The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c19.s8.4

v1.c19.s8.4

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