CULTURE CHANGE AMONG THE NILGIRI TRIBES *

CULTURE CHANGE AMONG THE NILGIRI TRIBES* By DAVID G. MANDELBAUM OUR tribes, isolated together, mutually interdependent, yet culturally distinct, are simultaneously exposed to alien custom. The culture of each takes a different course of adaptation to the new circumstance. Our purpose is to indicate some reasons for these differences and, if possible, to discern certain general trends underlying the variant processes of accultura­ tion. For many centuries the tribes of t~.e Nilgiri Hills in South India were isolated from the people of the plains below. The steepness of the hills and the climate of the plateau discouraged any extensive contacts with the Hindus of the lowlands. So the tribes formed a social enclave which was geographically close to Hindu life but culturally remote from it. The Nilgiri folk lived in economic and social symbiosis, the Todas being pastoral people, the Badagas agriculturalists, the Kotas artisans, the Kurumbas food gatherers and sorcerers. It was about a hundred years ago that the English discovered the plateau and there found a godsend as a haven from the summer heat of the plains. They soon pushed a road through to the summit and before long moved the seat of the provincial government up to the hills for six months every year. With the British administrators and vacationists came an influx of lowland Hindus and Mohammedans, servants, merchants, wanderers looking for a living-men from many castes and areas. The natives of the Nilgiris were thus subject to the impact of two levels of invading culture, Hindu and European. From both sources each tribe took over certain things, rejected others-each group according to its own tastes and inclinations. Before attempting to assess these borrowings, it is well to consider the nature of cultural interchange before Europeans ap­ peared in the area. There was some cultural give and take among the tribes; the great wonder is that it amounted to so little. The four peoples lived in constant and close contact with each other, yet were culturally and linguistically segregate. Any village of one tribe was, and still is, within a short walk of villages of each of the other tribes. But the four cultures have relatively little in common. The complex Toda ritual and social organization had only vague parallels in Kota life. While Kota dress and housing are similar to that F * Read before the Central Section of the American Anthropological Association, Indian­ apolis, April 26, 1940. Field work sponsored by National Research Council and Institute of Human Relations, Yale University.