Proudly herding their long-horned buffaloes over the high plateau grasslands of the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu, the Toda people people have intrigued generations of visitors by their unusual personal appearance and their distinctive dwellings. In the annals of Indian ethnography they are famous, with such Toda practices as adelphic polyandry (brothers sharing a wife) and the sacred dairy cult having become classic examples in the anthropological literature.

For most of the present century, the outstanding authority on the Toda has been monumental work, The Todas, published in 1906 by Cambridge University anthropologist W.H.R. Rivers. But since Rivers's time, great changes have occurred not only in India and in Indian studies but even in the small, essentially conservative Toda community.

Hence the purpose of this new book on the Toda is twofold: first, to bring Toda ethnography up to date and, more importantly, to re-examine Toda society and culture, viewing them now not as isolated "tribal" phenomena (as is usual), but rather as part of the wider Hindu society and culture of South India.

Eight substantial chapters cover four major areas: the Toda people and their environment, the organization of Toda society, Toda pastoralism in its secular and ritual dimensions, and the changing Toda world from British times to the present.

This book is a "new look" at a people who themselves have a "new look".