Many of these were purely national gods--and two at least had probably been raised to this rank from a condition of symbolic totemism during a period of national expansion and military success.
This type of clan is shown in Professor Hearn's Aryan Household to have been the common unit of society over much of Europe, where no traces of the existence of totemism are established.
Totemism establishes a relation of kinship between persons belonging to one clan who are not related by blood, and exogamy prescribes that the persons held to be so related shall not intermarry.
Frazer for his kind permission to make quotations from The Golden Bough and Totemism and Exogamy (Macmillan), in which the best examples of almost all branches of primitive custom are to be found; to Dr.
This late and secondary form of totemism is that which obtains in India, where the migratory and hunting stage has long been passed.
Exogamy and totemism are found not only in India, but are the characteristics of primitive social groups over the greater part of the world.
Frazer has shown in Totemism and Exogamy, [94] after some edible animal or plant.
This theory of totemism was first promulgated by Professor Robertson Smith and, though much disputed, appears to me to be the most probable.
Frazer in Totemism and Exogamy, show a considerable amount of evidence that the early totems were not only as a rule edible animals, but the animals eaten by the totem-clans which bore their names.
The first condition of the clan was one of sexual promiscuity, and in Totemism and Exogamy Sir J.
Frazer in Totemism and Exogamy, there is often a special name for the mother's brother when other uncles or aunts are addressed simply as father or mother.
The aborigines of Australia have totemism in the most primitive form known to us; but there is no clear evidence that they attempt, like the North American Indians, to conciliate the animals which they kill and eat.
The Ritual of Death and Resurrection THIS view of totemism throws light on a class of religious rites of which no adequate explanation, so far as I am aware, has yet been offered.
But institutions like totemismare not resorted to merely on special occasions of danger; they are systems into which every one, or at least every male, is obliged to be initiated at a certain period of life.
This explanation of totemism squares very well with Sir George Grey's definition of a totem or kobong in Western Australia.
However, as I have observed, sex totems have been found nowhere but in Australia; so that as a rule the savage who practises totemism need not have more than one soul out of his body at a time.
The essence of totemism is a confessed belief in animal descent, a name declaring that descent and some sacredness attached to the animal or other fancied ancestor.
But it would, it is almost certain, be incorrect to say that while totemism is at present most active among the Dravidians, in connection with marriage, it was peculiar to them.
At the same time, it is quite possible that further inquiry will discover undoubted instances of totemism in the nomenclature of Northern India, as is the case with other races in a similar stage of culture.
We perhaps get a glimpse of totemism in connection with the goat in some of the early Hindu legends.
From totemismwe get a clue to many curious usages, especially in the matter of food.
For the purpose of such an investigation it is convenient to have some sort of working classification of the tests of, and the forms in which, totemism usually appears.
One of the best illustrations of this form of totemism is that of the Devak or family guardian gods of Berar and Bombay.
As regards the origin of totemism great diversity of opinion exists.
The same prohibition of meats appears to be a survival of totemism in Arabia.
Lastly, the result of the Indian evidence is that it is only in connection with the rules of exogamy that totemism at the present day displays any considerable degree of vitality.
Frazer does not, at present, regard totemism as proved in the case of Greece.
It is to be noticed, as a peculiarity of Red Indian totemism which we have not observed (though it may exist) in Africa, that certain stocks claim relations with the sun.
Another argument in favour of the general thesis that savagery left deep marks on Greek life in general, and on myth in particular, may be derived from survivals of totemism in ritual and legend.
As will afterwards be seen, totemism has also left its mark on the mythologies of the civilised races.
An excellent sketch of totemism in India is given by Mr. H.
Complete totemism is not asserted here, and is denied for Melanesia.
According to him, the Inca sun-worship was really a totemism of a loftier character.
Though a large amount of evidence might be added to that already put forward, we may now sum up the inferences to be drawn from the study of totemism in Australia.
Professor Robertson Smith, Kinship in Arabia, attempts to show that totemism existed in the Semitic races.
The chief facts of totemism have been collected by the present writer in a little work, Totemism (Edinburgh, A.
However, as I have observed, sex totems occur nowhere but in Australia; so that as a rule the savage who practises totemism need not have more than one soul out of his body at a time.
This view of totemism throws light on a class of religious rites of which no adequate explanation, so far as I am aware, has yet been offered.
The aborigines of Australia have totemism in the most primitive form known to us, but, so far as I am aware, there is no evidence that they attempt, like the North American Indians, to conciliate the animals which they kill and eat.
As far as totemism is religious, it accepts the answer of evolution, men were evolved out of lower types, beasts and plants, their totems.
In pure totemismit is their kindred animal that men revere.
It is in the study of savage totemism that we too seek a partial explanation of the singular Egyptian practices that puzzled the Greeks and Romans, and the Egyptians themselves.
Willoughby, "Notes on the Totemismof the Becwana," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxv.
But totemism cannot be established as the typical form of "primitive religion" any more than any other complicated system.
The immigrants introduced the cult of the dead and the institutions of taboo, totemism and chieftainship.
Totemism occurs in parts of New Guinea and elsewhere and has marked socialising effects, as totemic solidarity takes precedence of all other considerations, but it is becoming obsolete.
That portion of the book which is concerned with totemism (if we may express our own belief at the risk of offending Prof.
Notes on theTotemism of the Becwana," in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxv.
Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia," in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xxxix.
Sketch of the Totemism and Religion of the People of the Islands in the Bougainville Straits (Western Solomon Islands)," in Archiv fuer Religionswissenschaft, xv.
I find no distinct traces of totemism in ancient Japan.
The law of exogamy, with which totemism is connected, was very narrow in its operation in ancient Japan.
Secondly, we have in the total absence of totemism among the Punans very strong ground for rejecting the suggestion of its previous existence among the Kenyahs.
Thirdly, although it may be said that even at the present time many of the features of the religious side of totemism are present, we have not been able to discover any traces of a social organisation based upon totemism.
According to the latest investigations totemism is not to be regarded as itself a religion; the totem being regarded not as a superior but as an equal.
Thus the ideas connected with totemism meet and harmonise in many old countries with those connected with local shrines.
In the second place, totemism explains the view taken in the early world of the nature of religious fellowship.
Totemism is to be seen in operation at the present day in various parts of the world.
In totemism the individual sacrifices himself to the tribe; here he is nothing apart from his family.
It must be admitted that when the totem of a group is a wild beast the totemism is probably theriolatric, but it is impossible to dispute van Gennep's statement that all theriolatry is not necessarily totemic.
Now the underlying idea of totemism is that of a compact between an aggregation (family, or group) of human beings and some animal species from which has sprung a relationship at once physical and social.
It has been noticed that a characteristic feature of totemism is the prohibition of marriages between men and women with the same totem and therefore belonging to the same clan.
Totemism is a semi-magical, semi-religious system which is based on the belief in a bond of relationship between a group of human beings and some species of animal regarded as protector, "totem.
The recent controversy over the definition of totemism seems to make it both redundant and impertinent for me to enlarge on a subject which is still fresh in the memory of all.
Dr Frazer, who has enunciated this view, maintains that totemism rests on a primitive theory of conception, due to savage ignorance of the facts of procreation.
If, as he conceives, conceptional totemism was transformed in the central tribes into patrilineal totemism, I fail to see why the phratries or classes should descend in the female line.
Hence if the name totemism may be used to include all such beliefs and the practices based on them, the origin of this type of story may be said to be totemic.
I have already illustrated and explained this type of story in Totemism and Exogamy, vol.
If all these notes occur, they would raise a presumption in favour of totemism in the past of Greece.
To treat all animal worship as due to totemismis a mistake.
The fact is rather inferred from rites among peoples just emerging from totemism (see the case of the Californian buzzard, in Bancroft) than derived from actual observation.
Mr. Max Muller wishes that 'those who write about totems and totemism would tell us exactly what they mean by these words.
Codrington is next cited for the apparent absence of totemism in the Solomon Islands and Polynesia, and Professor Oldenberg as denying that 'animal names of persons and clans [necessarily?
To gratify Mr. Max Muller by defining totemism as Mr. McLennan first used the term is all that I dare do.
Mr. Frazer and I It is plain that where a people claim no connection by descent and blood from a sacred animal, are neither of his name nor kin, the essential feature of totemism is absent.
A man has no business to write on totemism if he does not know these facts.
Choice must be made between the maternal and the paternal line--for totemism implies the blood-bond.
In totemism lies the germ of the future family and state.
From its very nature totemism favors the rise of mother-right and group-marriage.
Totemism is thus a means of differentiating matrimonial classes.
Tribes which have religious myths, attributing totemism to the decree of a superhuman being, may also have other myths giving quite other explanations.
At the present time these magical ceremonies seem to constitute the main function of totemism in Central Australia.
Without them, the Arunta system of totemism does not, and apparently cannot exist On this head Mr. Frazer says nothing.
By the friends of this theory the association of exogamy with hereditary kin-totemism is regarded as "accidental," rather than essential.
We have perhaps succeeded in showing how totemism my have become a belief and a source of institutions: we have shown, at least, that granting savage methods of thought, totemism might very naturally have come in this way.
The Arunta have been so long in the relatively advanced state of local totemism that their myths do not look behind it.
Thus what may be called conceptional totemism pure and simple furnishes an intelligible starting-point for the evolution of totemism in general.
Lang proceeds to examine the mental condition of savages, in accordance with the views in our introductory chapter, and with special reference to totemism and magic.
About the beginning of the eighteenth century certain French missionaries--among them the Jesuit Lafitau--were struck with the importance of totemism in the religious and social life of the North American Indians.
That is where animism with its branches, totemismand fetishism, may be distinguished from the religions of the higher cultus, the polytheisms which possess definite pantheons, and the monotheisms.
Thus Greek religion was unquestionably an anthropomorphic polytheism; the Mexican a polytheism with survivals oftotemism and fetishism; and so on.
At the Academie des Inscriptions in 1900 the only members who did not doubt my sanity when I read some lucubrations on the Biblical taboos and the totemism of the Celts were MM.
During the first part of the nineteenth century the facts concerning totemism began to reach Great Britain from missionaries and travellers in every part of the globe.
He touches upon Mueller's misunderstandings regarding totemism and reviews "the value of anthropological evidence.
If arguments founded on these alleged survivals be valid, it may be that the most civilized races have passed through the stages of Exogamy, Totemism and reckoning descent in the female line.
It has often been suggested that totemism arose when the familiar of an individual became hereditary among his descendants.
For India, where vestiges of totemism linger in the hill tribes, see Risley and Crooke, Tribes and Castes, vols.
In spite of these facts, Spencer and Gillen conceive that the peculiar totemism of the Arunta is the most primitive type extant (cp.
The whole system is impossible except where descent is reckoned in the male line, for there alone is local totemism possible, and the Arunta system is based on local totemism, plus the churinga nanja and reincarnation beliefs.
When once descent and inheritance are traced through males, the social side of totemism begins to break up.
Origin of theTotemism of the Aborigines of British Columbia," Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol.
Exogamy, in his opinion, is the result of treaties of political alliance with exclusive interconnubium between two sets of kinsfolk by blood, totemism being a mere accidental concomitant.
This opinion does not affect by itself the usual exogamous character of totemism among the other tribes.
Moreover, it is an ascertained fact that the custom of exogamy (marriage by capture outside the tribe), and of counting kindred on the female side alone, accompanies the low stage of culture with which Totemism is usually associated.
It is generally believed that the totem has some special religious significance; but this is not true, if we are to believe that the younger and educated Indians of to-day know what totemism means.
Totemism is defined as the system of dividing a tribe into clans according to their totems.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "totemism" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
