The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c19.s8: § 8. Totemism

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c19.s8

Language: English

§ 8. Totemism

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The nature and meaning of totemism are so uncertain and ill defined that it would be necessary to examine the concept in detail, if it were not for the fact that, on any theory of totemism which does not reduce it to the worship of animals, there is no support for the view that that phenomenon is to be found in Vedic religion. The essential feature of a totemist community as conceived by S. Reinach,² who is now its most consistent supporter, assumes that the men and women of that community conceive themselves severally to be related to some animal or plant or other thing,³ and that they normally treat that plant or animal with great care and respect, only on special occasions in the case of an animal or plant destroying it in the course of a formal meal, in which they enter into communion among themselves and with the god, through devouring the representative of the god: the species and not the mere animal being sacred, as soon as one animal is killed, another takes its place. To this conception of totemism the most value is attributed by Reinach because of his view that the domestication of animals and plants came about through this belief, which he traces to a hypertrophy of the same social instinct which allowed of the growth of human society by forbidding killing within the family and the clan. He does not regard it as primitive in totemism that the members of the totem group should regard the totem as an ancestor: this is in his view the sort of wrong explanation which is inevitably given by savages when asked to explain uses of which they do not know the real origin.

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² *Cultes, Mythes et Religions*, i. 9–29; 41 ff.; ii. 112, 113; iv. p. iii (review of E. Durkheim, *Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse*, Paris, 1912). The suggestion of Frazer (*Golden Bough*³, iv. 104 ff.) that the form of Vṛtra may conceal totemism as well as a nature myth may be passed over without comment. Cf. his *Totemism*, iv. 13; Warde Fowler, *Religious Experience of the Roman People*, pp. 25–7; A. van Gennep, *L'état actuel du problème totémique*; Hopkins, JAOS. xxxviii. 154–69. For Germany cf. R. M. Meyer, *Altgerm. Rel.*, p. 486; Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 157–63; for the Celts, S. Czarnowski, *Le culte des héros et ses conditions sociales* (1919), pp. 331 ff.

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³ Van Gennep (*op. cit.*, p. 343) accepts this fact as vital, but not the rest.

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This theory of totemism in itself is open to the gravest doubts,⁴ but it is unnecessary to discuss it or the alternative views that totemism is derived from ancestor worship and metempsychosis,⁵ or is economic *au fond*,⁶ or originates from the desire of the savage, at the time of puberty in connexion with the new birth which he then undergoes, to provide himself with a safe resting place¹ for the external soul, or from his ignorance of the true nature of conception, which is Sir J. Frazer’s latest opinion on this subject. In the Vedic religion there is not a single case in which we can trace any totem clan which eats sacramentally the totem animal or plant, and, therefore, the most essential feature of totemism on Reinach’s theory does not even begin to appear in the Veda. The only point on which there is anything to be gleaned from the Vedic literature is the question of descent from animals, or plants. The evidence is the following: the Rigveda² mentions among the tribes the names of the Matsyas, ‘fishes’, Ajas, ‘goats’, Çigrus, ‘horse radishes’, and the names of Vedic families include Gotamas, which includes the base *go*, ‘cow’, Vatsas, ‘calves’, Çunakas, ‘dogs’, Kauçikas, ‘owls’, and Māṇḍūkeyas, ‘descendants of Maṇḍūka (frog)’. The family of Kaçyapas bear the name tortoise, which as we have seen is occasionally a name of Prajāpati, or even an independent semi-divine animal. In a passage of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa³ where Prajāpati appears as a tortoise, the remark is made that people say that all beings are the children of the tortoise. The last statement is so obviously due to the fact that Prajāpati is the father of all beings, and that if he is also a tortoise, the tortoise is obviously the father of all beings too, that it cannot be considered seriously at all. Of the other cases, it is sufficient to remark that in not a single one of them have we even the hint of a tradition that the families claimed their origin from the animals mentioned: it is most probable that some of them may be nicknames given by their too candid friends, other again for causes which we cannot know, such as the prevalence of the thing mentioned (e. g. fish or horse radishes in the land) and so on.⁴

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⁴ Cf. Keith, JRAS. 1916, pp. 542 ff.

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⁵ Wundt, *Elemente der Völkerpsychologie*, pp. 173 ff. Cf. Wilken, *De verspreide Geschriften*, iii. 85 ff.; iv. 109 ff.; E. B. Tylor, JAI. xxviii. 138 ff.

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⁶ Hopkins, *loc. cit.* Cf. Frazer's second theory and that of Haddon. Van Gennep (*op. cit.*, pp. 339 ff.) argues for a classificatory theory, ‘parentiste et territorialiste.’

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¹ Frazer, *Totemism and Exogamy*, iv. 52 ff.; *Belief in Immortality*, i. 95.

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² vii. 18. 6, 19.

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³ vii. 5. 1. 5. As a seer Kaçyapa is found in RV. ix. 114. 2; cf. AB. vii. 27.

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⁴ Hopkins, JAOS. 1894, p. cliv. The fish people of King Matsya Sāmmada in ÇB. xiii. 4. 3. 12, are of course merely fictitious as the context shows.

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Oldenberg⁵ adduces some later evidence which is in itself irrelevant for the Vedic age, since he admits that in the case of the best instance of all, the princes of Chota Nagpur who claim descent from a snake, the belief is probably aboriginal. But what is adduced from the epic is of no value: the name Ikṣvāku, which is known in the Veda, of the line of princes is in sense sugar cane; Ṛkṣa, father of Saṁvaraṇa, a name found in the Rigveda,⁶ means bear, and Sagara’s wife brought forth a cucumber in which were 60,000 sons. The value of such evidence is obviously minimal.⁷ Moreover, it must be remembered that such legends need have nothing whatever to do with totemism at all, but may simply belong to the very old idea which draws no persistent or accurate distinction between men on the one hand, and animals on the other. Of such ideas there are remains not merely in the theriomorphism of the gods, which is undeniable and clear, but also in such fictions as that of the genus man-tiger which is found from the Yajurveda¹ onwards, and which in post-epic religion has its classical example in the man-lion incarnation of Viṣṇu, but also in the Nāgas, who are first so called in the Sūtras,² and who according to the later tradition were human beings in appearance but really serpents. This view is widely spread in later India and results in the solemn question being put to initiates into the Buddhist community whether they were men or Nāgas, the latter kind of being being excluded from the privilege of becoming a member of the Saṅgha.

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⁵ *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 82 ff. (modified from ed. 1 in view of Keith, JRAS. 1907, pp. 929 ff.; *Taittirīya Saṁhitā*, p. cxxi).

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⁶ v. 53. 10.

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⁷ The same remark applies to Hopkins’ suggestions (*Epic Myth.*, p. 24) that the Pañcālas may mean ‘five snake clans (*āla*, cf. eel)’ and the Kurus and Krivis are Nāga names.

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¹ VS. xxx. 8; ÇB. xiii. 2. 4. 2. Such ideas are common in Babylonian religion. Cf. werwolves, Carnoy, *Les Indo-Européens*, p. 226. These have been seen in the Sālāvṛkas of RV. x. 95. 15; Brunnhofer, *Arische Urzeit*, p. 284.

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² AGS. iii. 4. 1; Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, pp. 23 ff.

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Oldenberg³ has suggested that the existence of taboos in some cases may be due to totemism, and has instanced the wearing of an antelope skin by the Brahman pupil as sign of possibly the wearing of the skin of the divine animal. It is proper to note these cases, but in none recorded in the Vedic ritual is there any trace of the conditions necessary to lend even a possibility of totemism, namely the existence of the totem community which observes the taboo, or the connexion of the animals whose skin is worn with the wearer. That the skin may have been worn in certain cases for magic purposes is perfectly possible without any element of totemism being visible or existing.

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³ *Rel. des Veda*², p. 83.

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Nor again is it possible to lay any stress on the argument that the occasional offering of food to animals in place of the sacrifice of animals points to totemism: the best known instances are the offerings made at the spit-ox ceremony to a bull, a cow, and a calf in place of Rudra, his consort, and Jayanta respectively instead of slaughtering an ox, and the similar rite at the Aṣṭakās.⁴ With these usages may be compared the legends, which seem to show that in the worship of the wolf-god Apollo at Sikyon an offering was made to wolves, regarded as in some degree the temporary incarnations of the god.⁵ But not much stress can be laid on the Indian cases, as they are recorded merely in Sūtras, which show the influence of the desire to avoid animal offerings, partly no doubt for economy, partly perhaps on humanitarian grounds.⁶

Linked texts (5)

Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
Śatapathabrāhmaṇa — Yājñavalkya & Śāṇḍilya (Vedic teacher), Sanskrit
Aitareyabrāhmaṇa — Mahidāsa Aitareya, Sanskrit
Vājasaneyisaṃhitā — Sanskrit
Āśvalāyanagṛhyasūtra — Āśvalāyana, Sanskrit