totemistic, when the clan is named after a plant or animal or other natural object. These are almost universal among the non-Aryan or primitive tribes, but occur also in most Hindu castes, including some of the highest. The commonest totem names are those of the prominent animals, including several which are held sacred by the Hindus, as bāgh or nāhar, the tiger; bachās, the calf; morkuria, the peacock; kachhwāha or limuān, the tortoise; nāgas, the cobra; hasti, the elephant; bandar, the monkey; bhainsa, the buffalo; richharia, the bear; kuliha, the jackal; kukura, the dog; karsayāl, the deer; heran, the black-buck, and so on. The utmost variety of names is found, and numerous trees, as well as rice, kodon and other crops, salt, sandalwood, cucumber, pepper, and some household implements, such as the pestle and rolling-slab, serve as names of clans. Names which may be held to have a totemistic origin occur even in the highest castes. Thus among the names of eponymous Rishis or saints, Bhāradwāj means a lark, Kaushik may be from the kūsha grass, Agastya from the agasti flower, Kashyap from kachhap, a tortoise; Taittiri from tītar, a partridge, and so on. Similarly the origin of other Rishis is attributed to animals, as Rishishringa to an antelope, Mandavya to a frog, and Kanāda to an owl.91 An inferior Rājpūt clan, Meshbansi, signifies descendants of the sheep, while the name of the Baghel clan is derived from the tiger (bāgh), that of the Kachhwāha clan perhaps from kachhap, a tortoise, of the Haihaivansi from the horse, of the Nāgvansi from the cobra, and of the Tomara clan from tomar, a club. The Karan or writer caste of Orissa, similarly, have clans derived from the cobra, tortoise and calf, and most of the cultivating and other middle castes have clans with totemistic names. The usual characteristics of totemism, in its later and more common form at any rate, are that members of a clan regard themselves as related to, or descended from, the animal or tree from which the clan takes its name, and abstain from killing or eating it. This was perhaps not the original relation of the clan to its clan totem in the hunting stage, but it is the one commonly found in India, where the settled agricultural stage has long been reached. The Bhaina tribe have among their totems the cobra, tiger, leopard, vulture, hawk, monkey, wild dog, quail, black ant, and so on. Members of a clan will not injure the animal after which it is named, and if they see the corpse of the animal or hear of its death they throw away an earthen cooking-pot, and bathe and shave themselves as for one of the family. At a wedding the bride’s father makes an image in clay of the bird or animal of the groom’s sept and places it beside the marriage-post. The bridegroom worships the image, lighting a sacrificial fire before it, and offers to it the vermilion which he afterwards smears on the forehead of the bride. Women are often tattooed with representations of their totem animal, and men swear by it as their most sacred oath. A similar respect is paid to the inanimate objects after which certain septs are named. Thus members of the Gawad or cowdung clan will not burn cowdung cakes for fuel; and those of the Mircha clan do not use chillies. One clan is named after the sun, and when an eclipse occurs they perform the same formal rites of mourning as others do on the death of their totem animal. The Bāghani clan of Majhwārs, named after the tiger, think that a tiger will not attack any member of their clan unless he has committed an offence entailing temporary excommunication from caste. Until this offence has been expiated his relationship with the tiger as head of the clan is in abeyance, and the tiger will eat him as he would any other stranger. If a tiger meets a member of the clan who is free from sin, he will run away. Members of the Khoba or peg clan will not make a peg nor drive one into the ground. Those of the Dūmar or fig-tree clan say that their first ancestor was born under this tree. They consider the tree to be sacred and never eat its fruit, and worship it once a year. Sometimes the members of the clan do not revere the object after which it is named but some other important animal or plant. Thus the Markām clan of Gonds, named after the mango-tree, venerate the tortoise and do not kill it. The Kathotia clan of Kols is named after kathota, a bowl, but they revere the tiger. Bāgheshwar Deo, the tiger-god, resides on a little platform in their verandas. They may not join in a tiger-beat nor sit up for a tiger over a kill. In the latter case they think that the tiger would not come and would be deprived of his food, and all the members of their family would get ill. The Katharia clan take their name from kathri, a mattress. A member of this sept must never have a mattress in his house, nor wear clothes sewn in crosspieces as mattresses are sewn. The name of the Mudia or Mudmudia clan is said to mean shaven head, but they apparently revere the white kumhra or gourd, perhaps because it has some resemblance to a shaven head. They give a white gourd to a woman on the day after she has borne a child, and her family then do not eat this vegetable for three years. The Kumraya sept revere the brown kumhra or gourd. They grow this vegetable on the thatch of their house-roof and from the time of planting it till the fruits have been plucked they do not touch it, though of course they afterwards eat the fruits. The Bhuwar sept are named after bhu or bhumi, the earth. They must always sleep on the earth and not on cots. The Nūn (salt) and Dhān (rice) clans of Oraons cannot dispense with eating their totems or titular ancestors. But the Dhān Oraons content themselves with refusing to consume the scum which thickens on the surface of the boiled rice, and the Nūn sept will not lick a plate in which salt and water have been mixed. At the weddings of the Vulture clan of the small Bhona caste one member of the clan kills a small chicken by biting off the head and then eats it in imitation of a vulture. Definite instances of the sacrificial eating of the totem animal have not been found, but it is said that the tiger and snake clans of the Bhatra tribe formerly ate their totems at a sacrificial meal. The Gonds also worship the cobra as a household god, and once a year they eat the flesh of the snake and think that by doing so they will be immune from snake-bite throughout the year. On the festival of Nāg-Panchmi the Mahārs make an image of a snake with flour and sugar and eat it. It is reported that the Singrore Dhīmars who work on rivers and tanks must eat the flesh of a crocodile at their weddings, while the Sonjharas who wash the sands of rivers for gold should catch a live crocodile for the occasion of the wedding and afterwards put it back into the river. These latter customs may probably have fallen into abeyance owing to the difficulty of catching a crocodile, and in any case the animals are tribal gods rather than totems.
50. Terms of relationship
Exogamy and totemism are found not only in India, but are the characteristics of primitive social groups over the greater part of the world. Totemism establishes a relation of kinship between persons belonging to one clan who are not related by blood, and exogamy prescribes that the persons held to be so related shall not intermarry. Further, when terms of relationship come into existence it is found that they are applied not to members of one family, but to all the persons of the clan who might have stood in each particular relationship to the person addressing them. Thus a man will address as mother not only his own mother, but all the women of his clan who might have stood to him in the relation of mother. Similarly he will address all the old men and women as grandfather or grandmother or aunt, and the boys and girls of his own generation as brother and sister, and so on. With the development of the recognition of the consanguineous family, the use of terms of relationship tends to be restricted to persons who have actual kinship; thus a boy will address only his father’s brothers as father, and his cousins as brothers and sisters; but sufficient traces of the older system of clan kinship remain to attest its former existence. But it seems also clear that some, at least, of the terms of relationship were first used between persons really related; thus the word for mother must have been taught by mothers to their own babies beginning to speak, as it is a paramount necessity for a small child to have a name by which to call its mother when it is wholly dependent on her; if the period of infancy is got over without the use of this term of address there is no reason why it should be introduced in later life, when in the primitive clan the child quickly ceased to be dependent on its mother or to retain any strong affection for her. Similarly, as shown by Sir J.G. Frazer in Totemism and Exogamy, there is often a special name for the mother’s brother when other uncles or aunts are addressed simply as father or mother. This name must therefore have been brought into existence to distinguish the mother’s brother at the time when, under the system of female descent, he stood in the relation of a protector and parent to the child. Where the names for grandfather and grandmother are a form of duplication of those for father and mother as in English, they would appear to imply a definite recognition of the idea of family descent.
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