Generally speaking (and how delightfully characteristic of us all is
this!), I see totems in Greek sacred beasts, where Mr. Frazer sees the
corn-spirit embodied in a beast, and where Mr. Max Muller sees (in the
case of Indra, called the bull) 'words meaning simply male, manly,
strong,' an 'animal simile.' {85a} Here, of course, Mr. Max Muller is
wholly in the right, when a Vedic poet calls Indra 'strong bull,' or the
like. Such poetic epithets do not afford the shadow of a presumption for
Vedic totemism, even as a survival. Mr. Frazer agrees with me and Mr.
Max Muller in this certainty. I myself say, 'If in the shape of Indra
there be traces of fur and feather, they are not very numerous nor very
distinct, but we give them for what they may be worth.' I then give
them. {85b} To prove that I do not force the evidence, I take the Vedic
text. {85c} 'His mother, a cow, bore Indra, an unlicked calf.' I then
give Sayana's explanation. Indra entered into the body of Dakshina, and
was reborn of her. She also bore a cow. But this legend, I say, 'has
rather the air of being an invention, apres coup, to account for the
Vedic text of calf Indra, born from a cow, than of being a genuine
ancient myth.' The Vedic myth of Indra's amours in shape of a ram, I say
'will doubtless be explained away as metaphorical.' Nay, I will go
further. It is perfectly conceivable to me that in certain cases a
poetic epithet applied by a poet to a god (say bull, ram, or snake)
_might_ be misconceived, and _might_ give rise to the worship of a god as
a bull, or snake, or ram. Further, if civilised ideas perished, and if a
race retained a bull-god, born of their degradation and confusion of
mind, they might eat him in a ritual sacrifice. But that _all_
totemistic races are totemistic, because they all first metaphorically
applied animal names to gods, and then forgot what they had meant, and
worshipped these animals, sans phrase, appears to me to be, if not
incredible, still greatly in want of evidence.