The Pastoral Architecture of Nī-āla-giri: Reconstructing the Primordial Agro-Pastoral Stratum of the Baḍugu Language and Ecosystem

Abstract

For over a century, the dominant paradigm in Nilgiri historical linguistics and ethnography—largely codified by Murray B. Emeneau and Thomas Burrow—has localized prehistoric pastoral institutions exclusively within the Toda (Tōtst) community, while characterizing the Baḍuga majority as relatively modern, 16th-century sedentary agricultural refugees from the Mysore plains [Emeneau, 1956; Burrow & Emeneau, 1984]. This paper challenges this deeply entrenched tree model by examining the archaic, highly integrated socio-pastoral vocabulary of the Baḍugu language. By deconstructing a series of un-glided monosyllabic compounds, morpho-semantic links, and bound collocates—such as haṇe, haṭṭihaṇe, baṇḍā badukku, emmaṭṭi, and emme baṇḍa—this study exposes a foundational, prehistoric buffalo-pastoral matrix completely native to the high-altitude plateau ecosystem. The structural and phonological data demonstrates that the linguistic infrastructure of buffalo husbandry, open-range grazing management, and live-capital jurisprudence on the plateau was engineered entirely by the Baḍugu majority. This paper presents a complete refutation of the colonial refugee narrative, establishing the Baḍugaru as the primordial, foundational pastoral civilization of the Nilgiri mountains.