Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/383

 The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs. 363

the various totem groups." That is to say, these totemic magical ceremonies tiow exist for the purpose of propagating and preserving animals or vegetables, which, by the former theory, were " soul-boxes," but are later to be killed for food. This would endanger the lives of the tribesmen, but to risk that is quite in accordance with the practical turn of the Arunta mind. Mr. Frazer has, indeed, suggested a probable method of reconciling his earlier hypothesis, that a totem was a soul-box, with his later theory, that the primal object of totem-groups was to breed their totems for food. ^

Mr. Frazer observes '' it is not as yet clear how far the particular theory of totemism suggested by the Central Australian system is of general application, and. . . . in the uncertainty which still hangs over the origin and meaning of totemism, it seems scarcely worth while to patch up an old theory which the next new facts may perhaps entirely demolish." He then cites the Arunta belief that their ancestors of " the dream time " (who were men evolved out of animals or plants, these objects being their totems) kept their souls (like the giant of the fairy tale) in stone churingas, which they hung on poles when they went out hunting. We thus have a va et vient between each man, and the spirit of the plant or animal out of which he was evolved. That spirit (in origin the spirit of an animal or plant) is handed down with the stone chiiringa, and is reincarnated in each child, who is thus an incarnation of the original totem. Such is the Arunta theory, and thus each living Arunta is the totem's soul-box, while, to savage reasoners, the totem-soul may, perhaps, seem to also tenant each plant or animal of its species.

This is a logical theory of totemism, but so far, we know

the facts on which it is based chiefly among one extraordinary

tribe of anomalous development We have still to ask, what

w'as the original connection of the men with the plants and

' Golden Bough, iii., p. 416, note 3.