Chapter 94

78Ibid.ii. 240.

79Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 461.

80Trumbull,Blood Covenant, p. 10.

81Maurer,Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes, ii. 171.

Mingling of blood is sometimes supposed to be a direct cause of mutual sympathy and agreement, in accordance with the principle of transmission of properties by contact;82even in Europe there are traces of the belief that a few drops of blood transferred from one person to another inspire the recipient with friendly feelings towards him with whose blood he is inoculated.83But the genuine blood-covenant imposes duties on both parties, and also contains the potential punishment for their transgression. It involves a promise, and the transference of blood is vaguely or distinctly supposed to convey to the person who drinks it, or who is inoculated with it, a conditional curse which will injure or destroy him should he break his promise. That this is the main idea underlying the blood-covenant appears from the fact that it is regularly accompanied by curses or self-imprecations.84In Madagascar, for instance, when two or more persons have agreed on forming the bond of fraternity, a fowl is procured, its head is nearly cut off, and it is left in this state to continue bleeding during the ceremony. The parties then pronounce a long imprecation and mutual vow over the blood, saying,inter alia“O this miserable fowl weltering in its blood! thy liver do we eat, thy liver do we eat; and should either of us retract from the terms of this oath, let him instantly become a fool, let him instantly become blind, let this covenant prove a curse to him.” A small portion of blood is then drawn from each individual and drunk by the covenanting parties with execrations of vengeance on each other in case of either violating the sacred oath.85According to another description the parties, after they have drunk each other’s blood, drink a mixture from the same bowl, praying that it may turn intopoison for him who fails to keep the oath.86As we have seen before, blood is commonly regarded as a particularly efficient conductor of curses, and what could in this respect be more excellent than the blood of the very person who utters the curse? But the blood of a victim sacrificed on the occasion may serve the same purpose, or some other suitable vehicle may be chosen to transfer the imprecation. The Masai in the old days “spat at a man with whom they swore eternal friendship”;87and the meaning of this seems clear when we hear that they spit copiously when cursing, and that “if a man while cursing spits in his enemy’s eyes, blindness is supposed to follow.”88The ancient Arabs, besides swearing alliance and protection by dipping their hands in a pan of blood and tasting the contents, had a covenant known as theḥilf al-foḍûl, which was made by taking Zemzem water and washing the corners of the Kaʿba with it, whereafter it was drunk by the parties concerned.89The blood-covenant is essentially based on the same idea as underlies the Moorish custom of sealing a compact of friendship by a common meal at the tomb of some saint, the meaning of which is obvious from the phrase that “the food will repay” him who breaks the compact.90

82Cf.Crawley,Mystic Rose, p. 236sq.

83von Wlislocki, ‘Menschenblut im Glauben der Zigeuner,’ inAm Ur-Quell, iii. 64. Dörfler, ‘Das Blut im magyarischen Volkglauben,’ibid.iii. 269sq.

84Forbes,A Naturalist’s Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, p. 452 (natives of Timor). Burns, ‘Kayans of the North-West of Borneo,’ inJour. of the Indian Archipelago, iii. 146sq.New,Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, p. 364 (Taveta). Decle,Three Years in Savage Africa, p. 494 (Wakamba). Trumbull,op. cit.pp. 9, 20, 31, 42, 45-47, 53, 61sq.For the practice of sealing an agreement by transference of blood accompanied by an oath, see also Partridge,Cross River Natives, p. 191 (pagans of Obubura Hill district in Southern Nigeria).

85Ellis,History of Madagascar, 187sqq.

86Dumont d’Urville,Voyage pittoresque autour du monde, i. 81.

87Hinde,Last of the Masai, p. 47. See also Johnston,Uganda, ii. 833.

88Hinde,op. cit.p. 48.

89Robertson Smith,Marriage and Kinship in Early Arabia, p. 56sqq.Cf.Herodotus, iii. 8.

90Seesupra,i. 587. According to another theory the inoculated blood is regarded as a pledge or deposit, which compels the person from whom it was drawn to be faithful to the person to whom it was transferred. Suppose that two individuals, A and B, become “blood-brothers” by mutual inoculation. Each, then, Mr. Crawley argues (Mystic Rose, p. 236sq.), has a part of the other in his keeping, each has “given himself away” to the other in a very real sense; and the possibility of mutual treachery or wrong is prevented both by the fact that injury done to B by A is considered equivalent to injury done by A to himself, and also by the belief that if B is wronged he may work vengeance by injuring the part of A which he possesses. To this explanation, however, serious objections may be raised. The belief in sympathetic magic does not imply that injury done to B by A iseo ipsosupposed to affect A himself through that part of him which has been deposited in B; it does not imply that two things which have once been conjoined remain, when quite dissevered from each other, in such a relation that “whatever is done to the one must similarly affect the other” (Frazer,Golden Bough, i. 49), unless there is an intention to this effect in the agent. The severed part then serves as a medium by which magic influence is transferred to the whole. Again, it is difficult to see how B could injure A through the part of him which he possesses when that part has been absorbed into his own system, as must be the case with those few drops of A’s blood with which he was inoculated.

Besides marriage, local proximity, and a common descent, a common worship may tie people together intosocial union. But among savages a religious community generally coincides with a community of some other kind. There are tutelary gods of families, clans, and tribes;91and a purely local group may also form a religious community by itself. Major Ellis observes that with some two or three exceptions all the gods worshipped by the Tshi-speaking tribes on the Gold Coast are exclusively local and have a limited area of worship. If they are nature-gods they are bound up with the natural objects they animate, if they are ghost-gods they are localised by the place of sepulture, and if they are tutelary deities whose origin has been forgotten their position is necessarily fixed by that of the town, village, or family they protect; in any case they are worshipped only by those who live in the neighbourhood, the only exceptions being the sky-god, the earthquake-god, and the goddess of the silkcotton trees, who are worshipped everywhere.92

91Seeinfra,ch. l.

92Ellis,Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 284sq.For various instances of village gods see Turner,Samoa, p. 18; Crozet,Voyage to Tasmania, &c.p. 45 (Maoris); Christian,Caroline Islands, p. 75 (natives of Ponape); Grierson,Bihār Peasant Life, p. 403sqq.

When the religious community is thus at the same time a family, clan, village, or tribe, it is of course impossible exactly to distinguish the social influence of the common religion from that exercised by marriage, local proximity, or a common descent. It seems, however, that the importance of the religious bond, or at least of the totem bond, has been somewhat exaggerated by a certain school of anthropologists. We are told that in early society “each member of the kin testifies and renews his union with the rest” by taking part in a sacrificial meal in which the totem god is eaten by his worshippers.93But no satisfactory evidence has ever been given in support of this theory. Sir J. G. Frazer knows only one certain case of a totem sacrament, namely, that prevalent among the Arunta and some other tribes in Central Australia,94who at the time of Intichiuma are in the habit of killing and eating totem animals; and this practice has nothing whateverto do with the mutual relations between kindred. Its object is only to multiply in a magic manner the animals of certain species for the purpose of increasing the food-supply for other totemic groups.95In his book on Totemism Frazer writes:—“The totem bond is stronger than the bond of blood or family in the modern sense. This is expressly stated of the clans of western Australia and of north-western America, and is probably true of all societies where totemism exists in full force. Hence in totem tribes every local group, being necessarily composed (owing to exogamy) of members of at least two totem clans, is liable to be dissolved at any moment into its totem elements by the outbreak of a blood feud, in which husband and wife must always (if the feud is between their clans) be arrayed on opposite sides, and in which the children will be arrayed against either their father or their mother, according as descent is traced through the mother, or through the father.”96In the two or three cases which Frazer quotes in support of his statement97the totemic group is identical with the clan; hence it is impossible to decide whether the strength of the tie which unites its members is due to the totem relationship or to the common descent. But even the combined clan and totem systems seem at most only in exceptional cases to lead to such consequences as are indicated by Frazer’s authorities. With reference to the Australian aborigines Mr. Curr observes:—“Of the children of one father being at war with him, or with each other, on the ground of maternal relationship, or any other ground, my inquiries and experience supply no instances. To Captain Grey’s statements, indeed, there are several objections.”98

93Hartland,op. cit.ii. 236.

94Frazer,Golden Bough, i. p. xix.Cf.Idem,Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 230sqq.

95Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, ch. vi.Iidem,Northern Tribes of Central Australia, ch. ix.sq.

96Frazer,Totemism, p. 57.

97Grey,Journals of Expeditions in North-West and Western Australia, ii. 230. Petroff,Report on Alaska, p. 165. Hardisty, ‘Loucheux Indians,’ inSmithsonian Report, 1866, p. 315.

98Curr,The Australian Race, i. 67. In Hardisty’s statement, referring to the Loucheux Indians, there is a conspicuous lack of definiteness. He says:—“In war it was not tribe against tribe, but division against division, and as the children were never of the same caste (clan) as the father, the children would, of course, be against the father and the father against the children…. This, however, was not likely to occur very often, as the worst of parents would have naturally preferred peace to war with his own children.” Petroff’s passage concerning the Thlinkets, referred to by Sir J. G. Frazer, simply runs:—“The ties of the totem or clanship are considered far stronger than those of blood relationship.”

Among the Arunta and some other Central Australian tribes we have fortunately an opportunity of studying the social influence of totemism apart from that of clanship, the division into totems being quite independent of the clan system. The whole district of a tribe may be mapped out into a large number of areas of various sizes, each of which centres in one or more spots where, in the dim past, certain mythical ancestors are said to have originated or camped during their wanderings, and where their spirits are still supposed to remain, associated with sacred stones, which the ancestors used to carry about with them. From these spirits have sprung, and still continue to spring, actual men and women, the members of the various totems being their reincarnations. At the spots where they remained, the ancestral spirits enter the bodies of women, and in consequence a child must belong to the totem of the spot at which the mother believes that it was conceived. A result of this is that no one totem is confined to the members of a particular clan or sub-clan,99and that though most members of a given horde or local group belong to the same totemic group, there is no absolute coincidence between these two kinds of organisation.100How, then, does the fact that two persons belong to the same totem influence their social relationships? “In these tribes,” say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, “there is no such thing as the members of one totem being bound together in such a way that they must combine to fight on behalf of a member of the totem to which they belong…. The men to assist a particular man in a quarrel are those of his locality, and not of necessity those of the same totem as himself, indeed the latter consideration does not enter into account and in this as in other matters we see the strongdevelopment of what we have called the ‘local influence.’… The men who assist him are his brothers, blood and tribal, the sons of his mother’s brothers, blood and tribal. That is, if he be a Panunga man he will have the assistance of the Panunga and Ungalla men of his locality, while if it comes to a general fight he will have the help of the whole of his local group…. It is only indeed during the performance of certain ceremonies that the existence of a mutual relationship, consequent upon the possession of a common totemic name, stands out at all prominently. In fact, it is perfectly easy to spend a considerable time amongst the Arunta tribe without even being aware that each individual has a totemic name.”101

99Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, ch. iv.

100Ibid.pp. 9, 32, 34.

101Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 34, 544.

When from the savage and barbarous races of men we pass to peoples of a higher culture, as they first appear to us in the light of history, we meet among them social units similar in kind to those prevalent at lower stages of civilisation: the family, clan, village, tribe. We also find among them, side by side with the family consisting of parents and children, a larger family organisation, which, though not unknown among the lower races, assumes particular prominence in the archaic State.

In China the family generally remains undivided till the children of the younger sons are beginning to grow up. Then the younger branches of the family separate, and form their own households. But the new householders continue to take part in the ancestral worship of the old home; and mourning is worn in theory for four generations of ascendants and descendants in the direct line, and for contemporaries descended in the same fifth generation from the “honoured head” of the family.102At the same time we find in China at least traces of a clan organisation. Large bodies of persons bear the same surname, and a penalty is inflicted on anyone who marries a person with the same surname as his own, whilst a man is strictly forbidden to nominate as his heiran individual of a different surname.103Moreover, there are whole villages composed of relatives all bearing the same ancestral name. “In many cases,” says Mr. Doolittle, “for a long period of time no division of inherited property is made in rural districts, the descendants of a common ancestor living or working together, enjoying and sharing the profits of their labours under the general direction and supervision of the head of the clan and the heads of the family branches…. There may be only one head of the clan. Under him there are several heads of families.”104

102Simcox,Primitive Civilizations, ii. 303, 493, 69.

103Medhurst, ‘Marriage, Affinity, and Inheritance in China,’ inTrans. Roy. Asiatic Soc. China Branch, iv. 21, 22, 29.

104Doolittle,Social Life of the Chinese, ii. 225sqq.

The “four generations” of the Chinese, comprising those who are regarded as near relatives, have their counterpart in the family organisation of most so-called Aryan peoples. The Roman Propinqui—that is, parents and children, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, first cousins (consobrini) and second cousins (sobrini)—exactly corresponded to the Anchisteis of the Greeks, the Sapindas of the Hindus,105and the “Syngeneis” of the Persians.106The persons belonging to these four generations stood in a particularly close relationship to each other. They had mutual rights and duties of various kinds. In early times, if one of them was killed, the survivors had to avenge his death. They were expected to assist each other whenever it was needed, especially before the court. They celebrated in common feasts of rejoicing and feasts for the dead. They had a common cult and common mourning. In short, they formed an enlarged family unit of which the individual families were merely sub-branches, even thoughthey did not necessarily live in the same house.107In India we still meet with a perishable survival of this organisation. “In the Joint Family of the Hindus,” says Sir Henry Maine, “… the agnatic group of the Romans absolutely survives—or rather, but for the English law and English courts, it would survive. Here there is a real, thoroughly ascertained common ancestor, a genuine consanguinity, a common fund of property, a common dwelling.”108The Gwentian, Dimetian, and Venedotian codes likewise represent the homestead and land of the free Welshman as a family holding. “So long as the head of the family lived,” says Mr. Seebohm, “all his descendants lived with him, apparently in the same homestead, unless new ones had already been built for them on the family land. In any case, they still formed part of the joint household of which he was the head. When a free tribesman, the head of a household, died, his holding was not broken up. It was held by his heirs for three generations as one joint holding.”109So also among the subdivisions of ancient Irish society there was one which comprised the “near relatives,” the Propinqui of the Romans.110Many of the South Slavonians to this day live in house communities each consisting of a body of from ten to sixty members or even more, who are blood-relations to the second or third degree on the male side, and who associate in a common dwelling or group of dwellings, having their land in common, following a common occupation, and being governed by a common chief.111Among the Russians,too, there are households of this kind, containing the representatives of three generations; and previous to the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 such households were much more common than they are now.112The ancient Teutons are the only “Aryan” race among whom the joint family organisation cannot be proved to have prevailed.113

105Baudhâyana, i. 5. 11. 9:—“The great-grandfather, the grandfather, the father, oneself, the uterine brothers, the son by a wife of equal caste, the grandson, and the great-grandson—these they call Sapindas, but not the great-grandson’s son.”Laws of Manu, ix. 186:—“To three ancestors water must be offered, to three the funeral cake is given, the fourth descendant is the giver of these oblations, the fifth has no connection with them.”Cf.Jolly, ‘Recht und Sitte,’ in Bühler,Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie, ii. 85.

106Brissonius,De regio Persarum principatu, i. 207, p. 279. Leist,Alt-arisches Jus Civile, i. 47sqq.

107Klenze, ‘Die Cognaten und Affinen nach Römischem Rechte in Vergleichung mit andern verwandten Rechten,’ inZeitschr. f. geschichtliche Rechtswiss.vi. 5sqq.Leist,Alt-arisches Jus Civile, i. 231sqq.Rivier,Précis du droit de famille romain, p. 34sqq.

108Maine,Dissertations on Early Law and Custom, p. 240.

109Seebohm,English Village Community, p. 193.Idem,Tribal System in Wales, p. 89sqq.

110Maine,Early History of Institutions, p. 90sq.Leist,Alt-arisches Jus Civile, i. Anhang i.

111Krauss,Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, pp. 75, 79sqq.Maine,Dissertations on Early Law and Custom, p. 241sqq.Utiešenović,Die Hauskommunionen der Südslaven, p. 20sqq.Miler, ‘Die Hauskommunion der Südslaven,’ inJahrbuch d. internat. Vereinigung f. vergl. Rechtswiss.iii. 199sqq.

112Mackenzie Wallace,Russia, i. 134. von Hellwald,Die menschliche Familie, p. 506sq.Kovalewsky,Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia, p. 53sq.

113See Leist,Alt-arisches Jus Civile, i. Anhang i.

Among all these peoples a number of kindred families or joint families were united into a larger social group forming a village community or a cluster of households. The Vedic people called such a body of kindredjanmanāor simplygrāma, which means “village”;114and the same organisation still survives in India, though in a modified form. The type of Indian village communities which has been described by Sir Henry Maine is at once an assemblage of co-proprietors and an organised patriarchal society, providing for the management of the common fund and generally also for internal government, police, the administration of justice, and the apportionment of taxes and public duties. Unlike the joint family, the related families of the village community no longer hold their land as an indistinguishable common fund: they have portioned it out, at most they redistribute it periodically, and are thus on the high road to modern landed proprietorship. And whilst the joint family is a narrow circle of persons actually related to each other, the village community has very generally been adulterated by the admission of strangers, especially purchasers of shares, who have from time to time been engrafted on the original stock of blood-relatives. Yet in all such cases there is the assumption of an original common parentage; hence the Hindu village community of the type indicated, whenever it is not actually an association of kinsmen, is always a body of co-proprietors formed on the model of such an association.115

114Zimmer,Altindisches Leben, p. 159sq.

115Maine,Ancient Law, p. 260sqq.Idem,Dissertations on Early Law and Custom, p. 240. Elphinstone,History of India, p. 68sqq.Mr. Baden-Powell (Indian Village Community, p. 3sqq.) has shown that Sir Henry Maine’s general description of Indian village communities holds true only of a certain class of villages in India.

Corresponding to the Vedicgrāmathere were the Iranianviç, the Greekgenos, and the Romangens; and as among the Vedic people severalgrāmasformed aviçand severalviçsajana,116so the Iranianviç, the Greekgenos, and the Romangenswere, respectively, subdivisions of azantu,phratria, andcuria; and these again were subdivisions of a still more comprehensive unit, adaqyu,phyle, andtribus.117The Roman territory was in earliest times divided into a number of clan-districts, each inhabited by a particulargens, which was thus a group associated at once by locality and by a common descent. Whilst each household had its own portion of land, the clan-household or village had a clan-land belonging to it, and this clan-land was managed up to a comparatively late period after the analogy of household-land, that is, on the system of joint-possession, each clan tilling its own land and thereafter distributing the produce among the several households belonging to it. Even the traditions of Roman law furnish the information that wealth consisted at first in cattle and the usufruct of the soil, and that it was not till later that land came to be distributed among the burgesses as their own special property.118Still in historical times, if a person left no sons or agnates living at his death, the inheritance escheated to thegentiles, or entire body of Roman citizens bearing the same name with the deceased, whereas no part of it was given to any relative united, however closely, with the dead man through female descent.119But as the Hindu village community, so also the Romangens, though originally a group of blood-relatives inhabiting a common district, was already in early times recruited from men of alien extraction who were assumed to be descended from a common ancestor. And it is difficult to believethat either in Rome or Greece even the fiction of a common origin could be preserved for long when the organisation of the people into gentes, phratries, and tribes was adopted by the State as a system of political division and their numbers were fixed.120When thegenosandgensfirst appear to us in history they were mere dwindling survivals, except in one respect: they remained, as they had been from the outset,121religious communities long after they had lost all other practical importance. This was especially the case at Athens, where certain reputed gentes for centuries continued to play a prominent part in the religious cult;122and the Romans seem to have preserved theirgentilicia sacrastill in Cicero’s time.123

116Zimmer,op. cit.p. 159sq.

117Leist,Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 104sq.

118Mommsen,History of Rome, i. 45, 46, 238.

119Maine,Ancient Law, p. 220sq.Fustel de Coulanges,La Cité antique, p. 126.

120Leist,Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 150sqq.It is expressly said that at Athens the members of the same γένος were not necessarily regarded as blood-relations (see Bunsen,De jure hereditario Atheniensium, p. 104, n. 28).

121Schoemann,Griechische Alterthümer, ii. 548sqq.Marquardt,Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 126, 130. Fustel de Coulanges,op. cit.p. 124sqq.

122Leist,Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 159sq.

123Cicero,Pro domo, 13 (34).

In ancient Wales districts were occupied by tribes under their petty kings or chiefs, and the tribe (cenedl) was a bundle of kindreds “bound together and interlocked by common interests and frequent intermarriages, as well as by the necessity of mutual protection against foreign foes.”124A group of households, again, corresponding to the Romangensformed atrev, which was a cluster of scattered households, “not necessarily a village in the modern sense.”125The same seems to have been the case with the Teutonicvici, spoken of by Tacitus;126but that among the Teutons, also, the people of the same neighbourhood were blood-relatives may be directly inferred from a statement made by Cæsar.127They were not much addicted to agriculture,128and “the dreary world” they inhabited, with its desert aspect, its harsh climate, its lack of cultivation, was notfavourable to the formation of permanent large social bodies of great cohesiveness. However, we meet among them social units which Cæsar callsregionesorpagi129of which thevicimay be assumed to have been subdivisions. Among the highly agricultural Slavonians, on the other hand, we find even in the present time a social organisation very similar to that of the Hindus. The South Slavonians, as we have seen, live in house communities corresponding to the joint families in India. Now, when the members of a house community, orzadruga—as it is often called—become too numerous, a separation takes place, and the emigrants form new households by themselves. Azadrugais thus gradually expanded into abratstvo, or brotherhood—a group of related house communities which not only feel themselves as branches of the same stock, but still have certain practical interests in common and a common chief. Severalbratstva, finally, form apleme, or tribe.130Among the Russians, again, the family, or joint family, has developed into amir, or village community, composed of an assemblage of separate houses each ruled by its own head, but with a common village chief elected by the heads of the various households. The Russianmiris an institution very similar to the Hindu village community described above. The land belongs to the community, and in earlier days it was probably cultivated in common. At present it is divided between the component families, the lots shifting among them periodically, or perhaps vesting in them as their property, but always subject to a power in the collective body of villagers to veto its sale. Originally themirwas also a group of kindred; but, as in the Hindu village community, the tie of blood has been greatly weakened by all sorts of fictions and the admission of so many strangers that the tradition of a common origin is dim or lost.131

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