TODAS  , a small

pastoral tribe of Southern India, found only on the Nilgiri hills . They are distinguished by their tall, well-proportioned figures, aquiline noses, long, black, wavy hair and full beards . Their colour is a light brown . Their dress consists of a single cloth, which they wear like the plaid of a Scotch highlander . The women cover the whole body with this mantle . Their sole occupation Is cattle-herding and dairy-work . They practise polyandry, a woman marrying all the brothers of a family . 'I he proportion of females to males is about three to five . Their language is a mixture of Tamil and Kanarese, and is classified by Bishop Caldwell as a separate language of the Dravidian family . The Todas worship their dairy-buffaloes, but they have a whole pantheon of other gods . The only purely religious ceremony they have is Kona Shastra, the annual sacrifice of a male buffalo calf . Toda villages, called minds, usually consist of five buildings or huts, three of which are used as dwellings, one as a dairy and the other for sheltering the calves at night .

These huts are of an

oval, pent-shaped construction usually Io ft. high, 18 ft. long and 9 ft. broad . They are built of bamboo fastened with rattan and thatched . Each hut is enclosed within a wall of loose stones . The inhabitants of a mand are generally related and consider themselves one family . The Todas numbered 807 in 1901 . See W . H . R . Rivers, The Todas (1906) .