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The TODA MAND or HUT.

From Colonel W. E. Marshall's "A Phrenologist amongst the Todas," frontispiece.

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The TIRIERI. The HOLY PLACE, or TODA SANCTUM. From Colonel W. E. Marshall's "A Phrenologist amongst the Todas," p. 146.

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and may have given rise to the Chaitya halls, but it is, of course, impossible to prove it."

I give a pen and ink sketch of one of these Toda hutswhich I trust Colonel Marshall will forgive me doing without his permission. The sketch also contains a hut with a straight-lined roof-which is not the common form with the Todas here it will show that the curved roof is the simpler in construction, and consequently we may suppose for that reason the most primitive. It is easy to understand how simple it would be to bend the flexible bamboo, and thus produce a covering from the sun and the weather; it is still further possible to suppose that in the very earliest condition of man, when trees were utilized for shelter, he would bend the growing bamboo, and spread over them branches or long grass, and thus produce a pansala, or primitive habitation; and this would be the first germ of the Chaitya hall. The additions which it would receive in its transition from the bamboo to a more solid wooden mode of construction, which we know the Chaitya hall reached, presents no difficulty. The one difficulty previously was to explain why, at some early time, the builders of India had produced a round roof, like an arch, with wood as their material. The Toda hut is sufficient to supply the explanation. That is all that can be said; we cannot affirm positively that this is the source, but it is, so far as I know, the best suggestion that has yet appeared, and when a better does turn up, I shall be most willing, as in the case of the Persian barrel-roof, to give it up.

According to Colonel Marshall, the Todas are very conservative in everything. No tribe remains perfectly stationary, however secluded it may be; but the Todas seem to have preserved everything about them in a very archaic state, and their huts are evidently not an exception to this condition of things.

I add, also from Colonel Marshall's book, a sketch of what he terms "The Tiriêri: The Holy Place, or Toda Sanctum." I cannot give all the details of the author; it will be enough to say that this is a temple. Constructively, it does not seem to differ from the Toda house, or hut. I do not think it helps the conclusion I have come to, but to some it may

appear as an additional confirmation that temples were also built in this peculiar manner in India. The Tiriêri contains a sacred bell-the bell of a cow-and some other relics, but it is in reality a dairy, and the only person who enters the place is the Pâlâl, a very sacred kind of priest, a sort of god-it is believed that the Deity is in him-who is cowkeeper and cow-milker for the community-evidently a most primitive ecclesiastical arrangement.1

The well-known Hindu temple, with its Sikhara, or spire, presents us with more than one problem for solution. India is covered with these places of worship, and up to the present day the origin of this temple is unknown; some few attempts at solving the difficulties have been made, but no certainty has as yet been reached, and I am willing to confess that the suggestions I am about to offer are here given rather as tentative, than as settled, convictions on my part.

The Hindu temple is formed of a cell, square in plan, with a door on one side. The sikhara rises from the walls of the cell, preserving the square form to the top: the line curves slightly inwards. In the oldest examples the curve is very small below, whilst the greatest amount of bend is at the summit, the line produced being what would be seen if you were to bend a tapered wand. The early sikharas are more like towers than spires. The sikhara is surmounted by a member called the amalaka, which is circular in plan, and might be likened to a cushion, or a compressed melon: the outer surface is ribbed. A kalasa, or jar, surmounts this as a pinnacle: emblems belonging to the deity of the temple are common on sikharas, but these do not belong to the problems before us.

The magnificent group of temples at Bhuvaneswar, in Orissa, brings before us the earliest known examples of these monuments. They date back, roughly speaking, to the sixth and seventh centuries, and whoever is familiar with Mr. Fergusson's works, will know that we have not in these

1 Since this was written, I have learned through the Rev. John MacKenzie, that the Gariepine people, or Yellow Race, of South Africa, have religious ideas about cows, milk, and milking, very like those of the Todas. A woman's presence would make the cattle pen impure; chiefs are buried in the pen, and the ground is trodden down by the cattle to obliterate all trace of the interment.

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