361
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_41
Chapter 41
The Conical Temple of Konawsh
41.1 A Non-violent People
The first documented westerner to reach the Todas, Rev. Fr. Giacomo Fenicio
(1558–1632), an Italian Jesuit priest, had come to the severe escarpment known as
the Nilgiris in search of a lost community of Thomistic Christians, a hidden Utopia,
Todamalaa. As Dr. Tarun Chhabra points out, reviewing studies by both Rivers and
Walker,
1
Fenicio’s hopes were dashed. The Todas spoke a language unlike any other
in all of India, were animists (Fenicio referred to their love of buffaloes), and apparently showed no interest in what he had to preach. In 1873 the British anthropologist
W. E. Marshall
2
spent minimal time among the Todas, following at least nine other
ethnographers who had visited this most unusual community. Marshall conveyed an
extensive characterization detailing how the Todas were primitive in a most unexpected manner: no violence, no hunting, no killing whatsoever, even to the alleged
detriment of the protein in their diets; no violent sports, no trade, agriculture, wars,
prisoners, torture, slaves. Nothing but “a milk diet and grain, whilst the woods are
full of game, and flocks and herds to be had for the taking.” (Fig. 41.1).
It was this discovery of a non-violent, magnificently isolated people (numbering
fewer than 600 individuals throughout the Nilgiris or Blue Mountains at that time)
which prompted him to write, “Have we come on the tracks of an aboriginal reign
of conscience? And was man originally created virtuous as well as very simple?” A
1 See The Toda Landscape – Explorations in Cultural Ecology, by Tarun Chhabra with a foreword
by Anthony R. Walker, Orient BlackSwan, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2015,
pp. 12–13. See W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas, Macmillan, London, 1906; and Anthony R. Walker,
Between Tradition and Modernity and Others, B.R., Delhi, 1998. See also, “The Toda People:
Stewards of Wilderness and Biodiversity,” by Tarun Chhabra, International Journal of Wilderness,
Volume 26, Number 1: April 2020/
2 A Phrenologist Amongst the Todas, Longmans Green, London; See also “The Anthropology of
Conscience,” by M. Tobias, Society & Animals, Volume 4, Issue 1, The White Horse Press,
Cambridge, UK, 1996.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_41
Chapter 41
The Conical Temple of Konawsh
41.1 A Non-violent People
The first documented westerner to reach the Todas, Rev. Fr. Giacomo Fenicio
(1558–1632), an Italian Jesuit priest, had come to the severe escarpment known as
the Nilgiris in search of a lost community of Thomistic Christians, a hidden Utopia,
Todamalaa. As Dr. Tarun Chhabra points out, reviewing studies by both Rivers and
Walker,
1
Fenicio’s hopes were dashed. The Todas spoke a language unlike any other
in all of India, were animists (Fenicio referred to their love of buffaloes), and apparently showed no interest in what he had to preach. In 1873 the British anthropologist
W. E. Marshall
2
spent minimal time among the Todas, following at least nine other
ethnographers who had visited this most unusual community. Marshall conveyed an
extensive characterization detailing how the Todas were primitive in a most unexpected manner: no violence, no hunting, no killing whatsoever, even to the alleged
detriment of the protein in their diets; no violent sports, no trade, agriculture, wars,
prisoners, torture, slaves. Nothing but “a milk diet and grain, whilst the woods are
full of game, and flocks and herds to be had for the taking.” (Fig. 41.1).
It was this discovery of a non-violent, magnificently isolated people (numbering
fewer than 600 individuals throughout the Nilgiris or Blue Mountains at that time)
which prompted him to write, “Have we come on the tracks of an aboriginal reign
of conscience? And was man originally created virtuous as well as very simple?” A
1 See The Toda Landscape – Explorations in Cultural Ecology, by Tarun Chhabra with a foreword
by Anthony R. Walker, Orient BlackSwan, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2015,
pp. 12–13. See W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas, Macmillan, London, 1906; and Anthony R. Walker,
Between Tradition and Modernity and Others, B.R., Delhi, 1998. See also, “The Toda People:
Stewards of Wilderness and Biodiversity,” by Tarun Chhabra, International Journal of Wilderness,
Volume 26, Number 1: April 2020/
2 A Phrenologist Amongst the Todas, Longmans Green, London; See also “The Anthropology of
Conscience,” by M. Tobias, Society & Animals, Volume 4, Issue 1, The White Horse Press,
Cambridge, UK, 1996.