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Not Isolated, Actively Isolationist: Towards a subaltern history of the Nilgiri hills before British imperialism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2017

GWENDOLYN I. O. KELLY
GWENDOLYN I. O. KELLY*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Ashoka University, Sonipat, India Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The Nilgiri hill communities have for a long time been the focus of anthropological inquiry, though they have rarely been the focus of historical inquiry that delves more deeply into the past than the colonial period. And, while the fields of history and anthropology have moved beyond tropes of primitive and timeless, our studies of those formerly so-called ‘timeless primitives’ have remained stuck in time. I argue, therefore, for an interdisciplinary modified Subaltern Studies approach, integrating data from anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and genetics, to develop a longue durée social history of the Nilgiri hills. For the Nilgiri communities, as with other tribal communities, narratives about their past have tended to emphasize their isolation until the modern period. In this article, drawing together data from several disciplines, I argue that the communities of the Nilgiris, especially the Toda, so frequently held up as examples of cultural isolation, were not truly isolated, neither from neighbouring tribal communities, nor from the states and empires of the plains below. I argue that the maintenance of distinctive religious, subsistence, and linguistic practices, despite contact with a wider world, is evidence of an active process of isolationist group formation/maintenance and resistance to other ways of being.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , July 2017 , pp. 1035 - 1069
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

For their thoughtful feedback and insight, I would like to thank Tom Trautmann, Kathy Morrison, and Kelly Wilcox Black, who commented on an earlier draft of this article, as well as Carla Sinopoli, Sherry Ortner, Heather Walder, Alex Foreman, and three anonymous reviewers, all of whose comments and criticisms were invaluable in refining this article. I want to thank Paul Hockings for a very helpful phone conversation. I also wish to thank Michael Willis for showing me some of the Nilgiris archaeological materials at the British Museum, and sharing his thoughts on their significance. Other early commenters and interlocutors include the organizers and participants of the Fifth Annual Workshop on South Asian Archaeology, at the University of Chicago, in particular Namita Sugandhi, Julie Hanlon, Andrew Bauer, and Brian Wilson; I thank them for their comments and feedback as well. Lastly, I wish to thank my friends in the Nilgiris, most especially Tarun Chhabra, N. Ananthi, and Josephine Raja, who were of great help in getting me settled and helping me find my footing as a young graduate student back in 2004. Any errors remain, of course, my own.

References

1 Kapp, D. B., ‘The Kuṟumbas’ relationship to the “megalithic” cult of the Nilgiri hills (South India)’, Anthropos, vol. 80, 1985;Google Scholar Poyil, M., ‘Megalithism and tribal ritualism: a passage through the Kurumbas of Attappadi’, Advances in Historical Studies, vol. 2, 2013;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Janardhanan, K., Sandhya, P., and Usha, S., ‘Studies on the hepatoprotective property of folklore medicinal plants of Badagas in Nilgiri Biospehere Reserve, Western Ghats—phytochemistry and antioxidant activity’, International Journal of Ethnomedicine and Pharmacological Research, vol. 1, 2013 Google Scholar.

2 Morrison argues that these communities have been gathering and exchanging non-timber forest products for lowland products like rice and have maintained interactions up and down the slopes of the hills for around 2000 years. She has also argued that, though they may appear ‘primitive’ in subsistence and social organization, their adaptations and economies are intimately tied to states and to complex economic systems. This work builds, in part, on her important contributions; see for example, Morrison, K. D., ‘Environmental history, the spice trade, and the state in South India’, in Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods, and Identities in South Asia, Cederlöf, G. and Sivaramakrishnan, K. (eds), Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2005, pp. 49–50;Google Scholar Morrison, K. D., ‘Historicizing adaptation, adapting to history: forager-traders in South and Southeast Asia’, in Forager Traders in South and Southeast Asia: Long Term Histories, Morrison, K. D. and Junker, L. (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; K. D. Morrison, ‘Pepper in the hills: upland-lowland exchange and the intensification of the spice trade’, in Morrison and Junker, Forager Traders in South and Southeast Asia; Morrison, K. D., ‘Foragers and forager-traders in South Asian worlds: some thoughts from the last 10,000 years’, in The Evolution and History of Human Populations in South Asia, Petraglia, M. D. and Allchin, B. (eds), Springer, Dordecht, the Netherlands, 2007 Google Scholar; Zagarell, A., ‘State and community in the Niligiri mountains’, Michigan Academician, vol. XXVI, 1994 Google Scholar; Zagarell, A., ‘Hierarchy and heterarchy: the unity of opposites’, in Heterarchy and the Analysis of Complex Societies, Crumley, C. L. and Levy, J. E. (eds), American Anthropological Association, Arlington, 1995 Google Scholar.

3 I do not cite any archival material, not because I have not looked for it, but because I have yet to find any colonial archival material that is directly relevant to the questions addressed here. Colonial sources are rich for the colonial period but, aside from the published research by British authors on the history of the region or surrounding regions, there is not much light that colonial sources can shed on the pre-colonial periods; cf. Francis, The Nilgiris (Gazetteer); D. Sutton, Other Landscapes: Colonialism and the Predicament of Authority in Nineteenth-Century South India, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, Copenhagen, 2009.

4 Cf. Hardiman, D., ‘Power in the forest: the Dangs, 1820–1940’, in Subaltern Studies VIII: Essays in Honor of Ranajit Guha, Arnold, D. and Hardiman, D. (eds), Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1994 Google Scholar; Skaria, A., Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and Wildness in Western India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1998 Google Scholar; Guha, S., Environment and Ethnicity in India: 1200–1991, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guha, S., Beyond Caste Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present, Brill, Leiden, 2013 Google Scholar; Bates, C. and Carter, M., ‘Tribal migration in India and beyond’, in The World of the Rural Labourer in Colonial India, Prakash, G. (ed.), Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1992 Google Scholar; Bates, C., ‘Race, caste and tribe in central India: the early origins of Indian anthropometry’, in The Concept of Race in South Asia, Robb, P. (ed.), Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1995 Google Scholar; Sundar, N., Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar 1854–2006, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2008 Google Scholar; Guha, R., The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya, 20th Anniversary Edition, Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2010 Google Scholar; Das Gupta, S., Adivasis and the Raj: Socio-Economic Transition of the Hos 1820–1932, Orient Blackswan, New Delhi, 2011 Google Scholar; Das Gupta, S. and Basu, R. S. (eds), Narratives from the Margins: Aspects of Adivasi History in India, Primus Books, New Delhi, 2012 Google Scholar; Prasad, A., Against Ecological Romanticism: Verrier Elwin and the Making of An Anti-Modern Tribal Identity, Three Essays Collective, Gurgaon, 2011 Google Scholar.

5 Some ethnographic research has been done with the contemporary Kurumba, Kota, and Irula people but, like much ethnographic writing, such work does not deal much in history, but rather in their present-day circumstances and cultural practices. See Bird-David, N., ‘Beyond “the hunting and gathering mode of subsistence”: culture-sensitive observations on the Nayaka and other modern hunter-gatherers’, Man, vol. 27, 1992 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bird-David, N., ‘The Nilgiri tribal systems: a view from below’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 28, 1994 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mandelbaum, D. G., ‘Polyandry in Kota society’, American Anthropologist, vol. 40, 1938 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mandelbaum, D. G., ‘The world and the world view of the Kota’, American Anthropologist, Comparative Studies of Cultures and Civilzations, No. 6, Village India: Studies in Little Community, vol. 57, 1955 Google Scholar. The Irulas rarely appear in studies devoted to them or their culture separate from the Nilgiri society as a whole; see W. A. Noble, ‘Cultural contrasts and similarities among five ethnic groups in the Nilgiri district, Madras State, India, 1800–1963’, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Baton Rouge, 1968.

6 Scott, J. C., The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009;Google ScholarPubMed Brubaker, R., ‘Ethnicity without groups’, Archives of European Sociology, vol. XLIII, 2002 Google Scholar.

7 Brubaker, ‘Ethnicity without groups’.

8 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed.

9 Hockings, P., Ancient Hindu Refugees: Badaga Social History 1550–1975, Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi, 1980 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hockings, P., So Long a Saga: Four Centuries of Badaga Social History, Manohar, New Delhi, 2013 Google Scholar.

10 There are issues even with Scott's analysis of the history of state avoidance for ‘zomia’, the region of upland Southeast Asia on which his book is focused. These critiques have been best addressed by Lieberman in his review of the book, which I will not go into here. See V. Lieberman, ‘A zone of refuge in Southeast Asia? Reconceptualizing interior spaces (review of The art of not being governed: an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia)’, Journal of Global History, vol. 5, 2010.

11 See Guha, R., Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1982 Google Scholar; Guha, R., A Subaltern Studies Reader: 1986–1995, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1997 Google Scholar; Spivak, G., ‘Subaltern Studies: deconstructing historiography’, in Selected Subaltern Studies, Guha, R. and Spivak, G. C. (eds), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988 Google Scholar.

12 Guha, Subaltern Studies I, p. 1.

13 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed.

14 Gramsci, A., Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1971 Google Scholar; Louai, E. H., ‘Retracing the concept of the subaltern from Gramsci to Spivak: historical developments and new applications’, African Journal of History and Culture, vol. 4, 2012 Google Scholar.

15 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, p. x.

16 Morrison, ‘Pepper in the hills’.

17 Morrison, ‘Environmental history’; Caner, L., Lo Seen, D., Gunnell, Y., Ramesh, B. R., and Bourgeon, G., ‘Spatial heterogeneity of land cover response to climatic change in the Nilgiri highlands (southern India) since the last glacial maximum’, The Holocene, vol. 17, 2007 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nalina, R., Meenambal, T., and Sathyanarayan Sridhar, R., ‘Land use land cover dynamics of Nilgiri District, India inferred from satellite imageries’, American Journal of Applied Sciences, vol. 11, 2014 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Grigg, H. B., A Manual of the Nílagiri District in the Madras Presidency, Government Press, Madras, 1880 Google Scholar.

19 Ward's account is reprinted in Grigg, A Manual of the Nílagiri District, pp. lx–lxx; map reprinted in Price, F., Ootacamund: A History, Government Press, Madras, 1908 Google Scholar.

20 Ramanujan, A. K., The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology [Kue Interi], Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1967 Google Scholar; Zvelebil, K. V., Companion Studies to the History of Tamil Literature, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1992 Google Scholar.

21 Darsana, S. B., ‘Megaliths in the Upper Palar Basin, Tamil Nadu: a new perspective’, Man and Environment, vol. XXIII, 1998 Google Scholar.

22 Tieken, H., Kāvya in South India: Old Tamil Can So Poetry, Egbert Forsten, Groningen, 2001 Google Scholar; Wilden, E., ‘Towards an internal chronology of old Tamil Caward literature or how to trace the laws of a poetic universe’, WZKS, vol. 46, 2002, pp. 105–33Google Scholar; G. L. Hart, ‘Review: Kāvya in South India: Old Tamil Can So Poetry, by Herman Tieken Egbert Forsten, Groningen, 2001. Pp. 270’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 124, 2004, pp. 180–4.

23 As compared with the work done by Skaria and Guha in western India and the Deccan, there are even fewer pre-colonial written sources to draw from; cf. Skaria, Hybrid Histories; Guha, Environment and Ethnicity.

24 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, pp. ix–x.

25 Francis, The Nilgiris (Gazetteer), p. 90.

26 Ibid., p. 90; Zagarell, ‘State and community’.

27 It is interesting to note that this situation is completely different from the history of hill forts in Western India described by Guha, in that the various Nilgiris communities seem not to have ever occupied them or used them for any purpose. Instead, these forts were only really appealing to various chieftains and kings from the north or the east, who competed with one another to occupy them. It seems that, if no particular king was actually occupying a fort, then these remained empty and unclaimed until another king came along to take them; cf. Guha, Environment and Ethnicity. P. Hockings, Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills, Manohar, Delhi, 2012, pp. 339–45.

28 Francis, The Nilgiris (Gazetteer), p. 90.

29 Metz, J. F., The Tribes Inhabiting the Neilgherry Hills: Their Social Customs and Religious Rites [From the Rough Notes of a German Missionary, Edited by a Friend], [s.n.], Madras, 1864 Google Scholar, p. 44.

30 M. B. Emeneau, Toda Grammar and Texts, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1984, p. 267.

31 Ibid., pp. 364–5.

32 Ibid., p. 285.

33 Ibid., p. 269.

34 Ibid., p. 295.

35 By the coinage of ‘para-history’, I mean that, from 900 ce onwards, in other words what, in Europe has been termed the medieval period, the Nilgiris region was populated, and was referenced by outside political entities in various forms of documents. But, for the inhabitants of the Nilgiris themselves, mostly illiterate, they would still be considered ‘pre-historic’ and were thought of as such by early antiquarians. It also makes little sense even to use the more recent coinage ‘proto-historic’. The Nilgiris are proximate to history, next to, and alongside, literate societies and therefore a ‘para-historic’ community.

36 Breeks, J. W., ‘The Todas’, in An Account of the Primitive Tribes and Monuments of the Nilagiris, Breeks, J. W. (ed.), India Museum, London, 1873 Google Scholar; Walhouse, M. J., ‘On non-sepulchral rude stone monuments’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 7, 1878 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leshnik, L. S., South Indian ‘Megalithic’ Burials: The Pandukal Complex, Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, Wiesbaden, 1974 Google Scholar; Brubaker, R., ‘Aspects of mortuary variability in the south Indian iron age’, Bulletin of the Deccan College, vol. 60–61 (2000–01), 2001 Google Scholar; Abraham, S., ‘Social complexity in early Tamilakam: sites and ceramics from the Palghat Gap, Kerala, India’, Social Complexity in Early Tamilakam: Sites and Ceramics from the Palghat Gap, Kerala, India, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2002 Google Scholar; Zagarell, ‘State and community’; Zagarell, ‘Hierarchy and heterarchy’; Zagarell, A., ‘The megalithic graves of the Nilgiri hills and Moyar Ditch’, in Blue Mountains Revisited: Cultural Studies on the Nilgiri Hills, Hockings, P. (ed.), Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1997 Google Scholar; Zagarell, A., ‘Rock art’, in Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills, Hockings, P. (ed.), Manohar Press, New Delhi, 2012 Google Scholar.

37 Hockings, P., ‘Paikara: an iron age burial in South India’, Asian Perspectives, vol. XVIII, 1975 Google Scholar.

38 Zagarell, ‘The megalithic graves’; Zagarell, ‘Rock art’.

39 Morrison, ‘Foragers and forager-traders’.

40 The dating is still somewhat controversial. See Tieken, Kāvya in South India; Tieken, H., ‘Old Tamil Caṅkam literature and the so-called Caṅkam period’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 40, 2003 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilden, ‘Towards an internal chronology’.

41 See Hart, G. L. and Heifetz, H., The Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom: An Anthology of Poems From Classical Tamil [Puṟanāṉuṟu], Columbia University Press, New York, 1999 Google Scholar.

42 Harkness, H., A Description of a Singular Aboriginal Race Inhabiting the Summit of the Neilgherry Hills, or Blue Mountains of Coimbatoor, in the Southern Peninsula of India, Smith, Elder, and Co., London, 1832 Google Scholar; Breeks, J. W., An Account of the Primitive Tribes and Monuments of the Nilagiris, India Museum, London, 1873 Google Scholar; Rivers, W. H. R., The Todas, MacMillan and Co. Ltd, London, 1906 Google Scholar.

43 Francis, The Nilgiris (Gazetteer), p. 95.

44 cf. Fried, M. H., The Notion of Tribe, Cummings, Menlo Park, CA, 1975 Google Scholar; Morrison, ‘Pepper in the hills’; Morrison, ‘Environmental history’; Morrison, ‘Foragers and forager-traders’; Morrison, K. D. and Lycett, M. T., ‘Forest products in a wider world: early historic connections across southern India’, in Connections and Complexity: New Approaches to the Archaeology of South Asia, Abraham, S. A., Gullapalli, P., Raczek, T., and Rizvi, U. (eds), Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California, 2013 Google Scholar; Hockings, So Long a Saga.

45 Pandian, A., ‘The time of anthropology: notes from a field of contemporary experience’, Cultural Anthropology, vol. 27, 2012 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Rivers, The Todas; Thurston, E. and Rangachari, K., ‘Kurumba or Kuruman’, in Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Vol. 4, Thurston, E. and Rangachari, K. (eds), Government Press, Madras, 1909 Google Scholar; Thurston, E. and Rangachari, K., ‘Badaga’, in Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Vol. 1, Thurston, E. and Rangachari, K. (eds), Government Press, Madras, 1909 Google Scholar; Thurston, E. and Rangachari, K., ‘Irulas of the Nilgiris’, in Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Vol. 2, Thurston, E. and Rangachari, K. (eds), Government Press, Madras, 1909 Google Scholar; E. Thurston and K. Rangachari, ‘Kota’, in Thurston and Rangachari, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Vol. 4; Thurston, E. and Rangachari, K., ‘Toda’, in Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Vol. 7, Thurston, E. and Rangachari, K. (eds), Government Press, Madras, 1909 Google Scholar; Mandelbaum, D. G., ‘Culture change among the Nilgiri tribes’, American Anthropologist, vol. 43, 1941 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Emeneau, M. B., ‘Language and social forms: a study of Toda kinship and dual descent’, in Language, Culture and Personality: Essays in Memory of Edward Sapir, Spier, L., Hallowell, A. E., and Newman, S. S. (eds), Sapir Memorial Publication Fund, Menasha, Wisconsin, 1941, pp. 158–79Google Scholar; Noble, ‘Cultural contrasts’; Hockings, P., ‘On giving salt to buffaloes: ritual as communication’, Ethnology, vol. 7, 1968 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hockings, P., ‘Identity in complex societies: are the Badagas caste or tribe?’, Political Science Review, vol. 7, 1968 Google Scholar; Hockings, Ancient Hindu Refugees; Hockings, P., ‘The cultural ecology of the Nilgiris district’, in Blue Mountains: The Ethnography and Biogeography of a South Indian Region, Hockings, P. (ed.), Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1989 Google Scholar; Hockings, Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills; Hockings, So Long a Saga.

47 Mandelbaum, ‘Culture change among the Nilgiri tribes’, p. 19.

48 Rivers, The Todas, pp. 18–19.

49 cf. Morrison, ‘Historicizing adaptation’; Morrison, ‘Pepper in the hills’; Morrison, ‘Foragers and forager-traders’.

50 Hockings, ‘On giving salt to buffaloes’, p. 428, footnote 5.

51 cf. Hockings, Ancient Hindu Refugees; Hockings, So Long a Saga.

52 See Metz, The Tribes; Ouchterlony, J. and Shortt, J., An Account of the Tribes of the Neilgherries, by J. Shortt, and a Geographical and Statistical Memoir of the Neilgherry Mountains by the Late Colonel Ouchterlony, Higginbotham & Co., Madras, 1868 Google Scholar; Rivers, The Todas; Mandelbaum, ‘Culture change among the Nilgiri tribes’; R. G. Fox, ‘“Professional primitives”: hunters and gatherers of nuclear South Asia’, Man in India, vol. 49, 1969; Noble, ‘Cultural contrasts’; Hockings, Ancient Hindu Refugees; Walker, A. R., The Toda of South India: A New Look, Hindustan Publishing Corporation, Delhi, 1986 Google Scholar.

53 To argue that Nilgiri communities were averse to the domination of plains societies is not to say that they were averse to domination at all, or were living in a utopian egalitarian society. I suggest that they were averse to being dominated, which by no means suggests that people will not take the opportunity to create new hierarchies in which they are at the top; cf. Zagarell, ‘Hierarchy and heterarchy’; Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed.

54 Dirks, N. B., Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001 Google Scholar; Béteille, A., ‘The concept of tribe with special reference to India’, European Journal of Sociology, vol. 27, 1986 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Béteille, A., ‘The idea of indigenous people’, Current Anthropology, vol. 39, 1998 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Bird-David, ‘The Nilgiri tribal systems’; Hockings, ‘On giving salt to buffaloes’; Hockings, ‘Identity in complex societies’; Hockings, P., A Comprehensive Bibliography for the Nilgiri Hills of Southern India, 1603–1996, Dynamiques des Milieuxet des Societes dansles EspacesTropicaux, Bordeaux, 1972 Google Scholar; Hockings, ‘Paikara’; Hockings, Ancient Hindu Refugees; Hockings, P., Sex and Disease in a Mountain Community, Vikas Publishing House, Delhi, 1980 Google Scholar; Hockings, P., Counsel from the Ancients: A Study of Badaga Proverbs, Prayers, Omens and Curses, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 1988 Google Scholar; Hockings, ‘The cultural ecology of the Nilgiris district’; Hockings, Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills; Hockings, So Long a Saga; Noble, ‘Cultural contrasts’; W. A. Noble, ‘Nilgiri Dolmens (South India)’, Anthropos, vol. Bd. 71, 1976; Walker, The Toda of South India; Walker, A. R., ‘Sacred dairies, dairymen, and buffaloes of the Nilgiri mountains in South India’, Asian Highlands Perspectives, vol. 21, 2012 Google Scholar.

56 Brubaker, ‘Ethnicity without groups’, p. 164.

57 Ibid., p. 165, emphasis in original.

58 Ibid., p. 166, emphasis in original; also see Barth, F., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference, Universitets Forlaget, Bergen, Oslo, 1969 Google Scholar.

59 Dirks, Castes of Mind.

60 Francis, The Nilgiris (Gazetteer), pp. 91–2.

61 Finicio, cited in Rivers, The Todas, p. 721.

62 I. G. Romero, C. B. Mallick, A. Liebert, F. Crivellaro, G. Chaubey, Y. Itan, M. Metspalu, M. Eaaswarkanth, R. Pitchappan, R. Villems, D. Reich, L. Singh, K. Thangaraj, M. G. Thomas, D. M. Swallow, M. M. Lahr, and T. Kivisild, ‘Herders of Indian and European cattle share their predominant allele for lactase persistence’, Molecular Biology and Evolution, vol. 29, 2012.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 A. Z. Foreman, personal communication.

66 Rivers, The Todas, pp. 604–5.

67 Emeneau, M. B., Language and Linguistic Area: Essays, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1980 Google Scholar.

68 On the subject of the merits of heterarchical versus hierarchical orderings of Nilgiri communities, see Zagarell, ‘Hierarchy and heterarchy’.

69 Cf. Matras, Y., Romani: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004, pp. 238–9Google Scholar.

70 C. Pilot-Raichoor, ‘Badaga and its relations with neighbouring languages’, in Hockings, Blue Mountains Revisited; C. Pilot-Raichoor, ‘Badaga language’, in Hockings, Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills, pp. 97–104.

71 See P. Kerswill, ‘Koineizetion and accommodation’, in The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, J. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill, and N. Schilling-Estes (eds), Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics, Oxford, 2002.

72 Even the word ‘mund’ in reference to a Toda village used in all British documents and maps is a Badaga word; the Toda equivalent is Mād, spelled in the nineteenth and early twentieth century as Mâd; cf. Rivers, The Todas, pp. 24, 604–5.

73 Finicio, cited in Rivers, The Todas, p. 721.

74 Hockings, So Long a Saga, pp. 12–13, 30–47.

75 Ibid., p. 12.

76 The chieftains/rajas of Ummattūr figure often in Badaga oral history, as well in written chronicles of the Vijaynagar empire. Because of their mention in textual sources, they provide an interesting touchstone, and clues for dating certain events in Nilgiri history. For instance, Zagarell (1995) tells us there is legend that the Toda were once ruled by a king and queen, but they were displaced by the Raja of Ummattūr, who came up into the hills and conquered, after he was deposed by someone else. This finds corroboration with other documents that tell of the conquests of the Wodeyar (also sometimes Udaiyar) raja of Mysore, who incorporated Ummattūr into his territories between 1614 and 1617, Hayavadana Rao, quoted in Hockings, Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills, p. 420. The fort at Malē Kotē was also apparently built by the rajas/chieftains of Ummattūr, possibly in this time frame. According to Hayavadana Rao, that same fort may have been captured by the later Mysore Wodeyar, Chikkadēvarāja Wodeyar, in 1677. Thus, indirectly, we have an example of a small fort on the northern edge of the Nilgiri massif, playing a role in the competition and repeated conquests and re-conquests by various chieftains or rajas from the north—see Hayavadana Rao, C., History of Mysore (1399–1799 A.D.), Vol. 1, Government Press, Bangalore, 1943 Google Scholar, p. 280.

77 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed.

78 Hockings, Ancient Hindu Refugees; Hockings, So Long a Saga.

79 Pilot-Raichoor, ‘Badaga and its relations’; Pilot-Raichoor, ‘Badaga language’, pp. 97–104.

80 Chatterjee, P., More on Modes of Power and the Peasantry, Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, 1982 Google Scholar, p. 7.

81 Rivers, The Todas, p. 550; Hockings, So Long a Saga, p. 158.

82 M. B. Emeneau, Toda Songs, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971, p. 14.

83 Zagarell, ‘Hierarchy and heterarchy’, p. 99; also cf. Zagarell, ‘State and community’.

84 See above, and Metz, The Tribes, p. 44.

85 cf. J. Guite, ‘Colonialism and its unruly? The colonial state and Kuki raids in nineteenth century northeast India’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 48, 2014.

86 Hockings, So Long a Saga, pp. 147–58.

87 Ibid., p. 182.

88 Ibid., p. 137.

89 cf. Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries.

90 Claims to land are still an issue for these communities in the contemporary world, who find themselves variably in conflict with other ‘tribal’ or caste communities, corporations or the state. See G. Cederlöf, ‘Narratives of rights: codifying people and land in early nineteenth-century Nilgiris’, Environment and History, vol. 8, 2002; G. Cederlöf, ‘The Toda tiger: debates on custom, utility and rights in nature, South India 1820–1843’, in Cederlöf and Sivaramakrishnan, Ecological Nationalisms; Cederlöf, G., ‘The agency of the colonial subject: claims and rights in forestlands in early nineteenth-century Nilgiris’, Studies in History, vol. 22, 2005 Google Scholar; Sutton, Other Landscapes.

91 Cederlöf, ‘The agency of the colonial subject’; Sutton, Other Landscapes.

92 Cederlöf, ‘The agency of the colonial subject’, pp. 249, 251.

93 See Morrison, ‘Pepper in the hills’; Morrison, ‘Historicizing adaptation’; Morrison, ‘Environmental history’; Morrison, ‘Foragers and forager-traders’; Morrison and Lycett, ‘Forest products in a wider world’.