The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1

65. The common life of the clan

The totem-clan held itself to partake of the life of its totem, and on the above hypothesis one common life would flow through all the animals and plants of the totem and all the members of the clan. An Australian calls his totem his Wingong (friend) or Tumang (flesh), and nowadays expresses his sorrow when he has to eat it.¹⁴⁸ If a man wishes to injure any man of a certain totem, he kills any animal of that man’s totem.¹⁴⁹ This clearly shows that one common life is held to bind together all the animals of the totem-species and all the members of the totem-clan, and the belief seems to be inexplicable on any other hypothesis. The same is the case with the sex-totems of the Kurnai tribe. In addition to the clan-totems all the boys have the Superb Warbler bird as a sex-totem, and call it their elder brother; and all the girls the Emu-wren, and call it their elder sister. If the boys wish to annoy the girls, or vice versa, each kills or injures the other’s totem-bird, and such an act is always followed by a free fight between the boys and girls.¹⁵⁰ Sex-totems are a peculiar development which need not be discussed here, but again it would appear that a common life runs through the birds of the totem and the members of the sex. Professor Robertson Smith describes the clan or kin as follows: “A kin was a group of persons whose lives were so bound up together, in what must be called a physical unity, that they could be treated as parts of one common life. The members of one kindred looked on themselves as one living whole, one single animated mass of blood, flesh and bones, of which no member could be touched without all the members suffering. This point of view is expressed in the Semitic tongue in many familiar forms of speech. In case of homicide Arabian tribesmen do not say, ‘The blood of M. or N. has been spilt’ (naming the man): they say, ‘Our blood has been spilt.’ In Hebrew the phrase by which one claims kinship is, ‘I am your bone and your flesh.’ Both in Hebrew and in Arabic flesh is synonymous with ‘clan’ or kindred group.”¹⁵¹ The custom of the blood-feud appears to have arisen from the belief in a common life of the clan. “The blood-feud is an institution not peculiar to tribes reckoning descent through females; and it is still in force. By virtue of its requirements every member of a kin, one of whom had suffered at the hands of a member of another kin, was bound to avenge the wrong upon the latter kin. Such is the solidarity between members of a kin that vengeance might be taken upon any member of the offending kin, though he might be personally quite innocent. In the growth of civilisation vengeance has gradually come to be concentrated upon the offender only.”¹⁵² Thus the blood-feud appears to have originated from the idea of primary retributive justice between clan and clan. When a member of a clan had been killed, one of the offending clan must be killed in return. Who he might be, and whether the original homicide was justifiable or not, were questions not regarded by primitive man; motives were abstract ideas with which he had no concern; he only knew that a piece of the common life had been lopped off, and the instinct of self-preservation of the clan demanded that a piece of the life of the offending clan should be cut off in return. And the tie which united the kin was eating and drinking together. “According to antique ideas those who eat and drink together are by this very act tied to one another by a bond of friendship and mutual obligation.”¹⁵³ This was the bond which first united the members of the totem-clan both among themselves and with their totem. And the relationship with the totem could only have arisen from the fact that they ate it. The belief in a common life could not possibly arise in the totem-clan towards any animal or plant which they did not eat or otherwise use. These they would simply disregard. Nor would savages, destitute at first of any moral ideas, and frequently on the brink of starvation, abstain from eating any edible animal from sentimental considerations; and, as already seen, the first totems were generally edible. They could not either have in the first place eaten the totem ceremonially, as there would be no reason for such a custom. But the ceremonial eating of the domestic animal, which was the tie subsequently uniting the members of the tribe,¹⁵⁴ cannot be satisfactorily explained except on the hypothesis that it was evolved from the customary eating of the totem-animal. Primitive savages would only feel affection towards the animals which they ate, just as the affection of animals is gained by feeding them. The objection might be made that savages could not feel affection and kinship for an animal which they killed and ate, but no doubt exists that they do.

“In British Columbia, when the fishing season commenced and the fish began coming up the rivers, the Indians used to meet them and speak to them. They paid court to them and would address them thus: ‘You fish, you fish; you are all chiefs, you are; you are all chiefs.’ Among the Northas when a bear is killed, it is dressed in a bonnet, covered with fine down, and solemnly invited to the chiefs presence.”¹⁵⁵ And there are many other instances.¹⁵⁶ Savages had no clear realisation of death, and they did not think that the life of the animal was extinguished but that it passed to them with the flesh. Moreover they only ate part of the life. In many cases also the totem-animal only appeared at a certain season of the year, in consequence of the habit of hibernation or migration in search of food, while trees only bore fruit in their season. The savage, regarding all animals and plants as possessed of self-conscious life and volition, would think that they came of their own accord to give him subsistence or life. Afterwards, when they had obtained the idea of a soul or spirit, and of the survival of the soul after death, and when, on the introduction of personal names, the personality of individuals could be realised and remembered after death, they frequently thought that the spirits of ancestors went back to the totem-animal, whence they derived their life. The idea of descent from the totem would thus naturally arise. As the means of subsistence increased, and especially in those communities which had domesticated animals or cultivated plants, the conception of the totem as the chief source of life would gradually die away and be replaced by the belief in descent from it; and when they also thought that the spirits of ancestors were in the totem, they would naturally abstain from eating it. Perhaps also the Australians consider that the members of the totem-clan should abstain from eating the totem for fear of injuring the common life, as more advanced communities abstained from eating the flesh of domestic animals. This may be the ground for the rule that they should only eat sparingly of the totem. To the later period may be ascribed the adoption of carnivorous animals as totems; when these animals came to be feared and also venerated for their qualities of strength, ferocity and courage, warriors would naturally wish to claim kinship with and descent from them.

66. Living and eating together

When the members of the totem-clan who lived together recognised that they owed something to each other, and that the gratification of the instincts and passions of the individual must to a certain degree be restrained if they endangered the lives and security of other members of the clan, they had taken the first step on the long path of moral and social progress. The tie by which they supposed themselves to be united was quite different from those which have constituted a bond of union between the communities who have subsequently lived together in the tribe, the city-state and the country. These have been a common religion, common language, race, or loyalty to a common sovereign; but the real bond has throughout been the common good or the public interest. And the desire for this end on the part of the majority of the members of the community, or the majority of those who were able to express their opinions, though its action was until recently not overt nor direct, and was not recognised, has led to the gradual evolution of the whole fabric of law and moral feeling, in order to govern and control the behaviour and conduct of the individual in his relations with his family, neighbours and fellow-citizens for the public advantage. The members of the totem-clan would have been quite unable to understand either the motives by which they were themselves actuated or the abstract ideas which have united more advanced communities; but they devised an even stronger bond than these, in supposing that they were parts or fractions of one common body or life. This was the more necessary as their natural impulses were uncontrolled by moral feeling. They conceived the bond of union in the concrete form of eating together. As language improved and passing events were recorded in speech and in the mind, the faculty of memory was perhaps concurrently developed. Then man began to realise the insecurity of his life, the dangers and misfortunes to which he was subject, the periodical failure or irregularity of the supply of food, and the imminent risks of death. Memory of the past made him apprehensive for the future, and holding that every event was the result of an act of volition, he began to assume an attitude either of veneration, gratitude, or fear towards the strongest of the beings by whom he thought his destinies were controlled—the sun, moon, sky, wind and rain, the ocean and great rivers, high mountains and trees, and the most important animals of his environment, whether they destroyed or assisted to preserve his life. The ideas of propitiation, atonement and purification were then imparted to the sacrifice, and it became an offering to a god.¹⁵⁷ But the primary idea of eating or drinking together as a bond of union was preserved, and can be recognised in religious and social custom to an advanced period of civilisation.

67. The origin of exogamy

Again, Dr. Westermarck shows that the practice of exogamy or the avoidance of intermarriage did not at first arise between persons recognised as blood relations, but between those who lived together. “Facts show that the extent to which relatives are not allowed to intermarry is nearly connected with their close living together. Generally speaking the prohibited degrees are extended much further among savage and barbarous peoples than in civilised societies. As a rule the former, if they have not remained in the most primitive social condition of man, live not in separate families but in large households or communities, all the members of which dwell in very close contact with each other.”¹⁵⁸ And later, after adducing the evil results of self-fertilisation in plants and close interbreeding in animals, Dr. Westermarck continues: “Taking all these facts into consideration, I cannot but believe that consanguineous marriages, in some way or other, are more or less detrimental to the species. And here I think we may find a quite sufficient explanation of the horror of incest; not because man at an early stage recognised the injurious influence of close intermarriage, but because the law of natural selection must inevitably have operated. Among the ancestors of man, as among other animals, there was no doubt a time when blood relationship was no bar to sexual intercourse. But variations here, as elsewhere, would naturally present themselves; and those of our ancestors who avoided in-and-in breeding would survive, while the others would gradually decay and ultimately perish. Thus an instinct would be developed, which would be powerful enough as a rule to prevent injurious unions. Of course it would display itself simply as an aversion on the part of individuals to union with others with whom they lived; but these as a matter of fact would be blood relations, so that the result would be the survival of the fittest.”

68. Promiscuity and female descent

The instinct of exogamy first developed in the totem-clan when it was migratory and lived by hunting, at least among the Australians and probably the American Indians.

The first condition of the clan was one of sexual promiscuity, and in Totemism and Exogamy Sir J.G. Frazer has adduced many instances of periodical promiscuous debauchery which probably recall this state of things.¹⁵⁹ The evil results which would accrue from in-breeding in the condition of promiscuity may have been modified by such incidents as the expulsion of the young males through the spasmodic jealousy of the older ones, the voluntary segregation of the old males, fights and quarrels leading to the rearrangement of groups, and the frequent partial destruction of a group, when the survivors might attach themselves to a new group. Primitive peoples attached the utmost importance to the rule of exogamy, and the punishments for the breach of it were generally more severe than those for the violation of the laws of affinity in civilised countries. The Australians say that the good spirit or the wise men prescribed to them the rule that the members of each totem-clan should not marry with each other.¹⁶⁰ Similarly the Gonds say that their divine hero, Lingo, introduced the rule of exogamy and the division into clans before he went to the gods.

At first, however, the exogamous clan was not constituted by descent through males, but through females. The hypothesis that female everywhere preceded male descent is strongly supported by natural probability. In the first instance, the parentage of children was no more observed and remembered than that of animals. When first observed, it was necessarily through the mother, the identity of the father being wholly uncertain. The mother would also be the first parent to remember her children, her affection for them being based on one of the strongest natural instincts, whereas the father neither knew nor cared for his children until long afterwards. Sir J.G. Frazer has further shown that even now some of the Australian aborigines are ignorant of the physical fact of paternity and its relation to sexual intercourse. That such ignorance could have survived so long is the strongest evidence in favour of the universal priority of female to male descent. It is doubtful, however, whether even the mother could remember her children after they had become adult, prior to the introduction of personal names. Mr. M’Lennan states: “The tie between mother and child, which exists as a matter of necessity during infancy, is not infrequently found to be lost sight of among savages on the age of independence being reached.”¹⁶¹ Personal names were probably long subsequent to clan-names, and when they were first introduced the name usually had some reference to the clan. The Red Indians and other races have totem-names which are frequently some variant of the name of the totem.¹⁶² When personal names came to be generally introduced, the genesis of the individual family might soon follow, but the family could scarcely have come into existence in the absence of personal names. As a rule, in the exogamous clan with female descent no regard was paid to the chastity of women, and they could select their partners as they pleased. Mr. Hartland has shown in Primitive Paternity that in a large number of primitive communities the chastity of women was neither enforced nor desired by the men, this state of things being probably a relic of the period of female descent. Thus exogamy first arose through the women of the clan resorting to men outside it. When we consider the extreme rigour of life and the frequent danger of starvation to which the small clans in the hunting stage must have been exposed, it does not seem impossible that the evil effects of marriage within the clan may have been noticed. At that time probably only a minority even of healthy children survived, and the slight congenital weakness produced by in-breeding might apparently be fatal to a child’s chance of life. Possibly some dim perception may have been obtained of the different fates of the children of women who restricted their sexual relations to men within the clan and those who resorted to strangers, even though the nature of paternity may not have been understood. The strength of the feeling and custom of exogamy seems to demand some such recognition for its satisfactory explanation, though, on the other hand, the lateness of the recognition of the father’s share in the production of children militates against this view. The suggestion may be made also that the belief that the new life of a child must be produced by a spirit entering the woman, or other extraneous source, does not necessarily involve an ignorance of the physical fact of paternity; the view that the spirits of ancestors are reborn in children is still firmly held by tribes who have long been wholly familiar with the results of the commerce of the sexes. The practice of exogamy was no doubt, as shown by Dr. Westermarck, favoured and supported by the influence of novelty in sexual attraction, since according to common observation and experience sexual love or desire is more easily excited between strangers or slight acquaintances than between those who have long lived together in the same household or in familiar intercourse. In the latter case the attraction is dulled by custom and familiarity.

69. Exogamy with female descent

The exogamous clan, with female descent, was, however, an unstable social institution, in that it had no regular provision for marriage nor for the incorporation of married couples. The men who associated with the women of the clan were not necessarily, nor as a rule, admitted to it, but remained in their own clans. How this association took place is not altogether clear. At a comparatively late period in Arabia, according to Professor Robertson Smith,¹⁶³ the woman would have a tent, and could entertain outside men for a shorter or longer period according to her inclination. The practice of serving for a wife also perhaps dates from the period of female descent. The arrangement would have been that a man went and lived with a woman’s family and gave his services in return for her conjugal society. Whether the residence with the wife’s family was permanent or not is perhaps uncertain. When Jacob served for Leah and Rachel, society seems to have been in the early patriarchal stage, as Laban was their father and he was Laban’s sister’s son. But it seems doubtful whether his right was then recognised to take his wives away with him, for even after he had served fourteen years Laban pursued him, and would have taken them back if he had not been warned against doing so in a vision. The episode of Rachel’s theft of the images also seems to indicate that she intended to take her own household gods with her and not to adopt those of her husband’s house. And Laban’s chief anxiety was for the recovery of the images. A relic of the husband’s residence with his wife’s family during the period of female descent may perhaps be found in the Banjāra caste, who oblige a man to go and live with his wife’s father for a month without seeing her face. Under the patriarchal system this rule of the Banjāras is meaningless, though the general practice of serving for a wife survives as a method of purchase.

The god Rāma, an incarnation of Vishnu, with attendant deities

Among the Australian aborigines apparently the clans, or sections of them, wander about in search of food and game, and meet each other for more or less promiscuous intercourse. This may perhaps be supposed to have been the general primitive condition of society after the introduction of exogamy combined with female descent. And its memory is possibly preserved in the tradition of the Golden Age, golden only in the sense that man was not troubled either by memory or anticipation, and lived only for the day. The entire insecurity of life and its frequent end by starvation or a violent death did not therefore trouble him any more than is the case with animals. He took no thought for the morrow, nor did the ills of yesterday oppress his mind. As when one of a herd of deer is shot by a hunter and the others stand by it pityingly as it lies dying on the ground, uncertain of its mishap, though they would help it if they could; yet when they perceive the hunter they make quickly off and in a few minutes are again grazing happily a mile or two away: little or no more than this can primitive man be supposed to have been affected by the deaths of his fellows. But possibly, since he was carnivorous, the sick and old may have been killed for food, as is still the practice among some tribes of savages. In the natural course, however, more or less permanent unions, though perhaps not regular marriages, must have developed in the female exogamous clan, which would thus usually have men of other clans living with it. And since identification of individuals would be extremely difficult before the introduction of personal names, there would be danger that when two clans met, men and women belonging to the same totem-clan would have sexual intercourse. This offence, owing to the strength of the feeling for exogamy, was frequently held to entail terrible evils for the community, and was consequently sometimes punished with death as treason. Moreover, if we suppose a number of small clans, A, B, C, D and E, to meet each other again and again, and the men and women to unite promiscuously, it is clear that the result would be a mixture of relationships of a very incestuous character. The incest of brothers and sisters by the same father would be possible and of almost all other relations, though that of brothers and sisters by the same mother would not be caused. This may have been the reason for the introduction of the class system among the Australians and Red Indians, by which all the clans of a certain area were divided into two classes, and the men of any clan of one class could only marry or have intercourse with the women of a clan of the other class. By such a division the evil results of the mixture of totems in exogamous clans with female descent would be avoided. The class system was sometimes further strengthened by the rule, in Australia, that different classes should, when they met, encamp on opposite sides of a creek or other natural division¹⁶⁴; whilst among the Red Indians, the classes camp on opposite sides of the road, or live on different sides of the same house or street.¹⁶⁵ In Australia, and very occasionally elsewhere, the class system has been developed into four and eight sub-classes. A man of one sub-class can only marry a woman of one other, and their children belong to one of those different from either the father’s or mother’s. This highly elaborate and artificial system was no doubt, as stated by Sir J. G. Frazer, devised for the purpose of preventing the intermarriage of parents and children belonging to different clans where there are four sub-classes, and of first cousins where there are eight sub-classes.¹⁶⁶ The class system, however, would not appear to have been the earliest form of exogamy among the Australian tribes. Its very complicated character, and the fact that the two principal classes sometimes do not even have names, seem to preclude the idea of its having been the first form of exogamy, which is a strong natural feeling, so much so that it may almost be described as an instinct, though of course not a primitive animal instinct. And just as the totem clan, which establishes a sentiment of kinship between people who are not related by blood, was prior to the individual family, so exogamy, which forbids the marriage of people who are not related by blood, must apparently have been prior to the feeling simply against connections of persons related by blood or what we call incest. If the two-class system was introduced in Australia to prohibit the marriage of brothers and sisters at a time when they could not recognise each other in adult life, then on the introduction of personal names which would enable brothers and sisters to recognise and remember each other, the two-class system should have been succeeded by a modern table of prohibited degrees, and not by clan exogamy at all. It is suggested that the two-class system was a common and natural form of evolution of a society divided into exogamous totem clans with female descent, when a man was not taken into the clan of the woman with whom he lived. The further subdivision into four and eight sub-classes is almost peculiar to the Australian tribes; its development may perhaps be attributed to the fact that these tribes have retained the system of female descent and the migratory hunting method of life for an abnormally long period, and have evolved this special institution to prevent the unions of near relatives which are likely to occur under such conditions. The remains of a two-class system appear to be traceable among the Gonds of the Central Provinces. In one part of Bastar all the Gond clans are divided into two classes without names, and a man cannot marry a woman belonging to any clan of his own class, but must take one from a clan of the other class. Elsewhere the Gonds are divided into two groups of six-god and seven-god worshippers among whom the same rule obtains. Formerly the Gonds appear in some places to have had seven groups, worshipping different numbers of gods from one to seven, and each of these groups was exogamous. But after the complete substitution of male for female kinship in the clan, and the settlement of clans in different villages, the classes cease to fulfil any useful purpose. They are now disappearing, and it is very difficult to obtain any reliable information about their rules. The system of counting kinship through the mother, or female descent, has long been extinct in the Central Provinces and over most of India. Some survival of it, or at least the custom of polyandry, is found among the Nairs of southern India and in Thibet. Elsewhere scarcely a trace remains, and this was also the condition of things with the classical races of antiquity; so much so, indeed, that even great thinkers like Sir Henry Maine and M. Fustel de Coulanges, with the examples only of India, Greece and Rome before them, did not recognise the system of female descent, and thought that the exogamous clan with male descent was an extension of the patriarchal family, this latter having been the original unit of society. The wide distribution of exogamy and the probable priority of the system of female to that of male descent were first brought prominently to notice by Mr. M’Lennan. Still a distinct trace of the prior form survives here in the special relationship sometimes found to exist between a man and his sister’s children. This is a survival of the period when a woman’s children, under the rule of female descent, belonged to her own family and her husband or partner in sexual relations had no proprietary right or authority over them, the place and authority of a father belonging in such a condition of society to the mother’s brother or brothers. Among the Halbas a marriage is commonly arranged when practicable between a brother’s daughter and a sister’s son. And a man always shows a special regard and respect for his sister’s son, touching the latter’s feet as to a superior, while whenever he desires to make a gift as an offering of thanks and atonement, or as a meritorious action, the sister’s son is the recipient. At his death he usually leaves a substantial legacy, such as one or two buffaloes, to his sister’s son, the remainder of the property going to his own family. Similarly among the Kamārs the marriage of a man’s children with his sister’s children is considered the most suitable union. If a man’s sister is poor, he will arrange for the weddings of her children. He will never beat his sister’s children however much they may deserve it, and he will not permit his sister’s son or daughter to eat from the dish from which he eats. The last rule, it is said, also applies to the maternal aunt. The Kunbis, and other Marātha castes, have a saying: ‘At the sister’s house the brother’s daughter is a daughter-in-law.’ The Gonds call the wedding of a brother’s daughter to a sister’s son Dūdh lautāna, or ‘bringing back the milk.’ The reason why a brother was formerly anxious to marry his daughter to his sister’s son was that the latter would be his heir under the matriarchal system; but now that inheritance is through males, and girls are at a premium for marriage, a brother is usually more anxious to get his sister’s daughter for his son, and on the analogy of the opposite union it is sometimes supposed, as among the Gonds, that he also has a right to her. Many other instances of the special relation between a brother and his sister’s children are given by Sir J.G. Frazer in Totemism and Exogamy. In some localities also the Korkus build their villages in two long lines of houses on each side of the road, and it may be the case that this is a relic of the period when two or more clans with female descent lived in the same village, and those belonging to each class who could not marry or have sexual relations among themselves occupied one side of the road.