Part 20
Meaningless in Europe, what meaning have these designs in Australia? Though certainty is impossible, I take it that they were first purely decorative, before the mythical and symbolical meaning was read into them by the savages. They occur on the mystic 'bull-roarers' of Central Queensland, but I do not learn that in Queensland the circles and so on are interpreted or deciphered as among the Arunta.[8] Still, they occur here in a religious connection--the bull-roarer being swung at the mysteries--and they are carved on trees at mysteries held far south in New South Wales.[9] But even in Central Australia the markings sometimes occur as purely decorative, on one rock or other object, while on others they are sacred, and are interpreted as records of legends,[10] according to Spencer and Gillen. There are 'ordinary rock-paintings,' and certain other drawings, in many cases not distinguishable from some of the first series, so far as their form is concerned, but belonging to a class all of which are spoken of as churinga ilkinia, and are regarded as sacred because they are associated with totems. Each local totemic group has certain of these specially belonging to the group, and in very many cases preserved on rock-surfaces in spots which are strictly _tabu_ to the women, children, and uninitiated men.' One of the commonest I represents a snake coming out of a hole in a rock,' which the wriggle out of the cup in our circle-marked stones would stand for fairly well. Some designs are only 'play-work;' others exactly similar, on another spot, have a definite meaning. The meaning is read, where the spot is sacred ground. The concentric circles are 'believed, on good ground, to have been derived from an original spiral.' 'It is much more easy to imagine a series of concentric circles originating out of a spiral than to imagine a spiral originating out of a series of concentric circles.' In this country the spiral seems to be later than the circle.
These devices not only occur on fixed rocks and portable churinga, they are also painted on the bodies of boys when initiated in the mysteries: 'concentric circles with radiating lines preponderate.'
In Mr. Haddon's 'Decorative Art of British New Guinea' he describes designs of concentric circles and spirals which are clearly derivatives of drawings of the human face.[11] Thus our concentric circles and spirals _may,_ in the last resort, have been derived from drawings of the human face, though _diablement changés en route_.
What, then, however we interpret the origin, decorative or symbolic, of the sacred designs, is their significance as understood by the Arunta of Central Australia at the present time?
The Arunta are totemistic--that is, they believe in close relations which bind up the groups of their society with certain plants and animals. But they differ vastly from other totemistic races all over the world, and even in Australia. So much do they differ that it may be doubted whether their totems can properly be called totems at all. Elsewhere a man of a given totem--say the emu--cannot marry a woman of that stock; it is incest. The children inherit their totem, either from the mother, or, less frequently, the father. Any local group in a given region contains persons of various totems. People may not kill, eat, or make any use of the plants and animals which, in each case, are their totems.
Among the Arunta all is otherwise. A child's totem may be that of his father, of his mother, or different from that of either parent. A man may marry a woman of his own totem, which elsewhere is incest, and capitally punished. Thus, father is a grub; mother is a grub; one child may be a grub, another an emu. Moreover, here totems are _local_; almost every one in a given place will be, for example, a lizard or a plum tree. Usually people do eat their own totems, though sparingly, at magical rites, intended to multiply the animal or plant with which it is associated, in the interests of the general food supply. The Grubs work a rite to cause plenty of grubs, and they give the other groups a lead by eating sparingly of the first fruits of the grubs. This bears, in my opinion, no strong analogy to the so-called 'totem-sacrament.' To work the magic, the men of the grub or other totem must eat a little of it. This probably confirms their relation to the grub, but involves no _religious_ element. They do not adore the grub. If any one likes to call this a 'totem-sacrament,' he is rather easily satisfied. Nor does it agree with the notion that a man's totem is the receptacle of his 'life' or 'soul;' if so, why should he encourage his neighbour to kill and eat it? Nay, he even helps them to destroy it.
Whether Arunta totemism is the most archaic kind, from which all other totemism has varied, or whether it is a private 'sport' from the main stock, does not concern us here, and is matter of conjecture. The Arunta, and other Central Australian tribes, look back to a mythic past, when ancestors, closely connected with this or that plant or animal, perhaps transformations of such animal or plant, roamed the country in groups, each of the same totem name, each feeding freely on its own totem.
This was 'the Alcheringa time,' and existing rites are explained by 'ætiological myths,'stating how such or such a mummery, still practised, was originally practised in the Alcheringa. Nothing of the sort, of course, need have been the case, and such myths cannot tell us what the manners and customs of that dim age really were. Demeter was a woman of the Greek Alcheringa, and the Eleusinian rites were explained by the Greeks as originating in her Alcheringa adventures. But these obviously were invented purely to account for the rites themselves, not _vice versâ_.
Now, among the Arunta the blacks of to-day are regarded as reincarnations of the Alcheringa fabulous ancestors. Each of these carried about (both men and women) churinga, the portable decorated stones. When an Alcheringite died, a rock or tree rose to mark the place, but his or her spirit 'remained in the churinga.' Plenty of churinga were dropped at different sites, and round these now hover the spirits associated with them. In one place is a crowd of wild cat ghosts; at another, a mob of frog or lizard or emu ghosts. These want to be reincarnated. Consequently, a woman who desires to have a baby goes to one of them (in Argyll she would slide down a cup-marked rock!), a woman who does _not_ want to have a baby keeps away. A child's totem is derived, not from father or mother, but from the totem of the ghosts at the place where the woman thinks she conceived it. When the baby is born her relations hunt the spot, and find for it the churinga left by the spirit which is reincarnated in it.
Thus, first there is the fabulous Alcheringite, himself a transformation of an emu, lizard, water, fire, or what not. Then there is his spirit haunting, after his death, a spot where churinga of his totem were deposited. That spirit enters into and is born again from a passing woman, and the spirit's churinga is found and is henceforth the child's churinga--an oval plate of stone, with cup and ring or other decorations.[12] All these churinga are kept at sacred central stores, caves, or crevices. Each member of the tribe is represented by her or his 'churinga nanja' in these repositories. Women may not go near these sacred stores, nor may they see a churinga.[13] If they do, their eyes are burned out with a fire stick. A man's churinga is _not_, to him, like the egg in which was the life of the giant in the fairy tale. If it comes to grief, he does not die, but expects bad luck, as we do if we break a mirror. Not till he has been through the mysteries and the most cruel mutilations, and just before he has been painted with the pattern on the sacred rock of his totem, can a man see the store-houses of the churinga. Now, in the witchetty grub totem this sacred painting tallies with the lines incised, under concentric circles, on the covering of a stone kist at Tillicoutry.[14] There are circles above the lines in the Australian example, or rather circular dabs of paint, called 'the decorated eyes,' painted on the rocks; the corresponding patterns are incised on the portable churinga. In Scotland the patterns are incised both on fixed rocks and portable stones; the latter at Dumbuck and Dunbuie.
I observe many patterns common to both regions. There are the concentric circles, the spiral, the marks like horseshoes, the tree pattern, the witchetty grub pattern, the volute, the long sinuous snake-like pattern, and a number of these recur in Brazil, on the banks of the Rio Negro.[15] Now, though we have those patterns on _rocks_ in Ohio, Brazil, Australia, in this country, in France, in Asia Minor, I only know the patterns _on portable small stones_ in Australia, at Dunbuie, on the Dumbuck site, and, I think, in a cairn near Lough Crew, in County Meath. The curious, for this last case, may consult 'Proceedings of Scottish Society of Antiquaries,' 1893, p. 299, where in figs. 6 and 7 he will see what in Australia would be called two stone churinga, with any number of Scoto-Australian patterns on large stones. On one the pattern is like that of a stone from Dunbuie.
In Australia members of each totem decipher the marks, purely conventional, as representative of the totem, and of adventures in the Alcheringa time. For example, a mark like two croquet hoops, or horseshoes, is 'an old woman gathering frogs.' The concentric circles are frogs; the dots round them are tracks of women; dull, often dirty, stories are told about the adventures of the Alcheringites commemorated by the patterns. At the sacred pattern-painted rocks, magic ceremonies, extremely puerile, are performed to ensure a supply of the edible totem which the pattern represents. Some event occurred there in the Alcheringa; the rite repeats what, in myth, was then done, and the stomachs of the men are rubbed with the churinga 'for luck.' Such are the uses of the churinga. Did they once exist wherever the similarly decorated fixed rocks exist? Did the makers of the decorations in Scotland decipher the churinga as the Central Australians do now? Were the dwellers by Clyde (much more advanced in culture than the Australians) totemists, looking on their small decorated stones as associated with the spirits of Alcheringa ancestors? Do women in Argyll slide down a cup-marked rock, in hope of offspring, because totemistic ghosts once hovered round it, eager to be reincarnated? The fact of the sliding is attested by a chief of Clan Diarmid.
Nobody can answer! I have shown these decorated rocks and small stones to have a living significance, a vital legendary symbolism, in Central Australia. I cannot prove that they had the same significance in County Meath or Dumbartonshire. The Australians may have begun with mere decoration, and later added a symbolism suited to their amazing theory of life. In our country the decorations may have quite a different symbolical sense, but probably they had some sense. Otherwise, why engrave them, not only on rocks, but on small stones pierced for suspension? Perhaps men believed in an Alcheringa time on the Clyde; perhaps they multiplied salmon and deer by magical mummeries at the engraved rocks; perhaps these were sacred places, tabooed to women. Or quite a different set of fables and customs may have crystallised in Scotland round marked rocks and inscribed small stones. I cannot prove that, as in Australia, Clydesdale boys of old, when initiated in the mysteries, were painted with the pattern on their sacred totem rock and stone or wood churinga. But, if not these rites, other rites were, I conceive, connected with the decorative patterns found in so many still savage countries.
One piece of evidence rather points in this direction. The Australian stone churinga are shaped like the wooden churinga, and these are shaped like the _tundun_, or 'bull-roarer.' Now the bull-roarer (which occurs in Australia where stone churinga do not) is a sacred oval piece of wood, not to be seen by women, which is whirled at the mysteries, and makes a windy, roaring noise. The same object is used, for the same purpose, at the mysteries in America, Africa, and, of old, in Greece.[16] The roaring noise is taken to be the voice of Tundun, son of Mungan-ngaur, 'Our Father' in the heavens, among the Kurnai, and of gods or culture heroes of other names in other tribes. Now, in Celtic Scotland (as also in England) this instrument, the tundun, occurs as a mere toy, in Gaelic named _strannam._ Does it descend from a sacred object of savage mysteries, and are the Australian stone churinga--in shape like the tundun, and like the tundun tabooed to women--mere lapidary modifications of the wooden tundun? However this may be, the _strannam_ looks like a link in the long chain which binds us to the prehistoric past.
While correcting the proof-sheets of this article I read, in the _Glasgow Herald_ (January 7, 1899), an article on Dumbuck and Dunbuie, by Dr. Munro, the eminent authority on crannogs, or pile-dwellings, and, generally on prehistoric Scotland. Dr. Munro, as I understand him, does not regard Dumbuck as an older than mediæval site, nor as a true crannog. The incised stones he looks on either as of most singular character (if genuine) or as forgeries of to-day, the opinion which he seems to prefer. He was then unacquainted with similar objects in any part of the world. I have here provided references to similar objects from Central Australia, and I suggest examination of the _apparently_ similar Irish objects, figured in 'Proceedings of Scottish Society of Antiquaries,' 1893, p. 299, figs. 6 and 7. Not having seen these stones I can only offer the hint suggested by the illustrations in 'Proceedings.' Why a forger should forge such unknown objects, and place them at Dunbuie, in 1895, before the Central Australian stones had been described, I cannot guess. Nor can I enough deplore the stupidity of the same hypothetical forger in not 'salting' Dunbuie and Dumbuck with neolithic implements, whether antique or made by some Flint Jack of to-day. Both his sins of omission and of commission _donnent furieusement à penser_. Dr. Munro, however, as I gather from his article on Dumbuck in 'The Reliquary' (April 1901), still declines to recognise the Dumbuck decorated portable stones as of genuine antiquity.
[1] For India see _Archaic-logical Notes on Ancient Sculpturings on Rocks in Kumaon, India_, by Mr. J. H. Bivett-Carnac, Calcutta, 1883. The form of the Jew's harp is common to India and Scotland.
[2] _Proceedings S.A.S_., June 1875. 'Ohio Rock Markings.'
[3] _Ancient Sculpturings of Cups, Circles, &c_. Edinburgh, 1871.
[4] _Proceedings S.A.S_. vol. xxx. 1896, pp. 291-316.
[5] Spencer and Gillen, p. 632, Nos. 14-23. 'Ilkinia and Plum Tree Totem.'
[6] The evidence for Australian slate spear-heads is not strong. Capt. King acquired a bundle of bark in a raid on natives. It contained 'several, spear-heads, most ingeniously and curiously made of stone ... the stone was covered with red pigment, and appeared to be _of a flinty slate_.'--See _The Picture of Australia_, p. 243. London, 1829.
[7] Simpson, pp. 182-184.
[8] Both, _Natives of N. W. Queensland_, p. 129, pi. xvii.
[9] _Journal Anthrop. Institute_, May 1895, p. 410, pi. 21, fig. 7.
[10] Some wooden churinga are engraved, as 'Australian Magic Sticks,' in Ratzel's popular _History of Mankind_, i. 379. They exactly answer to the churinga of the Arunta.
[11] Royal Irish Academy, _Cunningham Memoirs_, No. x. 1894.
[12] For cups, see Spencer and Gillen, p. 129; for concentric circles, see p. 131.
[13] The tribal stores of churinga are _not_ the same as the places where churinga were dropped in the Alcheringa.
[14] _Proceedings S.A.S_. vol. xxix. p. 193. Spencer and Gillen, fig. 132, No. 6.
[15] _S.A.S_. 1884-5, vol. vii. pp. 388-394. Compare, for County Meath, the same work, 1892-93, pp. 297-338.
[16] See the author's _Custom and Myth: The Bull Roarer_. Prof. Haddon has discovered many other instances; see also _The Golden Bough_, iii. 423 _et seq._
XIV
_FIRST-FRUITS AND TABOOS_
Taboo is one of the few savage words which have struck root in England. Introduced from New Zealand (_tapu_) and other Polynesian islands, it is used in English to denote a prohibition. This, that, or the other thing, or person, or book is 'tabooed.' Many of the Ten Commandments are, in this sense, taboos. But, in anthropological language, 'taboo' generally denotes something more than a prohibition. It commonly means a prohibition for which, to the civilised mind, there is no very obvious meaning. In this way the prohibitive Commandments are not precisely taboos; it is pretty obvious why we ought not to steal or kill, though the _raison d'être_ of the Seventh Commandment is obscure to some advanced intelligences. But the reasons why a Sinclair must not cross the Ord on a certain 'lawful day,' or why on another 'lawful day' the fishermen of St. Andrews might not go a-fishing, resemble many savage taboos in the lack of a manifest reason why. Secondly, the infraction of the savage taboo generally, unlike that of the decalogue, carries its own punishment. Forbidden food is poison, tabooed land is dangerous to tread upon, to handle tabooed property may mean death; nobody knows what awful cosmic catastrophe might occur if a tabooed woman saw the sun; many words and names are taboo, and no luck will come of using them--for instance, you must not name 'salmon,' 'pigs,' or the minister when out fishing in some parts of Scotland.
In many cases the reason of this or that taboo is easily discovered. A day is unlucky because all the fishers, as at St. Andrews, were lost on that day in a past century through a storm; or the Sinclairs on another day were cut off in an expedition. Most of us have our lucky or unlucky days, clothes, and other vanities. Again, things are taboo for some reason in that kind of faith which holds that things connected in the association of ideas are mystically connected in fact. You must not mention salmon, lest they hear you and escape; or tin in Malay tin mining, lest the tin should literally 'make itself scarce.' You may not name the fairies, a jealous folk. Therefore you say 'the people of peace,' and so on. But many other taboos have good practical reasons. If women, among ourselves, were tabooed from salmon-fishing, eating oysters, or entering smoking-rooms (all of which things are greatly to be desired), the reason would be the convenience of the men, who wish a sanctuary or asylum in the smoking-room, and want to keep oysters and fishing to themselves. It is pretty plain why the sight of the royal treasury is tabooed to a West African king: to speak colloquially, if admitted to see the hoards he 'would blue the lot.' A taboo often protects by a supernatural sanction the property and persons of the privileged classes. If the umbrella of a bishop or a baronet were taboo, it would not be taken away from the club by accident.
This simple explanation covers the case of many taboos.
Brother and sister may scarcely ever see each other, still less speak to or name each other, where the law against brother and sister marriage or amour is the one most definite law of the community. 'It is not, therefore, surprising,' says Mr. Jevons, 'that the earlier students of the custom' (of taboo) 'regarded it as an artificial invention, a piece of statecraft, cunningly devised in the interests of the nobility and the priests. This view is, however, now generally abandoned,' because taboo 'is most at home in communities which have no state organisation, and flourishes where there are no priests or no priesthood. Above all the belief is not artificial and imposed, but spontaneous and natural.'[1]
I hesitate about this theory. Taboo can hardly flourish more than it does in Polynesia and West Africa, where there are kings and priests. Moreover, though there are human societies without kings or priests (as in Australia), there are no societies in which artificial rules are not propagated, instituted, and enforced by the adult males meeting in councils. The Arunta of Central Australia are, of course, far from 'primitive.' They have institutions, ceremonies, weapons, rules, and a complete system of philosophy, which must have needed unknown ages to develop. They have local head-men, or Alatunjas, whose office passes always in the male line: from father to son, if the son be of age to succeed, or, if he is not, to the brother, on whose death it reverts to the son. An Alatunja dying without a son nominates a brother or nephew to succeed him. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen know no equivalent to this law among other Australian tribes, and it indicates, among the so-called 'primitive' Arunta, a marked advance beyond other tribes in social evolution. The Alatunja is hereditary Convener of Council, and if an able man has considerable power. He is guardian of the Sacra of the group, determines the date of the cessation of close-time for certain sorts of game, the date of the magical ceremonies for fostering the game or edible plants, and directs the ceremonies. In the councils called by the Alatunja it appears that changes in stereo-typed custom may be introduced. Men learned in the customs and skilled in magic 'settle everything.' Definite proof of fundamental innovations thus introduced Messrs. Spencer and Gillen do not possess; but tradition indicates alterations of custom, and it is quite possible that a strong Alatunja, well backed, might bring in even a radical reform.[2] There are also recognised grades of skill among the medicine-men and the dealers with spirits, who must have their own share of social influence.
In brief, though without priests or kings these backward tribes have councils, and conveners, and directors whose office is hereditary in the male line. These persons, through unknown ages, have moulded customs and taboos, which are just as much sanctioned by tradition and authority just as little 'spontaneous and universal,' as if kings and priests had invented them for purposes of statecraft. Mr. Jevons next argues that taboo 'cannot have been derived from experience. It is prior to and even contradictory of experience. In fine, it is an inherent tendency of the human mind.' In the same way Gibbon's ancestor, Blue Gown herald, when among North American Indians, declared that heraldry is an inherent tendency of the human mind, an innate idea.