The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1. Robert Vane Russell

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СКАЧАТЬ the special names for other relatives, such as fraternal and maternal uncles and aunts, must also have been devised to designate those relatives in particular, and hence there is a probability that the terms for father and brother and sister, which on a priori grounds may be considered doubtful, were also first applied to real or putative fathers and brothers and sisters. But, as already seen, under the classificatory system of relationship these same terms are addressed to members of the same clan who might by age and sex have stood in such a relationship to the person addressing them, but are not actually akin to him at all. And hence it seems a valid and necessary conclusion that at the time when the family terms of relationship came into existence, the clan sentiment of kinship was stronger than the family sentiment; that is, a boy was taught or made to feel that all the women of the clan of about the same age as his mother were as nearly akin to him as his own mother, and that he should regard them all in the same relation. And similarly he looked on all the men of the clan of an age enabling them to be his fathers in the same light as his own father, and all the children of or about his own age as his brothers and sisters. The above seems a necessary conclusion from the existence of the classificatory system of relationship, which is very widely spread among savages, and if admitted, it follows that the sentiment of kinship within the clan was already established when the family terms of relationship were devised, and therefore that the clan was prior to the family as a social unit. This conclusion is fortified by the rule of exogamy which prohibits marriage between persons of the same clan between whom no blood-relationship can be traced, and therefore shows that some kind of kinship was believed to exist between them, independent of and stronger than the link of consanguinity. Further, Mr. Hartland shows in Primitive Paternity92 that during the period of female descent when physical paternity has been recognised, but the father and mother belong to different clans, the children, being of the mother’s clan, will avenge a blood-feud of their clan upon their own father; and this custom seems to show clearly that the sentiment of clan-kinship was prior to and stronger than that of family kinship.

      51. Clan kinship and totemism

      The same argument seems to demonstrate that the idea of kinship within the clan was prior to the idea of descent from a common ancestor, whether an animal or plant, a god, hero or nicknamed ancestor. Because it is obvious that a set of persons otherwise unconnected could not suddenly and without reason have believed themselves to be descended from a common ancestor and hence related. If a number of persons not demonstrably connected by blood believe themselves to be akin simply on account of their descent from a common ancestor, it can only be because they are an expanded family, either actually or by fiction, which really had or might have had a common ancestor. That is, the clan tracing its descent from a common ancestor, if this was the primary type of clan, must have been subsequent to the family as a social institution. But as already seen the sentiment of kinship within the clan was prior to that within the family, and therefore the genesis of the clan from an expanded family is an impossible hypothesis; and it follows that the members of the clan must first have believed themselves to be bound together by some tie equivalent to or stronger than that of consanguineous kinship, and afterwards, when the primary belief was falling into abeyance, that of descent from a common ancestor came into existence to account for the clan sentiment of kinship already existing. If then the first form of association of human beings was in small groups, which led a migratory life and subsisted mainly by hunting and the consumption of fruits and roots, as the Australian natives still do, the sentiment of kinship must first have arisen, as stated by Mr. M’Lennan, in that small body which lived and hunted together, and was due simply to the fact that they were so associated, that they obtained food for each other, and on occasion protected and preserved each other’s lives.93 These small bodies of persons were the first social units, and according to our knowledge of the savage peoples who are nearest to the original migratory and hunting condition of life, without settled habitations, domestic animals or cultivated plants, they first called themselves after some animal or plant, usually, as Sir J.G. Frazer has shown in Totemism and Exogamy,94 after some edible animal or plant. The most probable theory of totemism on a priori grounds seems therefore to be that the original small bodies who lived and hunted together, or totem-clans, called themselves after the edible animal or plant from which they principally derived their sustenance, or that which gave them life. While the real tie which connected them was that of living together, they did not realise this, and supposed themselves to be akin because they commonly ate this animal or plant together. This theory of totemism was first promulgated by Professor Robertson Smith and, though much disputed, appears to me to be the most probable. It has also been advocated by Dr. A.C. Haddon, F.R.S.95 The Gaelic names for family, teadhloch and cuedichc or coedichc, mean, the first, ‘having a common residence,’ the second, ‘those who eat together.’96 The detailed accounts of the totems of the Australian, Red Indian and African tribes, now brought together by Sir J.G. Frazer in Totemism and Exogamy, show a considerable amount of evidence that the early totems were not only as a rule edible animals, but the animals eaten by the totem-clans which bore their names.97 But after the domestication of animals and the culture of plants had been attained to, the totems ceased to be the chief means of subsistence. Hence the original tie of kinship was supplanted by another and wider one in the tribe, and though the totem-clans remained and continued to fulfil an important purpose, they were no longer the chief social group. And in many cases, as man had also by now begun to speculate on his origin, the totems came to be regarded as ancestors, and the totem-clans, retaining their sentiment of kinship, accounted for it by supposing themselves to be descended from a common ancestor. They thus also came to base the belief in clan-kinship on the tie of consanguinity recognised in the family, which had by now come into existence. This late and secondary form of totemism is that which obtains in India, where the migratory and hunting stage has long been passed. The Indian evidence is, however, of great value because we find here in the same community, occasionally in the same caste, exogamous clans which trace their descent sometimes from animals and plants, or totems, and sometimes from gods, heroes, or titular ancestors, while many of the clans are named after villages or have names to which no meaning can be attached. As has been seen, there is good reason to suppose that all these forms of the exogamous clan are developed from the earliest form of the totem-clan; and since this later type of clan has developed from the totem-clan in India, it is a legitimate deduction that wherever elsewhere exogamous clans are found tracing their descent from a common ancestor or with unintelligible names, probably derived from places, they were probably also evolved from the totem-clan. This type of clan is shown in Professor Hearn’s Aryan Household to have been the common unit of society over much of Europe, where no traces of the existence of totemism are established.98 And from the Indian analogy it is therefore legitimate to presume that the totem-clan may have been the original unit of society among several European races as well as in America, Africa, Australia and India. Similar exogamous clans exist in China, and many of them have the names of plants and animals.99

      52. Animate Creation

      In order to render clear the manner in which the clan named after a totem animal (or, less frequently, a plant) came to hold its members akin both to each other and their totem animals, an attempt may be made to indicate, however briefly and imperfectly, some features of primitive man’s conception of nature and life. Apparently when they began dimly to observe and form conscious mental impressions of the world around them, our first ancestors made some cardinal, though natural and inevitable, mistakes. In the first place they thought that the whole of nature was animate, and that every animal, plant, or natural object which they saw around them, was alive and self-conscious like themselves. They had, of course, no words or ideas connoting life or consciousness, or distinguishing animals, vegetables or lifeless objects, and they were naturally quite incapable of distinguishing them. They merely thought that everything they saw was like themselves, would feel hurt and resentment if injured, and would know СКАЧАТЬ