Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/193

 To da Prayer. 175

example of the commemoration in the dairy prayer of a recent event, for the practice of selling buffalo-dung has probably only arisen since the advent of European tea- planters to the Nilgiri Hills.

The prayer is uttered " in the throat," so that the words cannot be distinguished by any one who overhears the prayer. I have several times stood outside a dairy and heard the prayer being recited by the dairyman within the building. I only heard a gurgling noise in which no words could be distinguished. At the ti village of Modr I one day stood outside the dairy and heard the beating of a dairy vessel which accompanies the first prayer at this grade of dairy. At intervals in the noise there was a distinct pause. We have seen that in some dairies the kwarzam fall into definite groups, the kwarzam of the gods, of the buffaloes, &c., and I inquired whether the pauses occurred between and served to mark off these various groups. It seemed clear that this was not the case, but that the dairy- man recited the words till he was out of breath, and that a pause was entirely due to the necessity of taking in a fresh breath.

Of the various features of interest presented by these formulae, one which will especially interest students of folk- lore is the close relation between the formulae and the legends of the people who use them. To the investigator of folklore, it is always very satisfactory to meet with the same fact or set of facts in different connections. When one man tells a legend or story of the past and later, another reveals a prayer which contains clauses agreeing with and rendered intelligible by the previously received legend or story, the investigator feels that the value of both parts of his information is enhanced. The mutual corroboration of lines of evidence collected from different individuals and at different times is a most valuable indication of the authenticity of the record as a whole. Further, many of the kwarzam of the Toda prayer suggested paths towards