The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume I (of IV)

R >> R.V. Russell >> The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume I (of IV)

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Sir E. B. Tylor states: "In Polynesia, if a village god were accustomed
to appear as an owl, and one of his votaries found a dead owl by
the roadside, he would mourn over the sacred bird and bury it with
much ceremony, but the god himself would not be thought to be dead,
for he remains incarnate in all existing owls. According to Father
Geronimo Boscana, the Acagchemen tribe of Upper California furnish a
curious parallel to this notion. They worshipped the _panes_ bird,
which seems to have been an eagle or vulture, and each year, in
the temple of each village, one of them was solemnly killed without
shedding blood, and the body buried. Yet the natives maintained and
believed that it was the same individual bird they sacrificed each
year, and more than this, that the same bird was slain by each of
the villages." [146] An account of the North American Indians quoted
by the same author states that they believe all the animals of each
species to have an elder brother, who is as it were the principle and
origin of all the individuals, and this elder brother is marvellously
great and powerful. According to another view each species has its
archetype in the land of souls; there exists, for example, a _manitu_
or archetype of all oxen, which animates all oxen. [147]

Generally in the relations between the totem-clan and its
totem-animal, and in all the fables about animals, one animal is
taken as representing the species, and it is tacitly assumed that
all the animals of the species have the same knowledge and qualities
and would behave in the same manner as the typical one. Thus when
the Majhwar says that the tiger would run away if he met a member
of the tiger-clan who was free from sin, but would devour any member
who had been put out of caste for an offence, he assumes that every
tiger would know a member of the clan on meeting him, and also whether
that member was in or out of caste. He therefore apparently supposes a
common knowledge and intelligence to exist in all tigers as regards the
clan, as if they were parts of one mind or intelligence. And since the
tigers know instinctively when a member of the clan is out of caste,
the mind and intelligence of the tigers must be the same as that
of the clan. The Kols of the tiger clan think that if they were to
sit up for a tiger over a kill the tiger would not come and would be
deprived of his food, and that they themselves would fall ill. Here
the evil effects of the want of food on one tiger are apparently held
to extend to all tigers and also to all members of the tiger clan.

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 Banjara 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 Banjaras is meaningless, though the general
practice of serving for a wife survives as a method of purchase.

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 division [164]; 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 Kamars 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 Maratha 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 _Dudh lautana_, 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.