Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/275

Rh a very little of it. It is supposed that any one else eating of it would be afflicted with Erkincha, a disease to which young persons are specially liable. Beyond this, totemic food-restrictions do not appear to go.

We have still to inquire what is the relation of the individual to his totem, and what is the relation of the members of the totem-clan to one another. When we are told that "every Arunta native thinks that his ancestor in the Alcheringa was the descendant of the animal or plant, or at least was immediately associated with the object the name of which he bears as his totemic name," it is not clear what is meant by the expressions "ancestor" and "descendant." The word "descendant," as repeatedly used in the book in speaking of the Arunta traditions, appears to mean the same individual in a subsequent existence. It can hardly mean anything else among a people having on the one hand no true notion of fatherhood, nor so far as I can gather any genealogies, and having on the other hand the fixed belief that every one is a reincarnation of somebody who lived in the Alcheringa. If we may assume that it is here used in that sense, and that the word "ancestor" has the correlative meaning of the same individual in a previous existence, then the Arunta native would seem to believe that he himself was in a previous existence the totem animal or plant. As to one man, indeed, of the kangaroo totem, we are expressly told that "he is the reincarnation of a celebrated kangaroo of the Alcheringa." Light is further thrown upon the subject by the account of the Ungambikula, two beings who came down from the western sky when there were no men and women, but only rudimentary creatures in the course of transformation from various plants and animals into human beings. These creatures it was their business to operate upon, so as to complete the process of transformation. The tradition relates that they operated upon a number of local groups of individuals belonging to certain totems; but it does not extend to all the totems. The process, however, was continued by individuals of the Ullakupera, or little hawk totem, but how these individuals came into existence is another question. I think at any rate we are warranted in concluding that the native holds that he himself was once, in many cases at least, an animal or plant of the species to which his totem belongs. No doubt this entails a certain belief in the brotherhood of the members of the totem-clan. Yet so