Toda Dwellings and Temples
By William A. Noble
Contents:
Introduction
1. Dwelling-Huts and Houses
2. Dairy-Temples and Funeral-Temples
Introduction
The Todas, by William H. R. Rivers, has become a classic among
anthropological works. However, because Rivers and later anthropologists
were not permitted to enter Toda dwellings and temples, details concerning
both constructional techniques and spacial layouts associated with these
structures have hitherto not been examined and described in adequate detail.
Due to abandonment of structures which has taken place in the last fifty years
and cooperation from Todas, the writer obtained an opportunity to study Toda
dwellings and temples in greater detail while working on the Nilgiris of southern
India in 1962-63*. Mainly for the sake of posterity, and to reveal certain
cultural changes, details concerning Toda dwelling-huts and houses, dairytemples,
and funeral-temples are presented.
1. Dwelling-Huts and Houses
After Yacome Finicio had visited the Nilgiris in the early part of 1603,
he wrote this first description of Toda huts:
... They were like a large barrel half buried in the ground, ... The hoops of the barrel
were of thick reeds like Indian canes, bent into a hoop with both ends fixed in the ground.
Pieces of wood from the bush were laid across those reeds and covered with grass. The
front was made of stakes set on end, like organ pipes, with no other filling whatever. The
door was a span [nine inches] and four inches wide, and two spans and an inch high, ... L
* This paper is the result of field work supported by the Foreign Field Research
Program, sponsored by the Geography Branch, U. S. Office of Naval Research.
1 Translated copy of a letter from Yacome Finicio to the Vice-Provincial of
Calicut, April 1, 1603, in W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas. London 1906, p. 726.
