United States or Nepal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Swan, who was missionary for many years in the Congo Free State, thus describes the custom: 'If I were to ask the Yeke people why they do not eat zebra flesh, they would reply, 'Chijila, i.e., 'It is a thing to which we have an antipathy; or better, 'It is one of the things which our fathers taught us not to eat. So it seems the word 'Bashilang' means 'the people who have an antipathy to the leopard; the 'Bashilamba, 'those who have an antipathy to the dog, and the 'Bashilanzefu, 'those who have an antipathy to the elephant. In other words, the members of these stocks refuse to eat their totems, the zebra, the leopard, or the elephant, from which they take their names.
'The fire totem, we are told, would thus naturally have become the god of the Indians. 'We are told' where, and by whom? Not a hint is given on the subject, so we must leave the doctrine of fire totems to its mysterious discoverer. Who are the 'others' who speak of a Greek 'culture-hero' by the impossibly fantastic name of 'a fire totem'? Prometheus Mr.
The worship of animals has been known in many countries; but in Egypt it was maintained to a later pitch of civilisation than elsewhere, and the mixture of such a primitive system with more elevated beliefs seemed as strange to the Greek as it does to us. The original motive was a kinship of animals with man, much like that underlying the system of totems.
In Africa the partially civilized peoples, such as the Baganda and adjacent tribes in the east, and Yoruba, Dahomi, and Ashanti in the west, have fairly well-developed religious organizations, in which totems play a subordinate part.
Of the gods named on inscriptions nearly all are identified with Mercury, Mars, or Apollo. The gods who came to be regarded as culture-deities appear from their names to be of various origins: some are humanised totems, others are in origin deities of vegetation or local natural phenomena.
We may compare with these the Melanesian and Samoan supernatural beings who are incarnate in animal forms and are at the same time originators of civilization. These zoömorphic beings are not necessarily totems, as in Australia; outside of the Arunta it does not appear that totems as such are ever regarded as creators they are ancestors, but at that point their function appears to cease.
At the stage of evolution in which the belief in transmigration arose many animals were the object of genuine respect because of the virtues of courage, etc., which were manifested by them; or because of the position they occupied as totems. Consequently no loss of status was involved when the soul transmigrated from a human to an animal form. No notion of punishment was involved in the belief.
Amongst other totems were once the Bralgah, Native Companion, and Dibbee, a sort of sandpiper, but their kins are quite extinct as far as our blacks are concerned; the birds themselves are still plentiful.
But I have since found that it is so widely spread, and is told in so many different forms, and is so deeply connected with tribal traditions and totems, that there is now no doubt in my mind that it is at least pre-Columbian. Another and a very curious version of this story was obtained by Mrs. W. Wallace Brown, who has been the chief discoverer of curious Indian lore among the Passamaquoddies.
It would be childish to talk of 'Totemism' in North America, 'Kobongism' in Australia, 'Pacarissaism' in the realm of the Incas: totems, kobongs, and pacarissas all amounting to the same thing, except in one point.
Word Of The Day