The secret of the totem / by Andrew Lang.

  • Andrew Lang
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The secret of the totem / by Andrew Lang. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    30/236 page 14
    H the same hereditary animal name or other name as himself or herself. Moreover no one may marry a person (where matrimonial classes exist) who bears the same class or generation name as his mother or father. In practice the rules are thus quite simple, mistake is impossible—complicated as the arrangements look on paper. Where totem and phratry names only exist, a man has merely to ask a woman, “ What is your phratry name ? If it is his own, an amour is forbidden. Where phratry names are obsolete, and classes exist, he has only to ask, “ What is your class name ? ” If it is that of either class in his own phratry of the tribe, to love is to break a sacred law. It is not necessary, as a rule, even to ask the totem name. What looks so perplexing is in essence, and in practical working, of extreme sim- plicity. But some tribes have deliberately modified the rules, to facilitate marriage. The conspicuous practical result of the Class arrange- ment (not primitive), is that just as totem law makes it impossible for a person to marry a sister or brother uterine, so Class law makes a marriage between father and daughter, mother and son, impossible.^ But such marriages never occur in Australian tribes of pristine organisation (i) which have no class names, no collective names for successive generations. The origin of these class or generation names is a problem which will be discussed later. Such is the Class system where it exists in tribes with female descent. It has often led to the loss and disap- pearance of the phratry names, which are forgotten, ^ Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 284, citing Mr. J. G. Frazer.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3