THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF CLASSES.
Effect of classes. Dr Durkheim's Theory of Origin. Origin in grouping of
totems. Dr Durkheim on origin of eight classes. Herr Cunow's theory
of classes.
In dealing with the origin of the classes it is important to bear in
mind that they are undoubtedly later than the phratries. This is clear,
not only from the considerations urged on p. 71, but also from the fact
that the areas covered by the same classes are in the three most
important cases immensely larger than any covered by a phratriac system.
We may therefore dismiss at the outset Herr Cunow's theory, which makes
the classes the original form of organisation.
To explain the origin of the classes, as of the phratries, two kinds of
theories have been put forward, which are in this case also classifiable
as reformatory and developmental respectively. The former labour under
the same disadvantages, so far as they assume that particular marriages
were regarded as immoral or objectionable, as do the similar hypotheses
of the origin of phratries.
What is the effect of dividing a phratry into two classes? Firstly and
most obviously, to reduce by one half the number of women from whom a
man may take his spouse. Secondarily, to put in the forbidden class both
his mother's generation and his daughters' generation. It must however
not be overlooked that it is the whole class of individuals that are
thus put beyond his reach and not those only who stand to him in the
relation of daughters in the European sense. Now it is certain that the
savage of the present day distinguishes blood relationship from tribal
relationship; of this there are plenty of examples in Australia
itself[130]. In fact the hypothesis that the introduction of class
regulations was due to a desire to prevent the intermarriage of parents
and children, more especially of fathers and daughters, the mothers
being of course of the same phratries as their sons in the normal tribe,
depends for its existence on the assumption that consanguinity was
recognised. But it is clearly a clumsy expedient to limit a man's right
of choice to the extent we have indicated solely in order to prevent him
from marrying his daughter, when the simple prohibition to marry her
would, so far as we can see, have been equally effective.
Dr Durkheim has suggested that phratries and classes originated
together.
If we start with two exogamous local groups in which the determinant
spouse removes, the result is two groups in which both phratries are
found, as is evident from the following graphic representation. The two
sides represent the local grouping, the letters A and B the phratry
names, and m or f male or female; the = denotes marriage, the vertical
lines show the children, the brackets show that the person whose symbol
is bracketed removes, and the italics that the symbol in question is
that of a spouse introduced from without.
mA=_fB_ mB=fA
_______| |_______
| | | |
[fB] mB=_fA_ _fB_=mA [mB]
_________| |_________
| | | |
[fA] mA=_fB_ _fA_=mB [fB]
_________| |_________
| | | |
[fB] mB=_fA_ _fB_=mA [fA]
etc. etc.
We see from this that the alternate generations are in each group A and
B, whose spouses are in the same alternation B and A, the male remaining
in the group, the female removing in each case, if we assume that the
matrilineal kinship is the rule. The permanent members of each group
therefore, and in like manner the imported members, are by alternate
generations A and B, though of course there is no difference of age
actually corresponding to the difference of generation.
By the simple phratry law that A can only marry B, and may marry any B,
local group mates are marriageable. The law however which forbids the
marriage of phratry mates is on Mr Lang's original theory founded on the
prohibition to marry group mates. If we suppose that the primal law or
the memory of it continued to work, we have at once a sufficient
explanation of the origin of the four-class system. The tribes or
nations in which the instinct against intra-group marriage was strong
enough to persist as an active principle after the law against
intra-phratry marriage had become recognised, may have proceeded to
create four classes at a very early stage, while those in whom the
feeling for the primal law was less strong adhered to the simple phratry
system.
But it is an insuperable objection to this theory that it makes the
four-class system originate simultaneously with, or at any rate shortly
after, the rise of the phratries. For we cannot suppose that the feeling
for the primal law remained dormant for long ages and then suddenly
revived. On the other hand we have seen that if the difference in the
distribution of the phratry and class names is any guide, a considerable
interval must have separated the rise of the one from the rise of the
other. Unless therefore it can be shown that some other explanation
accounts for the non-coincidence of phratry and class areas, we can
hardly accept any explanation of the origin of classes which makes them
originate at a period not far removed from the introduction of the
phratries.
The fact that a certain number of class names are in character totemic,
that is, bear animal names, suggests that the class system may be a
development of the totem kins, which in certain cases are grouped within
the phratries or otherwise subject to special regulations. In the
Urabunna the choice of a man of one totem is said to be limited to women
of the right status in a single totem of the opposite phratry. Among the
similarly organised Yandairunga the limitation is to certain totems, and
Dr Howitt gives other examples of the same order. In the Kongulu tribe
these totemic classes seem to have been known by special names. In the
Wotjoballuk tribe there are sub-totems, grouped with certain totems,
which again seem to be collected into aggregates intermediate between
the phratry and the simple totem kin. But it is difficult to see why, if
the classes have arisen out of such organisations, there should be found
over the great part of Australia four, and only four, classes from which
the eight have obviously developed. In any case we have no parallel in
these modifications to the alternate generations of the class system.
These find an analogue, according to an old report, not subsequently
confirmed, in the Wailwun tribe, where, however, it is supplementary to
the classes. We are told that there are four totems in this tribe,
though this does not agree with other reports, and that they are found
in both phratries indiscriminately. A woman's children do not take her
totem, nor, apparently, the totem of her brother, who belongs to a
different kin, but are of the remaining two totems according to their
sex[131]. From this it follows that the totems alternate, precisely as
do the classes; the difference in the arrangement consists in the
distinction of totem falling to males and females, which has no analogue
in the class system. But such arrangements, even if we may take them as
established facts, are clearly of secondary origin, and can hardly give
a clue to the origin of the classes.
There is an important difference between the four-class and eight-class
organisations in respect of the totem kins. In the former systems the
kins are almost invariably divided between the phratries; but within
them they do not belong to either of the classes, though certain classes
claim them[132]; but on the contrary, of necessity are divided between
them. In the eight-class tribes this seems to be the case in some tribes
also; in others, like the Arunta, abnormalities of development cause the
totems to fall in both phratries. But in the Mara, the Mayoo, and the
Warramunga[133] they fall, or are stated to fall, in the first case into
groups according to the four classes, in the other cases according to
the "couples," i.e. the two classes which stand in the relation of
parent and child (the son of Panunga is Appungerta, his son is again
Panunga, and so for the other pairs). This suggests that totemism has
something to do with the division of the four classes into eight, as was
pointed out by Dr Durkheim in 1905[134]. His argument is that as long as
descent was in the female line, the rule was that a man could not marry
a woman of his mother's totem. When the change to male descent took
place, the mother's totem, as we see by actual examples[135], did not
lose the respect which it formerly enjoyed; there is in more than one
tribe a tabu of the mother's as well as of the father's totem. That
being so, it is natural to suppose that the new marriage organisation
according to male descent might be modified to take account of this
fact. By dividing the classes and arranging that one member of a couple
should be debarred not only from intermarrying with the class of his
mother, for which the four-class system also provides, but also from
intermarrying with the second member of the same couple too, this result
was attained, in the view of Dr Durkheim.
It remains however to be established that this segregation of totems is
actually found in the tribes in question. For the Warramunga Spencer and
Gillen distinctly state[136] that the arrangement is dichotomous, in
which case the alleged result would not be brought about. The Anula and
Mara are exceptional tribes with direct male descent; it is hardly
likely that the eight-class system spread from them. The Mayoo have not
yet been reported on by an expert. Finally some of the tribes have not
even the dichotomous arrangement of totems but distribute them in both
phratries. The basis of the hypothesis, therefore, is hardly
established.
Singularly enough, Dr Durkheim[137] expresses his adherence to a
previous theory of his own as to the method of effecting the change from
female to male descent in four-class tribes. This he supposes to have
been done by transferring one of the two classes from each phratry to
the opposite one; and in the former discussion (_Année Soc._ V, 82 sq.)
he showed that this procedure would result in scattering the totems
through both phratries, as we find them to be in the case of the Arunta.
It is therefore singular to find that he adheres to this theory when his
new hypothesis demands that the totems, so far from being more widely
distributed, should be actually confined to the members of one couple.
Beyond the Urabunna custom in intertribal marriages, however, which is
hardly decisive evidence, there does not appear to be any proof that the
transference from one phratry to the other ever took place.
The further support claimed by Dr Durkheim for his hypothesis from the
alleged male descent of the totem in tribes where female descent of the
class names prevails, rests on too uncertain a basis to make it
necessary to deal with it at length; some criticism of the evidence will
be found elsewhere.
We have seen above that the Dieri rule is precisely parallel to that of
the eight-class tribes in practice; it is however expressed, not by a
class system, but by enacting that people standing in a certain degree
of kinship or consanguinity shall marry. If Dr Durkheim's theory of the
origin of the eight-class system is correct, it should also apply to the
Dieri. Now the rule that a man must marry his maternal great-uncle's
daughter clearly prevents intermarriage with one of the mother's totem;
but this cannot be the object of the rule, for it is prevented already
by the phratry system. Dr Durkheim's theory therefore finds no support
in the Dieri rule.
On the other hand, unless the totems have been scattered through the
phratries since the southern Arunta divided their classes, Dr Durkheim
will have difficulty in explaining why a tribe where the totem does not
concern marriage at all has found it necessary to split the classes; and
that though the child does not take its totem from mother or father.
Herr Cunow has advanced the view that the classes correspond to
distinctions of age; but he took as his basis, not the differentia of
elder and younger, but the distinction made by the initiation customs,
which divide the community, in his view, into three strata--young, adult
and old. Into the difficulties created by this theory we need not here
enter. Suffice it to say that the theory depends on the supposition that
an age-grade had to marry within itself. Now the age-grade is not a
fixed body, but is continually changing its personnel; not only so, but
it is difficult to see how marriage could take place, given the
initiation ceremonies, in any other way; unions of "old men" with adult
women apart, which are not, in fact, prohibited, so far as is known, the
only marriages possible are those within the adult grade. Although
father and son can rarely belong to the adult grade simultaneously,
mother and daughter can readily do so. If not, these grades are clearly
generation classes, and what Herr Cunow really takes as the basis of his
theory is the generation in each family. This can readily be shown by a
consideration of the kinship terms.
FOOTNOTES:
[130] Roth, _Eth. Stud._ p. 182; Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._ p. 616;
Howitt, p. 262; _J.R.S.N.S.W._ XXXI, 166.
[131] _J.A.I._ VII, 249, cf. _J.R.S.N.S.W._ XXXI, 172.
[132] Howitt, p. 110.
[133] _Nor. Tr._ p. 167; _Proc. R.G.S. Qu._ XVI, 70; _J.R.S.N.S.W._ XXX,
111, 112.
[134] _Ann. Soc._ VIII, 118.
[135] Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._ p. 166.
[136] _Nor. Tr._ p. 163.
[137] p. 142.