Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 8.djvu/117

TODA MEN.—TODA WOMEN. and it is strange, if it were so, that the graves should resemble those found in the Deccan as well as in the Neelgerry hills. In the former (vide Meadows Taylor's article published in Vol. XXIV. of The Transaction. of the Royal Irish Academy) instances are given of skeletons found on their faces, surrounded by arms and utensils for the use of the dead in spirit land; in others of ashes and charred bones buried in pots or urns. In comparing Mr. Breeks' narrative of examination of cairns or barrows, as also Captain Harkness' many similarities between them and the Deccan cairns are evident, especially the finding of covering or closing slabs of stone at or near the surface, lying almost invariably north-east and south-west—a similar peculiarity existing in the case of cairns on Twizelt Moor in Northumberland—and in the position of the pot containing human ashes underneath the covering slabs, which was identical with Mr. Breeks' descriptions. The presence of a fine foreign earth, by which the articles were surrounded, the occasional discovery of bells, of spear and arrow heads, swords, and other weapons, are facts which invite and suggest further investigations. The Todas, it is true, do not claim these cairns, barrows, Kistvaens, and Dolmens; but may they not belong to that former faith, to which Mr. Breeks makes such forcible allusion?

There is probably no ancient tribe in India so interesting as these entirely isolated Todas, isolated alike by position as by ethnological peculiarity. As yet, however, they have baffled all attempts to assign them a place among the other aboriginal tribes of India.