effects of its geographical isolation, see Alfred Newton, _Dictionary of
Birds_ (London, 1893-96), pp. 317-319. He observes (p. 318) that "the
isolation of Australia is probably the next oldest in the world to that
of New Zealand, having possibly existed since the time when no mammals
higher than marsupials had appeared on the face of the earth."]
[Footnote 109: For details see _Totemism and Exogamy_, i. 314 _sqq._]
[Footnote 110: Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, _Northern Tribes of
Central Australia_ (London, 1904), p. 491.]
[Footnote 111: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. xi.]
[Footnote 112: Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._ p. 545.]
[Footnote 113: Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._ p. 546.]
[Footnote 114: Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, _Native Tribes of
Central Australia_ (London, 1899), pp. 119-127, 335-338, 552; _id.,
Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 145-153, 162, 271, 330 _sq._,
448-451, 512-515. Compare _Totemism and Exogamy_, i. 188 _sqq._]
[Footnote 115: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 147.]
[Footnote 116: See _Totemism and Exogamy_, i. 155 _sqq._, iv. 40 _sqq._]
[Footnote 117: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
pp. 123, 126.]
[Footnote 118: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
pp. 119-127, 128 _sqq._, 513; _id., Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, pp. 145 _sqq._, 257 _sqq._]
[Footnote 119: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
pp. 132-135; _id._, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 258, 268
_sqq._]
[Footnote 120: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
pp. 128, 134.]
[Footnote 121: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
pp. 134 _sq._]
[Footnote 122: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
pp. 133, 135; _id._, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 269.]
[Footnote 123: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 267.]
[Footnote 124: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
pp. 139 _sq._]
[Footnote 125: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 273.]
[Footnote 126: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
p. 141.]
[Footnote 127: Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._ p. 140]
[Footnote 128: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, pp. 144, 145.]
[Footnote 129: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, pp. 164, _sq._;
_id._, _Northern Tribes_, pp. 261, 264.]
[Footnote 130: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, p. 145.]
[Footnote 131: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, p. 136.]
[Footnote 132: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, pp. 158 _sq._]
[Footnote 133: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, pp. 271 _sq._]
[Footnote 134: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, pp. 490 _sq._]
[Footnote 135: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, pp. 226 _sq._ Another mythical being in which the Warramunga
believe is _the pau-wa_, a fabulous animal, half human and somewhat
resembling a dog. See Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._ pp. 195, 197, 201,
210 _sq._ But the creature seems not to be a totem, for it is not
included in the list of totems given by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (_op.
cit._ pp. 768-773).]
[Footnote 136: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, pp. 252 _sq._]
LECTURE V
THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE ABORIGINES
OF CENTRAL AUSTRALIA (_continued_)
[Sidenote: Beliefs of the Central Australian aborigines concerning the
reincarnation of the dead. The mythical water-snake Wollunqua.]
In the last lecture we began our survey of the belief in immortality and
the practices to which it has given rise among the aboriginal tribes of
Central Australia. I shewed that these primitive savages hold a very
remarkable theory of birth and death. They believe that the souls of the
dead do not perish but are reborn in human form after a longer or
shorter interval. During that interval the spirits of the departed are
supposed to congregate in certain parts of the country, generally
distinguished by some conspicuous natural feature, which accordingly the
natives account sacred, believing them to be haunted by the souls of the
dead. From time to time one of these disembodied spirits enters into a
passing woman and is born as an infant into the world. Thus according to
the Central Australian theory every living person without exception is
the reincarnation of a dead man, woman, or child. At first sight the
theory seems to exclude the possibility of any worship of the dead,
since it appears to put the living on a footing of perfect equality with
the dead by identifying the one with the other. But I pointed out that
as a matter of fact these savages do admit, whether logically or not,
the superiority of their remote ancestors to themselves: they
acknowledge that these old forefathers of theirs did possess many
marvellous powers to which they themselves can lay no claim. In this
acknowledgment, accordingly, we may detect an opening or possibility for
the development of a real worship of ancestors. Indeed, as I said at the
close of last lecture, something closely approaching to ancestor worship
has actually grown up in regard to the mythical ancestor of the
Wollunqua clan in the Warramunga tribe. The Wollunqua is a purely
fabulous water-snake, of gigantic dimensions, which is supposed to haunt
the waters of a certain lonely pool called Thapauerlu, in the Murchison
Range of mountains. Unlike the ancestors of the other totemic clans,
this mythical serpent is never reborn in human form; he always lives in
his solitary pool among the barren hills; but the natives think that he
has it in his power to come forth and do them an injury, and accordingly
they pray to him to remain quiet and not to harm them. Indeed so afraid
of him are they that speaking of the creature among themselves they
avoid using his proper name of Wollunqua and call him by a different
name, lest hearing himself called by his true name he should rush forth
and devour them. More than that they even endeavour to propitiate him by
the performance of certain rites, which, however childish and absurd
they may seem to us, are very solemn affairs for these simple folk. The
rites were witnessed by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, whose description I
will summarise. It offers an interesting and instructive example of a
ritual observed by primitive savages, who are clearly standing on, if
they have not already crossed, the threshold of religion.
[Sidenote: Wanderings of the Wollunqua. Dramatic ceremonies in honour of
the Wollunqua.]
Like all other totemic ancestors the Wollunqua is said to have arisen at
a particular spot, to have wandered about the country, and finally to
have gone down into the ground. Starting from the deep rocky pool in the
Murchison Range he travelled at first underground, coming up, however,
at various points where he performed ceremonies and left many spirit
children, who issued from his body and remained behind, forming local
totemic centres when he had passed on. It is these spirit children who
have formed the Wollunqua clan ever since, undergoing an endless series
of reincarnations. Now the ceremonies which the clan perform in honour
of their mythical ancestor the Wollunqua all refer to his wanderings
about the country. Thus there is a particular water-hole called
Pitingari where the great old water-snake is said to have emerged from
the ground and looked about him. Here, accordingly, two men performed a
ceremony. Each of them was decorated with a broad band of red down,
which curved round both the front and the back of the performer and
stood sharply out from the mass of white down with which all the rest of
the upper part of his body was covered. These broad red bands
represented the Wollunqua. Each man also wore a tall, conical helmet
adorned with a curved band of red down, which, no doubt, likewise
symbolised the mythical serpent. When the two actors in the little drama
had been attired in this quaint costume of red and white down, they
retired behind a bush, which served for the side scenes of a theatre.
Then, when the orchestra, composed of adult men, struck up the music on
the ceremonial ground by chanting and beating boomerangs and sticks
together, the performers ran in, stopping every now and then to shake
themselves in imitation of the snake. Finally, they sat down close
together with their heads bowed down on a few green branches of
gum-trees. A man then stepped up to them, knocked off their
head-dresses, and the simple ceremony came to an end.[137]
[Sidenote: Ceremony in honour of the Wollunqua.]
The next ceremony was performed on the following day at another place
called Antipataringa, where the mythical snake is said to have halted in
his wanderings. The same two men acted as before, but this time one of
them carried on his head a curious curved bundle shaped like an enormous
boomerang. It was made of grass-stalks bound together with human
hair-string and decorated with white down. This sacred object
represented the Wollunqua himself.[138] From this spot the snake was
believed to have travelled on to another place called Tjunguniari, where
he popped up his head among the sand-hills, the greater part of his body
remaining underground. Indeed, of such an enormous length was the
serpent, that though his head had now travelled very many miles his tail
still remained at the starting-point and had not yet begun to take part
in the procession. Here accordingly the third ceremony, perhaps we may
say the third act in the drama, was performed on the third day. In it
one of the actors personated the snake himself, while the other stood
for a sand-hill.[139]
[Sidenote: Further ceremony in honour of the Wollunqua: the white mound
with the red wavy band to represent the mythical snake.]
After an interval of three days a fourth ceremony was performed of an
entirely different kind. A keel-shaped mound was made of wet sand, about
fifteen feet long by two feet high. The smooth surface of the mound was
covered with a mass of little dots of white down, except for a long wavy
band of red down which ran all along both sides of the mound. This wavy
red band represented the Wollunqua, his head being indicated by a small
round swelling at one end and his tail by a short prolongation at the
other. The mound itself represented a sand-hill beside which the snake
is said to have stood up and looked about. The preparation of this
elaborate emblem of the Wollunqua occupied the greater part of the day,
and it was late in the afternoon before it was completed. When darkness
fell, fires were lighted on the ceremonial ground, and as the night grew
late more fires were kindled, and all of the men sat round the mound
singing songs which referred to the mythical water-snake. This went on
for hours. At last, about three o'clock in the morning, a ring of fires
was lit all round the ceremonial ground, in the light of which the white
trunks of the gum-trees and the surrounding scrub stood out weird and
ghastly against the blackness of darkness beyond. Amid the wildest
excitement the men of the Wollunqua totem now ranged themselves in
single file on their knees beside the mound which bore the red image of
their great mythical forefather, and with their hands on their thighs
surged round and round it, every man bending in unison first to one side
and then to the other, each successive movement being accompanied by a
loud and simultaneous shout, or rather yell, while the other men, who
were not of the Wollunqua totem, stood by, clanging their boomerangs
excitedly, and one old man, who acted as a sort of choregus, walked
backwards at the end of the kneeling procession of Wollunqua men,
swaying his body about and lifting high his knees at every step. In this
way, with shouts and clangour, the men of the totem surged twice round
the mound on their knees. After that, as the fires died down, the men
rose from their knees, and for another hour every one sat round the
mound singing incessantly. The last act in the drama was played at four
o'clock in the morning at the moment when the first faint streaks of
dawn glimmered in the east. At sight of them every man jumped to his
feet, the smouldering fires were rekindled, and in their blaze the long
white mound stood out in strong relief. The men of the totem, armed with
spears, boomerangs, and clubs, ranged themselves round it, and
encouraged by the men of the other totems attacked it fiercely with
their weapons, until in a few minutes they had hacked it to pieces, and
nothing was left of it but a rough heap of sandy earth. The fires again
died down and for a short time silence reigned. Then, just as the sun
rose above the eastern horizon, the painful ceremony of subincision was
performed on three youths, who had recently passed through the earlier
stages of initiation.[140]
[Sidenote: The rite aims both at pleasing and at coercing the mythical
snake.]
This remarkable rite is supposed, we are informed, "in some way to be
associated with the idea of persuading, or almost forcing, the Wollunqua
to remain quietly in his home under the water-hole at Thapauerlu, and to
do no harm to any of the natives. They say that when he sees the mound
with his representation drawn upon it he is gratified, and wriggles
about underneath with pleasure. The savage attack upon the mound is
associated with the idea of driving him down, and, taken altogether, the
ceremony indicates their belief that, at one and the same time, they can
both please and coerce the mythic beast. It is necessary to do things to
please him, or else he might grow sulky and come out and do them harm,
but at the same time they occasionally use force to make him do what
they want."[141] In fact the ritual of the mound with its red image of
the snake combines the principles of religion and magic. So far as the
rite is intended to please and propitiate the mythical beast, it is
religious; so far as it is intended to constrain him, it is magical. The
two principles are contradictory and the attempt to combine them is
illogical; but the savage is heedless, or rather totally unaware, of the
contradiction and illogicality: all that concerns him is to accomplish
his ends: he has neither the wish nor the ability to analyse his
motives. In this respect he is in substantial agreement with the vast
majority of mankind. How many of us scrutinise the reasons of our
conduct with the view of detecting and eliminating any latent
inconsistencies in them? And how many, or rather how few of us, on such
a scrutiny would be so fortunate as to discover that there were no such
inconsistencies to detect? The logical pedant who imagines that men
cannot possibly act on inconsistent and even contradictory motives only
betrays his ignorance of life. It is not therefore for us to cast stones
at the Warramunga men of the Wollunqua totem for attempting to
propitiate and constrain their mythical serpent at the same time. Such
contradictions meet us again and again in the history of religion: it is
interesting but by no means surprising to find them in one of its
rudimentary stages.
[Sidenote: Thunder the voice of the Wollunqua.]
On the evening of the day which succeeded the construction of the
emblematic mound the old men who had made the emblem said they had heard
the Wollunqua talking, and that he was pleased with what had been done
and was sending them rain. What they took for the voice of the Wollunqua
was thunder rumbling in the distance. No rain fell, but a few days later
thunder was again heard rolling afar off and a heavy bank of clouds lay
low on the western horizon. The old men now said that the Wollunqua was
growling because the remains of the mound had been left uncovered; so
they hastily cut down branches and covered up the ruins. After that the
Wollunqua ceased to growl: there was no more thunder.[142]
[Sidenote: Ground drawings of the Wollunqua.]
On the four following days ceremonies of an entirely different kind from
all the preceding were performed in honour of the Wollunqua. A space of
sandy ground was smoothed down, sprinkled with water, and rubbed so as
to form a compact surface. The smooth surface was then overlaid with a
coat of red or yellow ochre, and on this coloured background a number of
designs were traced, one after the other, by a series of white dots,
which together made up a pattern of curved lines and concentric circles.
These patterns represented the Wollunqua and some of his traditionary
adventures. The snake himself was portrayed by a broad wavy band, but
all the other designs were purely conventional; for example, trees,
ant-hills, and wells were alike indicated by circles. Altogether there
were eight such drawings on the earth, some of them very elaborate and
entailing, each of them, not less than six or seven hours' labour: one
of them was ten feet long. Each drawing was rubbed out before the next
one was drawn. Moreover, the drawings were accompanied by little dramas
acted by decorated men. In one of these dramas no fewer than eight
actors took part, some of whom wore head-dresses adorned with a long
wavy band to represent the Wollunqua. The last drawing of all was
supposed to portray the mythical snake as he plunged into the earth and
returned to his home in the rocky pool called Thapauerlu among the
Murchison Ranges.[143]
[Sidenote: Religious importance of the Wollunqua.]
I have dwelt at some length on these ceremonies of the Wollunqua totem,
because they furnish a remarkable and perhaps unique instance in
Australia of a totemic ancestor in the act of developing into something
like a god. In the Warramunga tribe there are other snake totems besides
the Wollunqua; for example, there is the black snake totem and the deaf
adder totem. But this purely mythical water-snake, the Wollunqua, is the
most important of them all and is regarded as the great father of all
the snakes. "It is not easy," say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "to
express in words what is in reality rather a vague feeling amongst the
natives, but after carefully watching the different series of ceremonies
we were impressed with the feeling that the Wollunqua represented to the
native mind the idea of a dominant totem."[144] Thus he is at once a
fabulous animal and the mythical ancestor of a human clan, but his
animal nature apparently predominates over his semi-human nature, as
shewn by the drawings and effigies of him, all of which are in serpent
form. The prayers offered to him at the pool which he is supposed to
haunt, and the attempt to please him by drawing his likeness can only be
regarded as propitiatory rites and therefore as rudimentary forms of
worship. And the idea that thunder is his voice, and that the rain is a
gift sent by him in return for the homage paid to him by the people,
appears to prove that in course of time, if left to himself, he might
easily have been elevated to the sky and have ranked as a celestial
deity, who dwells aloft and sends down or withholds the refreshing
showers at his good pleasure. Thus the Wollunqua, a rude creation of the
savage Australian imagination, possesses a high interest for the
historian of religion, since he combines elements of ancestor worship
and totem worship with a germ of heaven worship; while on the purely
material side his representation, both in plastic form by a curved
bundle of grass-stalks and in graphic form by broad wavy bands of red
down, may be said in a sense to stand at the starting-point of that long
development of religious art, which in so many countries and so many
ages has attempted to represent to the bodily eye the mysteries of the
unseen and invisible, and which, whatever we may think of the success or
failure of that attempt, has given to the world some of the noblest
works of sculpture and painting.
[Sidenote: Possible religious evolution of totemism.]
I have already pointed out the difficulty of seeing how a belief in the
reincarnation of the dead, such as prevails universally among the
aborigines of Central Australia, could ever be reconciled with or
develop into a worship of the dead; for by identifying the living with
the dead, the theory of reincarnation seems to abolish that distinction
between the worshipper and the worshipped which is essential to the
existence of worship. But, as I also indicated, what seems a loophole or
mode of escape from the dilemma may be furnished by the belief of these
savages, that though they themselves are nothing but their ancestors
come to life again, nevertheless in their earliest incarnations of the
_alcheringa_ or dream times their ancestors possessed miraculous powers
which they have admittedly lost in their later reincarnations; for this
suggests an incipient discrimination or line of cleavage between the
living and the dead; it hints that perhaps after all the first
ancestors, with their marvellous endowments, may have been entirely
different persons from their feebler descendants, and if this vague hint
could only grow into a firm conviction of the essential difference
between the two, then the course would be clear for the development of
ancestor worship: the dead forefathers, viewed as beings perfectly
distinct from and far superior to the living, might easily come to
receive from the latter the homage of prayer and sacrifice, might be
besought by their descendants to protect them in danger and to succour
them in all the manifold ills of life, or at least to abstain from
injuring them. Now, this important step in religious evolution appears
to have been actually taken by the Wollunqua, the mythical water-snake,
who is the totem of one of the Warramunga clans. Unlike all the other
totems he is supposed to exist only in his invisible and animal form and
never to be reincarnated in a man.[145] Hence, withdrawn as he is from
the real world of sense, the imagination is free to play about him and
to invest him more and more with those supernatural attributes which men
ascribe to their deities. And what has actually happened to this
particular totemic ancestor might under favourable circumstances happen
to many others. Each of them might be gradually detached from the line
of his descendants, might cease to be reincarnated in them, and might
gradually attain to the lonely pre-eminence of godhead. Thus a system of
pure totemism, such as prevails among the aborigines of Central
Australia, might develop through a phase of ancestor worship into a
pantheon of the ordinary type.
[Sidenote: Conspicuous features of the landscape associated with
ancestral spirits.]
Although none of the other totemic ancestors of the Central Australian
aborigines appears to have advanced so far on the road to religion as
the Wollunqua, yet they all contain in germ the elements out of which a
religion might have been developed. It is difficult for us civilised men
to conceive the extent to which the thoughts and lives of these savages
are dominated by the memories and traditions of the dead. Every
conspicuous feature in the landscape is not only associated with the
legendary doings of some ancestors but is commonly said to have arisen
as a direct result of their actions. The mountains, the plains, the
rivers, the seas, the islands of ancient Greece itself were not more
thickly haunted by the phantoms of a fairy mythology than are the barren
sun-scorched steppes and stony hills of the Australian wilderness; but
great indeed is the gulf which divides the beautiful creations of Greek
fancy from the crude imaginings of the Australian savage, whose
legendary tales are for the most part a mere tissue of trivial
absurdities unrelieved by a single touch of beauty or poetry.
[Sidenote: A journey through the Warramunga country.]