From a religious point of view, it consists in converting something they dare not eat into something they can eat.
Many, though not all, of their buffaloes are sacred, and their milk may not be drunk.

The reason why it may not be drunk anthropologists may cast about to discover, but the Todas themselves do not know.

All that they know, and are concerned to know, is that things would somehow all go wrong, if any one were foolish enough to commit such a sin.
So in the Toda temple, which is a dairy, the Toda priest, who is the dairyman, sets about rendering the sacred products harmless.

The dairy has two compartments--one sacred, the other profane.

In the first are stored the sacred vessels, into which the milk is placed when it comes from the buffaloes, and in which it is turned into butter and buttermilk with the help of some of the previous brew, this having meanwhile been put by in an especially sacred vessel.