of the most a sacred substance and the dairy & place of picturesque spots in the environs : near the worship. The milking and churning operations Marlimund Reservoir, near the Umbrella Tree, at
of the dairy form the basis of the greater part of the top of the Sigur Ghat, in Governor's Shola, the religious ritual of the Todas' (p. 38). Besides &c. From the time when the hills were first the ordinary buffaloes' attached to avy village, visited by Europeans ( which is less than a century there are herds of sacred buffaloes which are ago), the Todas hare excited much interest, and tended by dairymen-priests. The holiest kind of a pretty extensive literature has grown up dairy is the t, and ita priest the pala! ( i. e., regarding them. No observer, however, has made milkman). Dr. Rivers gives a full description of 80 deep a study of them as Dr. Rivers, whose the complicated dairy ritual, plans of the dairies, special accomplishments as an anthropologist, and and photographs of the dairy-vessels, the prieste, whose previous experience of similar work in the and their attendants. The most sacred object of Torres Straits,enabled him to gather very accurate the dairies are certain buffalo-bells (mani), which and detailed information about their customs and are kept in the innermost room of the dairy. beliefs. The result of his stay among them is the temples, and to which a miraculous origin is delightful volume to which I seek to draw the imputed. The picture on p. 51 will interest Sansattention of all friends of India.
krit scholars, as it shows the native method of Dr. Rivers gradually examined nearly every churning, which is frequently alluded to in Hindu individual of the whole tribe, which numbers literature. Most of the dairies resemble in form