Anthropology by Robert Ranulph Marett (top ten books to read txt) 📕

Hence the conservatism inherent in religion. "Nothing," says Robertson Smith, "appeals so strongly as religion to the conservative instincts." "The history of religion," once exclaimed Dr. Frazer, "is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for absurd practice." At first sight one is apt to see nothing but the absurdities in savage custom and religion. After all, these are what strike us most, being the curiosity-hunters that we all are. But savage custom and religion must be taken as a whole, the bad side with the good. Of course, if we have to do with a primitive society on the down-grade—and very few that have been "civilizaded," as John Stuart Mill terms it, at the hands of the white man are not on the down-grade—its disorganized and debased custom no longer serves a vital function. But a healthy society is bound, in a wholesale way, to have a healthy custom. Though it may go about the business in a queer and roundabout fashion, it must hit off the general requirements of the situation. Therefore I shall not waste time, as I might easily do, in piling up instances of outlandish "superstitions," whether horrible and disgusting, from our more advanced point of view, or merely droll and silly. On the contrary, I would rather make it my working assumption that, with all its apparent drawbacks, the religion of a human society, if the latter be a going concern, is always something to be respected.

In considering, however, the relation of religion to custom, we are met by the apparent difficulty that, whereas custom implies "Do," the prevailing note of primitive religion would seem rather to consist in "Do not." But there is really no antagonism between them on this account. As the old Greek proverb has it, "There is only one way of going right, but there are infinite ways of going wrong." Hence, a nice observance of custom of itself involves endless taboos. Since a given line of conduct is lucky, then this or that alternative course of behaviour must be unlucky. There is just this difference between positive customs or rites, which cause something to be done, and negative customs or rites, which cause something to be left undone, that the latter appeal more exclusively to the imagination for their sanction, and are therefore more conspicuously and directly a part of religion. "Why should I do this?" is answered well-nigh sufficiently by saying, "Because it is the custom, because it is right." It seems hardly necessary to add, "Because it will bring luck." But "Why should I not do something else instead?" meets, in the primitive society, with the invariable answer, "Because, if you do, something awful will happen to us all." What precise shape the ill-luck will take need not be specified. The suggestion rather gains than loses by the indefiniteness of its appeal to the imagination.

To understand more clearly the difference between negative and positive types of custom as associated with religion, let us examine in some detail an example of each. It will be well to select our cases from amongst those that show the custom and the religion to be quite inseparable—to be, in short, but two aspects of one and the same fact. Now nothing could be more commonplace and secular a custom than that of providing for one's dinner. Yet for primitive society this custom tends to be likewise a rite—a rite which may, however, be mainly negative and precautionary, or mainly positive and practical in character, as we shall now see.

The Todas, so well described by Dr. Rivers, are a small community, less than a thousand all told, who have retired out of the stress of the world into the fastnesses of the Nilgiri Hills, in southern India, where they spend a safe but decidedly listless life. They are in a backwater, and are likely to remain there. At any rate, their religion is not such as to make them more enterprising. Gods they may be said to have none. The bare names of certain deities of the hill-tops are retained, but whether these were once the honoured gods of the Todas or, as some think, those of a former race, certain it is that there is more shadow than substance about them now. The real religion of the people centres round a dairy-ritual. From a practical and economic point of view, the work of the dairy consists in converting the milk of their buffaloes into the butter and buttermilk which constitute their staple diet. From a religious point of view, it consists in converting something they dare not eat into something they can eat.

Many, though not all, of their buffaloes are sacred, and their milk may not be drunk. The reason why it may not be drunk anthropologists may cast about to discover, but the Todas themselves do not know. All that they know, and are concerned to know, is that things would somehow all go wrong, if any one were foolish enough to commit such a sin. So in the Toda temple, which is a dairy, the Toda priest, who is the dairyman, sets about rendering the sacred products harmless. The dairy has two compartments—one sacred, the other profane. In the first are stored the sacred vessels, into which the milk is placed when it comes from the buffaloes, and in which it is turned into butter and buttermilk with the help of some of the previous brew, this having meanwhile been put by in an especially sacred vessel. In the second compartment are profane vessels, destined to receive the butter and buttermilk, after they have been carefully transferred from the sacred vessels with the help of an intermediary vessel, which stands exactly on the line between the two compartments. This transference, being carried out to the accompaniment of all sorts of reverential gestures and utterances, secures such a profanation of the sacred substance as is without the evil consequences that would otherwise be entailed. Thus the ritual is essentially precautionary. A taboo is the hinge of the whole affair.

And the tendency of such a negative type of religion is to pile precautions on precautions. Thus the dairyman, in order to be equal to his sacred office, must observe taboos without end. He must be celibate. He must avoid all contact with the dead. He is limited to certain kinds of food; which, moreover, must be prepared in a certain way, and consumed in a certain place. His drink, again, is a special milk, which must be poured out with prescribed formulas. He is inaccessible to ordinary folk save on certain days and in certain ways, their mode of approach, their salutations, his greeting in reply, being all regulated with the utmost nicety. He can only wear a special garb. He must never cut his hair. His nails must be suffered to grow long. And so on and so forth. Such disabilities, indeed, are wont to circumscribe the life of all sacred persons, and can be matched from every part of the world. But they may fairly be cited here, as helping to fill in the picture of what I have called the precautionary or negative type of religious ritual.

Further, there is something rotten in the state of Toda religion. The dairymen struck Dr. Rivers as very slovenly in the performance of their duties, as well as vague and inaccurate in their accounts of what ought to be done. Indeed, it was hard to find persons willing to undertake the office. Ritual duties involving uncomfortable taboos were apt to be thrust on youngsters. The youngsters, being youngsters, would probably violate the taboos; but anyway that was their look-out. From evasions to fictions is but a step. Hence when an unclean person approached the dairyman, the latter would simply pretend not to see him. Or the rule that he must not enter a hut, if women were within, would be circumvented by simply removing from the dwelling the three emblems of womanhood, the pounder, the sieve, and the sweeper; whereupon his "face was saved." Now wherefore all this lack of earnestness? Dr. Rivers thinks that too much ritual was the reason. I agree; but would venture to add, "too much negative ritual." A religion that is all dodging must produce a sneaking kind of worshipper.

Now let us turn another type of primitive religion that is equally identified with the food-quest, but allied to its positive and active functions, which it seeks to help out. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have given us a most minute account of certain ceremonies of the Arunta, a people of central Australia. These ceremonies they have named Intichiuma, and the name will probably stick, though there is reason to believe that the native word for them is really something different. Their purpose is to make the food-animals and food-plants multiply and prosper. Each animal or plant is attended to by the group that has it for a totem. (Totemism amongst this very remarkable people has nothing to do either with exogamy or with lineage; but that is a subject into which it is impossible to go here.) The rites vary considerably from totem to totem, but a typical case or two may be cited.

The witchetty-grub men, for instance, want the grubs to multiply, that there may be plenty for their fellows to eat. So they wend their way along a certain path which tradition declares to have been traversed by the great leader of the witchetty-grubs of the days of long ago. (These were grubs transformed into men, who became by reincarnation ancestors of the present totemites.) The path brings them to a place in the hills where there is a big stone surrounded by many small stones. The big stone is the adult animal, the little stones are its eggs. So first they tap the big stone, chanting an invitation to it to lay eggs. Then the master of the ceremonies rubs the stomach of each totemite with the little stones, and says, "You have eaten much food."

Or, again, the Kangaroo men repair to a place called Undiara. It is a picturesque spot. By the side of a water-hole that is sheltered by a tall gum-tree rises a curiously gnarled and weather-beaten face of quartzite rock. About twenty feet from the base a ledge juts out. When the totemites hold their ceremony, they repair to this ledge. For here in the days of long ago the ancestors who are now reincarnated in them cooked and ate kangaroo food; and here, moreover, the kangaroo animals of that time deposited their spirit-parts. First the face of the rock below the ledge is decorated with long stripes of red ochre and white gypsum, to represent the red fur and white bones of the kangaroo. It is, in fact, one of those rock-paintings such as the palæolithic men of Europe made in their caves. Then a number of men, say, seven or eight, mount upon the ledge, and, whilst the rest sing solemn chants about the prospective increase of the kangaroos, these men open veins in their arms, so that the blood flows down freely upon the ceremonial stone. This is the first part of the rite. The second part is no less interesting. After the blood-letting, they hunt until they kill a kangaroo. Thereupon the old men of the totem eat a little of the meat; then they smear some of the fat on the bodies of all the party; finally, they divide the flesh amongst them. Afterwards, the totemites paint their bodies with stripes in imitation of the design upon the rock. A second hunt, followed by a second sacramental meal, concludes the whole ceremony. That their meal is sacramental, a sort of communion service, is proved by the fact that henceforth in an ordinary way they