A Phrenologist Amongst The Todas Or The Study Of A Primitive Tribe In South India History, Character, Customs, Religion Infanticide, Polyandry, Language

In the course of a furlough the author took in the year 1870 to the Madras sanatorium of Utacamand, in the Nilagiri Mountains, he heard much of an ‘aboriginal race ‘ living in the neighbourhood; which, infanticidal and polyandrous, was said to be fast dying out. He had long been curious to understand the mysterious process by which, as appears inevitable, savage tribes melt away when forced into prolonged contact with a superior civilisation. But, ignorant of all the languages of South India, he should have relinquished attempt to study the Todas, had he not the great good fortune to make the acquaintance of the Reverend Friedrich Metz, of the Basel Missionary Society, who had spent upwards of twenty years in labours amongst the primitive tribes forming the inhabitants of the Nilagiris; and who, in addition to being skilled in several Dravidian dialects, was exceptionally practised in High Kanarese and Tamil. Above all, he was the only European able to speak the obscure Toda tongue. It was not only that his knowledge of Toda dialect was invaluable for minute and truthful investigation, but the personal respect in which he was held by the people, and the confidence they placed in his fidelity to them, obtained for us a more friendly welcome and complete exposure of their minds than would have been accorded had we been mere strangers. The book is the product of extensive study of this race to make it a worth readable.