Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/96

 in what the Arunta call “the right” divisions; Arunta, that is, were so arrayed that no totem existed in more than one division. Obliged, as now, to marry out of their own exogamous division (one of four sub-classes among the Arunta) into one of the four sub-classes of the opposite side, no man could then find in it a woman of his own totem to marry. But when Arunta ceased to be hereditary, and came to be acquired, as now, by the local accident of the totem spirits-all, in each case, of one totem name, which haunt the supposed place of a child's conception some totems inevitably would often get out of their original sub-class into another, and thus the same totems are in several divisions. But granting that a man of division A may legally marry a woman of division B, he is not now prevented from doing so because his totem (say Wild Cat) is also hers. His or hers has strayed, by accident of supposed place of conception, out of its “right” into its “wrong” division. The words “right” and “wrong” as here used by the Arunta make it certain that they still perceive the distinction, and that, before the Arunta evolved the spiritual view of conception, they had, like other people, their totems in each case confined to a single main exogamous division of their tribe, and therefore no persons could then marry into their own totems.

But when the theory of spiritual conception arose, and was combined, in the Arunta set of tribes alone (it is common enough elsewhere in northern and western Australia), with the churinga doctrine, which gave totems by accident, these two factors, as Messrs Spencer and Gillen say, became the causes—“lie at the root”—of the present Arunta system by which persons may marry others of “the right” division, but of “the wrong” totem. That system is strictly confined to the group of tribes (Ilpirra, Loritja, Unmaterja, Kaitish, Arunta) which constitute “the Arunta nation.” Elsewhere the belief in spiritual conception widely prevails, but not the belief in the connexion of spirits of individuals with the stone churinga of individuals. Consequently the Arunta system of marriage within the totem exists nowhere, and the non-exogamous non-hereditary totem exists nowhere, except in the Arunta region. Everywhere else hereditary totems are exogamous.

Thus the practice of acquiring the totem by local accident is absolutely confined to five tribes where the churinga doctrine coexists with it. That the churinga belief, coexistent with the spiritual theory of conception, is of relatively recent origin is a demonstrable fact. Had it always been present among the Arunta the inevitable result, in the course of ages, would be the scattering of the totems almost equally, as chance would scatter them among the eight exogamous divisions.

This can be tested by experiment. Take eight men, to represent the eight exogamous divisions, and set them apart in two groups of four. Take four packs of cards, 208 cards, to represent the Arunta totems, which are over 200 in number. Deal the cards round in the usual way to each of the eight men; each will receive 26 cards. It will not be found that group A has “the great majority” of spades and clubs, while group B has “the great majority” of diamonds and hearts, and neither group will have “the great majority” of court cards. Accident does not work in that way. But while accident alone now determines the totem to which an Arunta shall belong, nevertheless “in the Arunta, as a general rule, the great majority of the members of any one totemic group belong to one moiety of the tribe; but this is by no means universal. . . ”—that is, of the totems the great majority in each case, as a rule, belongs to one or the other set of four exogamous sub-classes.

The inference is obvious. While chance has now placed only the small minority of each totem in all or several of the eight exogamous divisions, the great majority of totems is in one or another of the divisions. This great majority cannot come by chance, as Arunta totems now come; consequently it is but lately that chance has determined the totem of each individual. Had chance from the first been the determining cause, each totem

would not be fairly equally present in each of the two sets of four exogamous divisions. But determination by accident has only existed long enough to affect “as a general rule” a small minority of cases. “The great majority” of totems remain in what is recognized as “the right,” the original divisions, as elsewhere universally. Arunta myth sometimes supports, sometimes contradicts, the belief that the totems were originally limited, in each case, to one or other division only, and, being self-contradictory, has no historic value.

A further proof of our point is that the northern neighbours of the Arunta, the Kaitish, have only partially accepted Arunta ideas, religious and social. Unlike the Arunta they have a creative being, Atnatu, from whom half of the population descend; the other half were evolved out of totemic forms. In the same way the Kaitish totems “are more strictly divided between the two moieties” (main exogamous divisions) “of the tribe.” Consequently a man may marry a woman of his own totem if she be in the right exogamous division. “She is not actually forbidden to him, as a wife becomes of this identity and totem, as she would be in the Warramunga neighbouring tribe. . .” “It is a very rare thing for a man to marry a woman of the same totem as himself,” naturally, for the old rule holds, in sentiment, and a totem is still very rarely in the wrong division. The Arunta system of accidental determination of the totem has as yet scarcely produced among the Kaitish any of its natural and important effects.

This view of the case seems logical: Arunta non-exogamous non-hereditary totemism is the result, as Messrs Spencer and Gillen show, of the theory of spiritual conception and the theory of the relation of the spirit part of each individual to his churinga. These two beliefs have already caused a minority of Arunta totems to get out of the original and into the wrong exogamous Arunta divisions. The process is not of old standing; if it were, all totems would now be fairly distributed among the divisions by the laws of chance. In the Kaitish tribe, on the other hand, the processes must be of very recent operation, for they have only begun to produce their necessary effects. The totemism of the Arunta is thus the reverse of “primitive,” and has but slightly affected the Kaitish.

Precisely the opposite view of the facts is taken by Mr Frazer in his erudite and exhaustive work Totemism. In the Kaitish, he writes, “we may detect the first stage in the transition from promiscuous marriage and fortuitous descent of the totem to strict exogamy of the totem clans and strict heredity of the totems in the paternal line.” By “promiscuous marriage,” marriage within or without the totem, at pleasure, is obviously intended, for the Arunta do not marry “promiscuously”—do not marry their nearest kin.

How, on Mr Frazer's theory, was the transition from the condition of the Arunta to that of the Kaitish made? If the Kaitish were once in the actual Arunta stage of totemism, how did their totems come now to be much more strictly divided between the two moieties, though “the division is not so absolute as amongst the Urabunna in the south and the tribes farther north. .”? How did this occur? The Kaitish have not made totems hereditary by law; they are acquired by local accident. They have not made a rule that all totems should, as among the more northern neighbours of the Arunta, be regimented so that no totem occurs in more than one division: to this rule there are exceptions. A man “is not actually forbidden” to marry a woman of his own totem provided she be of “the right division,” but it is clear that he “does not usually do so.” This we can explain as the result of a survival in manners of the old absolute universal prohibition.

Meanwhile our view of the facts makes all the phenomena seem natural and intelligible in accordance with the statement of the observers, Messrs Spencer and Gillen, that the cause of the unique non-hereditary non-exogamous totems of the Arunta is the combination of the churinga spiritual belief with the belief in spiritual conception. This cause, though now present among