Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/136

 I04 Reviews.

have been raised to the ranks of gods, and that the lives of their heroes, founded to some extent on actual fact, have more interest to the Todas and are remembered and passed on, while the legends of the older gods are gradually becoming vaguer in the process towards complete oblivescence ; that the gods as a whole, however, are still regarded as the authors of punishment, and that there is a tendency to make an abstraction of the power of the gods." At present ritual persists in tropical luxuriance, while the beliefs at the basis of the ritual have largely disappeared. The wearisome round of ceremonies intended to secure the purity of the officiant, and the ring of taboos which encompasses him, remind us of the frivolities of the Hindu Brahmana literature. In fact, as Dr. Rivers clearly shows, the Todas are Hindus by race and have been profoundly affected by Hindu influence, direct, or indirect through neighbouring tribes like the Badagas. The tale of woman being formed out of the rib of man suggests that while resident on the western coast they may have absorbed some Christian or Jewish beliefs.

At present the cult of the buffalo is the most prominent feature of their religion. It is perhaps possible that, as suggested by Dr. Rivers, they may have brought with them some animal cultus, like the Hindu reverence for the cow, from their original home in Malabar ; and that in their new settlement " the religion of the Todas underwent a very special development, its ritual coming to centre more and more round the buffalo, because in their very simple environment this was the most accessible object of veneration." This explanation, though perhaps the most reasonable which can be offered at present, is far from satisfactory. No other Dravidian buffalo cult seems as yet to have been dis- covered. But we know little of the primitive tribes of Southern India, and some day Mr. Thurston may explain the mystery.

The cult of the bell is almost equally mysterious. Dr. Rivers suggests that it may have come about by a process of transference from the buffalo to the object worn by it. "Probably at one time the buffaloes were more directly venerated than they appear to be at present." This, again, seems very doubtful. The Gonds, who have no buffalo cult, worship a bell-god as Ghagarapen, and this may easily have arisen from a belief in the sanctity of the bell