Читать книгу Social Origins and Primal Law - Lang Andrew - Страница 22

In any case, by Mr. Fison's and Mr. Howitt's theory and our own, we have totems almost all the way: totems in the so-called 'primary divisions' (phratries); totems in the so-called gentes, and all these divisions (setting the Arunta apart) are strictly exogamous. The four or eight 'classes,' on the other hand, are apparently not of totemic origin. However much the systems may be complicated and inter-twisted, the basis of the whole, except of the four or eight 'classes,' is, I think, the totem exogamous prohibition. There are many examples of the type; thus the Urabunna 'are divided into two exogamous intermarrying classes, which are respectively called Matthurie and Kirarawa, and the members of these again are divided into a series of totemic groups, for which the native name is Thunthunnie. A Matthurie man must marry a Kirarawa women' (as in the system of the Kamil-speaking tribes, or Kamilaroi, reported on by Mr. Fison) – 'and not only this, but a man of one totem must marry a woman of another totem.' This is precisely what I should expect. It works out thus:

{ Old Local Totem Group} Matthurie.

{ New 'Phratry' }

{ Old Local Totem Group} Kirarawa.

{ New 'Phratry' }

Each of these 'phratries' has five totems, not found in the other class, and how this occurred, if not by actual deliberate arrangement, I do not know. One thing is clear: totem and phratry are prior to 'class' divisions. They occur where 'class' divisions do not. But my theory does not involve the deliberate introduction of exogamy, by an exogamous bisection of groups not hitherto exogamous, or by making two pre-existing totem groups exogamous. I take the groups to have been exogamous already, before the blending in connubium of two local totem groups (now 'phratries'), each including numbers of already exogamous totem kindreds. They were exogamous before the 'phratries' existed, and after their falling into the two phratries, exogamous they remained.