Toda

Asiapastoralists

Map
expand_more Description

The Toda are a small group of indigenous people living in the Nilgiri mountains of southern India. They were long portrayed as isolated pastoralist people with their own distinct culture involving a vegetarian diet, worship of dairy-buffalos, and fraternal polyandry (a practice in which a woman marries a group of brothers). As of the 1980s, however, many Toda earned their income from agriculture and other non-farm activities. They also tended to be monogamous, and increasingly interacted with people of different religious faiths, food customs and economic pursuits.

Identifier
Region
  • Asia
Subregion
  • South Asia
Subsistence Type
  • pastoralists
Samples
Countries
  • India
External Links