The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Part 8

64. The common life.

Thus, resuming from paragraph 61, primitive man had no difficulty in conceiving of a life as shared between two or more persons or objects, and it does not seem impossible that he should have at first conceived it to extend through a whole species. [141] A good instance of the common life is afforded by the G.o.ds of the Hindu and other pantheons. Each G.o.d was conceived of as performing some divine function, guiding the chariot of the sun, manipulating the thunder and so on; but at the same time thousands of temples existed throughout the country, and in each of these the G.o.d was alive and present in his image or idol, able to act independently, receive and consume sacrifices and offerings, protect suppliants and punish transgressors. No doubt at all can be entertained that each idol was in itself held to be a living G.o.d. In India food is offered to the idol, it goes through its ablutions, is fanned, and so on, exactly like a human king. The ideas of sanctuary and sacrilege appear to depend primarily on the belief in the actual presence of the G.o.d in his shrine. And in India no sanct.i.ty at all attaches to a temple from which the idol has been removed. Thus we see the life of the G.o.d distributed over a mult.i.tude of personalities. Again, the same G.o.d, as Vishnu or the sun, is held to have had a number of incarnations, as the boar, the tortoise, a man-lion, a dwarf, Rama and Krishna, and these are venerated simultaneously as distinct deities. The whole Brahman caste considered itself divine or as partaking in the life of the G.o.d, the original reason for this perhaps being that the Brahmans obtained the exclusive right to perform sacrifices, and hence the life of the sacrificial animal or food pa.s.sed to them, as in other societies it pa.s.sed to the king who performed the sacrifice. A Brahman further holds that the five G.o.ds, Indra, Brahma, Siva, Vishnu and Ganesh, are present in different parts of his body, [142] and here again the life of the G.o.d is seen to be divided into innumerable fragments. The priests of the Vallabhacharya sect, the Gokulastha Gosains, were all held to be possessed by the G.o.d Krishna, so that it was esteemed a high privilege to perform the most menial offices for them, because to touch them was equivalent to touching the G.o.d, and perhaps a.s.similating by contact a fragment of his divine life and nature. [143] The belief in a common life would also explain the veneration of domestic animals and the prohibition against killing them, because to kill one would injure the whole life of the species, from which the tribe drew its subsistence. Similarly in a number of cases the first idea of seasonal fasts is that the people abstain from the grain or fruit which is growing or sown in the ground. Thus in India during the rains the vegetables growing at this period are not eaten, and are again partaken of for the first time after the sacrificial offering of the new crop. This rule could not possibly be observed in the case of grain, but instead certain single fast-days are prescribed, and on these days no cultivated grain or fruit, but only those growing wild, should be eaten. These rules seem to indicate that the original motive of the fast was to avoid injuring the common life of the grain or fruit, which injury would be caused by a consumption of any part of it, at a time when the whole of the common life and vigour was required for its reproduction and multiplication. This idea may have operated to enable the savage to restrain himself from digging up and eating the grain sown in the ground, or slaughtering his domestic animals for food, and a taboo on the consumption of grain and fruits during their period of ripening may have first begun in their wild state. The Intichiuma ceremonies of the Australian natives are carried out with the object of increasing the supply of the totem for food purposes. In the Ilpirla or Manna totem the members of the clan go to a large boulder surrounded by stones, which are held to represent ma.s.ses of Ilpirla or the manna of the _mulga_ tree. A Churinga stone is dug up, which is supposed to represent another ma.s.s of manna, and this is rubbed over the boulder, and the smaller stones are also rubbed over it. While the leader does this, the others sing a song which is an invitation to the dust produced by the rubbing of the stones to go out and produce a plentiful supply of Ilpirla on the _mulga_ trees. [144]

Then the dust is swept off the surface of the stones with twigs of the _mulga_ tree. Here apparently the large boulder and other stones are held to be the centre or focus of the common life of the manna, and from them the seed issues forth which will produce a crop of manna on all the _mulga_ trees. The deduction seems clear that the trees are not conceived of individually, but are held to have a common life. In the case of the _hakea_ flower totem they go to a stone lying beneath an old tree, and one of the members lets his blood flow on to the stone until it is covered, while the others sing a song inciting the _hakea_ tree to flower much and to the blossoms to be full of honey. [145]

The blood is said to represent a drink prepared from the _hakea_ flowers, but probably it was originally meant to quicken the stone with the blood of a member of the totem, that is its own blood or life, in order that it might produce abundance of flowers. Here again the stone seems to be the centre of the common life of the _hakea_ flower. The songs are sung with the idea that the repet.i.tion of words connoting a state of facts will have the effect of causing that state of facts to exist, in accordance with the belief already explained in the concrete virtue of words.

Sir E. B. Tylor states: "In Polynesia, if a village G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 wors.h.i.+pped 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sumes 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 s.e.x-totems of the Kurnai tribe. In addition to the clan-totems all the boys have the Superb Warbler bird as a s.e.x-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] s.e.x-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 s.e.x. 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 ma.s.s 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 kins.h.i.+p 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 inst.i.tution 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 relations.h.i.+p 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, dest.i.tute 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 kins.h.i.+p for an animal which they killed and ate, but no doubt exists that they do.

"In British Columbia, when the fis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 kins.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sions 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 const.i.tuted 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sume an att.i.tude either of veneration, grat.i.tude, 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 a.s.sisted to preserve his life. The ideas of propitiation, atonement and purification were then imparted to the sacrifice, and it became an offering to a G.o.d. [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 relations.h.i.+p was no bar to s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 G.o.ds.

At first, however, the exogamous clan was not const.i.tuted 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 ident.i.ty 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 s.e.xual 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 chast.i.ty 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 chast.i.ty 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xes. The practice of exogamy was no doubt, as shown by Dr. Westermarck, favoured and supported by the influence of novelty in s.e.xual attraction, since according to common observation and experience s.e.xual 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 inst.i.tution, in that it had no regular provision for marriage nor for the incorporation of married couples. The men who a.s.sociated with the women of the clan were not necessarily, nor as a rule, admitted to it, but remained in their own clans. How this a.s.sociation 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 G.o.ds 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 antic.i.p.ation, 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 s.e.xual 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 relations.h.i.+ps 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 cla.s.s system among the Australians and Red Indians, by which all the clans of a certain area were divided into two cla.s.ses, and the men of any clan of one cla.s.s could only marry or have intercourse with the women of a clan of the other cla.s.s. By such a division the evil results of the mixture of totems in exogamous clans with female descent would be avoided. The cla.s.s system was sometimes further strengthened by the rule, in Australia, that different cla.s.ses should, when they met, encamp on opposite sides of a creek or other natural division [164]; whilst among the Red Indians, the cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s system has been developed into four and eight sub-cla.s.ses. A man of one sub-cla.s.s 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-cla.s.ses, and of first cousins where there are eight sub-cla.s.ses. [166] The cla.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al cla.s.ses 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 kins.h.i.+p 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-cla.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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-cla.s.ses 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 inst.i.tution to prevent the unions of near relatives which are likely to occur under such conditions. The remains of a two-cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses without names, and a man cannot marry a woman belonging to any clan of his own cla.s.s, but must take one from a clan of the other cla.s.s. Elsewhere the Gonds are divided into two groups of six-G.o.d and seven-G.o.d wors.h.i.+ppers among whom the same rule obtains. Formerly the Gonds appear in some places to have had seven groups, wors.h.i.+pping different numbers of G.o.ds from one to seven, and each of these groups was exogamous. But after the complete subst.i.tution of male for female kins.h.i.+p in the clan, and the settlement of clans in different villages, the cla.s.ses 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 kins.h.i.+p 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 cla.s.sical 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 s.e.xual 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 a.n.a.logy 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 cla.s.s who could not marry or have s.e.xual relations among themselves occupied one side of the road.

70. Marriage.

The transfer of the reckoning of kins.h.i.+p and descent from the mother's to the father's side may perhaps be a.s.sociated with the full recognition of the physical fact of paternity. Though they may not have been contemporaneous in all or even the majority of societies, it would seem that the former was in most cases the logical outcome of the latter, regard being had also to the man's natural function as protector of the family and provider of its sustenance. But this transition from female to male kins.h.i.+p was a social revolution of the first importance. Under the system of female descent there had been generally no transfer of clans.h.i.+p; both the woman and her partner or husband retained their own clans, and the children belonged to their mother's clan. In the totemic stage of society the totem-clan was the vital organism, and the individual scarcely realised his own separate existence, but regarded himself as a member of his totem-clan, being a piece or fraction of a common life which extended through all the members of the clan and all the totem animals of the species. They may have thought also that each species of animals and plants had a different kind of life, and consequently also each clan whose life was derived from, and linked to, that of its totem-species. For the name, and life, and qualities, and flesh and blood were not separate conceptions, but only one conception; and since the name and qualities were part of the life, the life of one species could not be the same as that of another, and every species which had a separate name must have been thought to have a different kind of life. Nor would man have been regarded as a distinct species in the early totem-stage, and there would be no word for man; but each totem-clan would regard itself as having the same life as its totem-species. With the introduction of the system of male kins.h.i.+p came also the practice of transferring a woman from her own clan to that of her husband. It may be suggested that this was the origin of the social inst.i.tution of marriage. Primitive society had no provision for such a procedure, which was opposed to its one fundamental idea of its own const.i.tution, and involved a change of the life and personality of the woman transferred.

71. Marriage by capture.

The view seems to have been long held that this transfer could only be effected by violence or capture, the manner in which presumably it was first practised. Marriage by capture is very widely prevalent among savage races, as shown by Mr. M'Lennan in _Primitive Marriage_, and by Dr. Westermarck in _The History of Human Marriage_. Where the custom has given place to more peaceable methods of procuring a wife, survivals commonly occur. In Bastar the regular capture of the girl is still sometimes carried out, though the business is usually arranged by the couple beforehand, and the same is the case among the Kolams of Wardha. A regular part of the marriage procedure among the Gonds and other tribes is that the bride should weep formally for some hours, or a day before the wedding, and she is sometimes taught to cry in the proper note. At the wedding the bride hides somewhere and has to be found or carried off by the bridegroom or his brother. This ritualistic display of grief and coyness appears to be of considerable interest. It cannot be explained by the girl's reluctance to marriage as involving the loss of her virginity, inasmuch as she is still frequently not a virgin at her wedding, and to judge from the a.n.a.logy of other tribes, could seldom or never have been one a few generations back. Nor is affection for her family or grief at the approaching separation from them a satisfactory motive. This would not account for the hiding at all, and not properly for the weeping, since she will after all only live a few miles away and will often return home; and sometimes she does not only weep at her own house but at all the houses of the village. The suggestion may be made that the procedure really indicates the girl's reluctance to be severed from her own clan and transferred to another; and that the sentiment is a survival of the resistance to marriage by capture which was at first imposed on the women by the men from loyalty to the clan totem and its common life, and had nothing to do with the conjugal relations.h.i.+p of marriage. But out of this feeling the s.e.xual modesty of women, which had been non-existent in the matriarchal condition of society, was perhaps gradually developed. The Chamars of Bilaspur have sham fights on the approach of the wedding party, and in most Hindu castes the bridegroom on his arrival performs some militant action, such as striking the marriage-shed or breaking one of its festoons. After the marriage the bride is nearly always sent home with the bridegroom's party for a few days, even though she may be a child and the consummation of the marriage impossible. This may be in memory of her having formerly been carried off, and some a.n.a.logous significance may attach to our honeymoon. When the custom of capture had died down it was succeeded by the milder form of elopement, or the bride was sold or exchanged against a girl from the bridegroom's family or clan, but there is usually a relic of a formal transfer, such as the Hindu _Kanyadan_ or gift of the virgin, the Roman _Traditio in manum_ or her transfer from her father's to her husband's power, and the giving away of the bride.

72. Transfer of the bride to her husband's clan.

These customs seem to mark the transfer of the woman from her father's to her husband's clan, which was in the first instance effected forcibly and afterwards by the free gift of her father or guardian, and the change of surname would be a relic of the change of clan. Among the Hindus a girl is never called by her proper name in her husband's house, but always by some other name or nickname. This custom seems to be a relic of the period when the name denoted the clan, though it no longer has any reference either to the girl's clan or family. Another rite portraying the transfer in India is the marking of the bride's forehead with vermilion, which is no doubt a subst.i.tute for blood. The ceremony would be a relic of partic.i.p.ation in the clan sacrifice when the bride would in the first place drink the blood of the totem animal or tribal G.o.d with the bridegroom in sign of her admission to his clan and afterwards be marked with the blood as a subst.i.tute. This smear of vermilion a married woman always continues to wear as a sign of her state, unless she wears pink powder or a spangle as a subst.i.tute. [167] Where this pink powder _(kunku)_ or spangles are used they must always be given by the bridegroom to the bride as part of the _Sohag_ or trousseau. At a Bhaina 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 wors.h.i.+ps the image, lighting a sacrificial fire before it, or offers to it the vermilion which he afterwards smears upon the forehead of the bride. The Khadals at their marriages wors.h.i.+p their totem animal or tree, and offer to it flowers, sandalwood, vermilion, uncooked rice, and the new clothes and ornaments intended for the bride, which she may not wear until this ceremony has been performed. Again, the sacrament of the Meher or marriage cakes is sometimes connected with the clan totem in India. These cakes are cooked and eaten sacramentally by all the members of the family and their relatives, the bride and bridegroom commencing first. Among the Kols the relatives to whom these cakes are distributed cannot intermarry, and this indicates that the eating of them was formerly a sacrament of the exogamous clan. The a.s.sociation of the totem with the marriage cakes is sometimes clearly shown. Thus in the Dahait caste members of the clans named after certain trees, go to the tree at the time of their weddings and invite it to be present at the ceremony. They offer the marriage cakes to the tree. Those of the Nagotia or cobra clan deposit the cakes at a snake's hole. Members of the Singh (lion) and Bagh (tiger) clans draw images of these animals on the wall at the time of their weddings and offer the cakes to them. The Basors of the Kulatia or somersault clan do somersaults at the time of eating the cakes; those of the Karai Nor clan, who venerate a well, eat the cakes at a well and not at home. Basors of the Lurhia clan, who venerate a grinding-stone, wors.h.i.+p this implement at the time of eating the marriage cakes. M. Fustel de Coulanges states that the Roman Confarreatio, or eating of a cake together by the bride and bridegroom in the presence of the family G.o.ds of the latter, const.i.tuted their holy union or marriage. By this act the wife was transferred to the G.o.ds and religion of her husband. [168] Here the G.o.ds referred to are clearly held to be the family G.o.ds, and in the historical period it seems doubtful whether the Roman _gens_ was still exogamous. But if the patriarchal family developed within the exogamous clan tracing descent through males, and finally supplanted the clan as the most important social unit, then it would follow that the family G.o.ds were only a subst.i.tute for the clan G.o.ds, and the bride came to be transferred to her husband's family instead of to his clan. The marriage ceremony in Greece consisted of a common meal of a precisely similar character, [169] and the English wedding cake seems to be a survival of such a rite. At their weddings the Bhils make cakes of the large millet juari, calling it Juari Mata or Mother Juari. These cakes are eaten at the houses of the bride and bridegroom by the members of their respective clans, and the remains are buried inside the house as sacred food. Dr. Howitt states of the Kurnai tribe: "By and by, when the bruises and perhaps wounds received in these fights (between the young men and women) had healed, a young man and a young woman might meet, and he, looking at her, would say, for instance, 'Djiitgun! [170] What does the Djiitgun eat?' The reply would be 'She eats kangaroo, opossum,' or some other game. This const.i.tuted a formal offer and acceptance, and would be followed by the elopement of the couple as described in the chapter on Marriage." [171] There is no statement that the question about eating refers to the totem, but this must apparently have been the original bearing of the question, which otherwise would be meaningless. Since this proposal of marriage followed on a fight between the boys and girls arising from the fact that one party had injured the other party's s.e.x-totem, the fight may perhaps really have been a preliminary to the proposal and have represented a symbolic subst.i.tute for or survival of marriage by capture. Among the Santals, Colonel Dalton says, "the social meal that the boy and girl eat together is the most important part of the ceremony, as by the act the girl ceases to belong to her father's tribe and becomes a member of the husband's family." Since the terms tribe and family are obviously used loosely in the above statement, we may perhaps subst.i.tute clan in both cases. Many other instances of the rite of eating together at a wedding are given by Dr. Westermarck. [172]

If, therefore, it be supposed that the wedding ceremony consisted originally of the formal transfer of the bride to the bridegroom's clan, and further that the original tie which united the totem-clan was the common eating of the totem animal, then the practice of the bride and bridegroom eating together as a symbol of marriage can be fully understood. When the totem animal had ceased to be the princ.i.p.al means of subsistence, bread, which to a people in the agricultural stage had become the staff or chief support of life, was subst.i.tuted for it, as argued by Professor Robertson Smith in _The Religion of the Semites_. If the inst.i.tution of marriage was thus originally based on the forcible transfer of a woman from her own to her husband's clan, certain Indian customs become easily explicable in the light of this view. We can understand why a Brahman or Rajput thought it essential to marry his daughter into a clan or family of higher status than his own; because the disgrace of having his daughter taken from him by what had been originally an act of force, was atoned for by the superior rank of the captor or abductor. And similarly the terms father-in-law and brother-in-law would be regarded as opprobrious because they originally implied not merely that the speaker had married the sister or daughter of the person addressed, but had married her forcibly, thereby placing him in a position of inferiority. A Rajput formerly felt it derogatory that any man should address him either as father-or brother-in-law. And the a.n.a.logous custom of a man refusing to take food in the house of his son-in-law's family and sometimes even refusing to drink water in their village would be explicable on precisely the same grounds. This view of marriage would also account for the wide prevalence of female infanticide. Because in the primitive condition of exogamy with male descent, girls could not be married in their own clan, as this would transgress the binding law of exogamy, and they could not be transferred from their own totem-clan and married in another except by force and rape. Hence it was thought better to kill girl children than to suffer the ignominy of their being forcibly carried off. Both kinds of female infanticide as distinguished by Sir H. Risley [173] would thus originally be due to the same belief. The Khond killed his daughter because she could not be married otherwise than by forcible abduction; not necessarily because he was unable to protect her, but because he could not conceive of her being transferred from one totem-clan to another by any other means; and he was bound to resist the transfer because by acquiescing in it, he would have been guilty of disloyalty to his own totem, whose common life was injured by the loss of the girl. The Rajput killed his daughter because it was a disgrace to him to get her married at all outside his clan, and she could not be married within it. Afterwards the disgrace was removed by marrying her into a higher clan than his own and by lavish expenditure on the wedding; and the practice of female infanticide was continued to avoid the ruinous outlay which this primitive view of marriage had originally entailed. The Hindu custom of the Swayamvara or armed contest for the hand of a Rajput princess, and the curious recognition by the Hindu law-books of simple rape as a legitimate form of marriage would be explained on the same ground.

73. The exogamous clan with male descent and the village.

It has been seen that the exogamous clan with female descent contained no married couples, and therefore it was necessary either that outside men should live with it, or that the clans should continually meet each other, or that two or more should live in the same village. With the change to male descent and the transfer of women to their husbands'

clans, this unstable characteristic was removed. Henceforth the clan was self-contained, having its married couples, both members of it, whose children would also be born in and belong to it. Since the clan was originally a body of persons who wandered about and hunted together, its character would be maintained by living together, and there is reason to suppose that the Indian exogamous clan with male descent took its special character because its members usually lived in one or more villages. This fact would account for the large number and multiplication of clans in India as compared with other places. As already seen one of the names of a clan is _khera_, which also means a village, and a large number of the clan names are derived from, or the same, as those of villages. Among the Khonds all the members of one clan live in the same locality about some central village. Thus the Tupa clan are collected about the village of Teplagarh in Patna State, the Loa clan round Sindhekala, the Borga clan round Bangomunda and so on. The Nunias of Mirzapur, Mr. Crooke remarks, [174] have a system of local subdivisions called _dih_, each subdivision being named after the village which is supposed to be its home. The word _dih_ itself means a site or village. Those who have the same _dih_ do not intermarry. In the villages first settled by the Oraons, Father Dehon states, [175] the population is divided into three _khunts_ or branches, the founders of the three branches being held to have been sons of the first settler. Members of each branch belong to the same clan or _got_. Each _khunt_ or branch has a share of the village lands. The Mochis or cobblers have forty exogamous sections or _gotras_, mostly named after Rajput clans, and they also have an equal number of _kheras_ or groups named after villages. The limits of the two groups seem to be identical; and members of each group have an ancestral village from which they are supposed to have come. Marriage is now regulated by the Rajput sept-names, but the probability is that the _kheras_ were the original divisions, and the Rajput _gotras_ have been more recently adopted in support of the claims already noticed. The Parjas have totemistic exogamous clans and marriage is prohibited in theory between members of the same clan. But as the number of clans is rather small, the rule is not adhered to, and members of the same clan are permitted to marry so long as they do not come from the same village. The Minas of Rajputana are divided into twelve exogamous _pals_ or clans; the original meaning of the word _pal_ was a defile or valley suitable for defence, where the members of the clan would live together as in a Scotch glen.

Thus among the cultivating castes apparently each exogamous clan consisted originally of the residents of one village, though they afterwards spread to a number of villages. The servile labouring castes may also have arranged their clans by villages as the primitive forest-tribes did. How the menial castes formed exogamous clans is not altogether clear, as the numbers in one village would be only small. But it may be supposed that as they gradually increased, clans came into existence either in one large village or a number of adjacent ones, and sometimes traced their descent from a single family or from an ancestor with a nickname. As a rule, the artisan castes do not appear to have formed villages of their own in India, as they did in Russia, though this may occasionally have happened. When among the cultivating castes the lands were divided, separate joint families would be const.i.tuted; the head only of each family would be its representative in the clan, as he would hold the share of the village land a.s.signed to the family, which was their joint means of subsistence, and the family would live in one household. Thus perhaps the Hindu joint family came into existence as a subdivision of the exogamous clan with male descent, on which its const.i.tution was modelled. In Chhattisgarh families still live together in large enclosures with separate huts for the married couples. A human ancestor gradually took the place of the totem as the giver of life to the clan. The members thought themselves bound together by the tie of his blood which flowed through all their veins, and frequently, as in Athens, Rome and Scotland, every member of the clan bore his name. In this capacity, as the source of the clan's life, the original ancestor was perhaps venerated, and on the development of the family system within the clan, the ancestors of the family were held in a similar regard, and the feeling extended to the living ancestor or father, who is treated with the greatest deference in the early patriarchal family. Even now Hindu boys, though they may be better educated and more intelligent than their father, will not as a rule address him at meals unless he speaks to them first, on account of their traditional respect for him. The regard for the father may be strengthened by his position as the stay and support of the family, but could scarcely have arisen solely from this cause.

Dr. Westermarck's view that the origin of exogamy lay in the feeling against the marriage of persons who lived together, receives support from the fact that a feeling of kins.h.i.+p still subsists between Hindus living in the same village, even though they may belong to different castes and clans. It is commonly found that all the households of a village believe themselves in a manner related. A man will address all the men of the generation above his own as uncle, though they may be of different castes, and the children of the generation below his own as niece and nephew. When a girl is married, all the old men of the village call her husband 'son-in-law.' This extends even to the impure castes who cannot be touched. Yet owing to the fact that they live together they are considered by fiction to be related. The Gowari caste do not employ Brahmans for their weddings, but the ceremony is performed by the _bhanja_ or sister's son either of the girl's father or the boy's father. If he is not available, any one whom either the girl's father or the boy's father addresses as _bhanja_ or nephew in the village, even though he may be no relation and may belong to another caste, may perform the ceremony as a subst.i.tute. Among the Oraons and other tribes prenuptial intercourse between boys and girls of the same village is regularly allowed. It is not considered right, however, that these unions should end in marriage, for which partners should be sought from other villages. [176] In the Maratha country the villagers have a communal feast on the occasion of the Dasahra festival, the Kunbis or cultivators eating first and the members of the menial and labouring castes afterwards.

74. The large exogamous clans of the Brahmans and Rajputs. The Sapindas, the _gens_ and the g'enoc.

The Brahmans and Rajputs, however, and one or two other military castes, as the Marathas and Lodhis, do not have the small exogamous clans (which probably, as has been seen, represented the persons who lived together in a village), but large ones. Thus the Rajputs were divided into thirty-six royal races, and theoretically all these should have been exogamous, marrying with each other. Each great clan was afterwards, as a rule, split into a number of branches, and it is probable that these became exogamous; while in cases where a community of Rajputs have settled on the land and become ordinary cultivators, they have developed into an endogamous subcaste containing small clans of the ordinary type. It seems likely that the Rajput clan originally consisted of those who followed the chief to battle and fought together, and hence considered themselves to be related. This was, as a matter of fact, the case. Colonel Tod states that the great Rathor clan, who said that they could muster a hundred thousand swords, spoke of themselves as the sons of one father. The members of the Scotch clans considered themselves related in the same manner, and they were probably of similar character to the Rajput clans. [177]