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epic and some of the tales. The book lacked the necessary dimension which would take it from a report of culture to an unfolding and understanding of Nyanga life-style, some- thing which the authors had intended to d o in the first place. An English edition is needed, perhaps it will be issued-soon.

Reference Cited Biebuyck, Daniel, and Kahombo Mateene

1969 The Mwindo Epic. Berkeley: The University o f California Press.

Toda Songs. M. B. EMENEAU. New York & London: Oxford University Press (Claren- don), 1971. xlvii + 1004 pp., plates, table, appendix, notes, concordance, 6 indexes. $35.25 (cloth).

Reviewed by PRINCE PETER

OF GREECE AND DENMARK Gen tofte, Denmark

Although a small community in South India, in the Nilgiri Hills of what is now Tamil Nadu (but was a district of the Madras Presidency), the Todas, who numbered under five hundred when Professor Emeneau visited them in the 1930s and have barely exceeded one thousand individuals since, are mentioned in nearly all important anthro- pological publications since the beginning of the century. But then they are a most original people, having developed an aber- rant culture with an aberrant Dravidian dialect, a culture of, n o doubt , great antiq- uity if, as I have suggested, some of their gods are indeed of Sumerian origin. They are quite distinct from the neighboring tribes among whom they live, the Badagas, Kotahs, Kurumbas and Kanada-speaking settlers, and consider themselves the proud “Lords of the Nilgiris,” the original inhabitants of the Blue Hills.

The classic, The Todas, which W. H. R. Rivers wrote in 1906, is still the basic work upon which all further research has since been based, including my own in 1939 and

1949 when I did fieldwork among them, No one, however, has done so much perhaps to supplement the initial pioneering effort of the British ethnologist than M.B. Emeneau, who left the Nilgiris just a few months before my arrival so that the Todas enquired from m e if I was his appointed successor. To thirteen well-known publications (men- tioned in the bibliography) he has now added this voluminous record of 250 Toda songs which will stand as a monument of Toda lore and of the painstaking, scientific work of a distinguished American linguist and scholar.

There is an introduction containing, in addition to the bibliography already men- tioned, information about the Todas and their songs, their ethnology (which I found very good) and, most interesting of all, I think, the relation between the songs and Toda culture, which they reflect in every one of its component details.

This is followed by notes on transcription (which I found somewhat difficult t o follow and even more difficult t o pronounce, as I am not a linguist) and by the songs them- selves, classified with reference to places, legends and myths, habitation, the dead, various ceremonies, marriage and love-affairs (the Todas are notoriously sexually active and their women are polyandrous), mis- cellaneous subjects, features of the Nilgiris’ neighboring tribes, the Christian Todas (of which there are about one hundred) and finally Westerners (“including myself” as the author amusingly puts it). The book is com- pleted by notes, a chapter with a concor- dance of the special Toda song-units, and two indexes, one of proper names and one of persons in the songs.

I t makes fascinating reading for anyone like myself acquainted with individual Todas and with a personal knowledge of their culture. I t cannot fail t o be also a very interesting book for those attracted by South Indian linguistics and ethnology.

Reference Cited Rivers, W . H. R.

1906 The Todas. London: Macmillan.