Mr. Frazer on Animals in Greek Religion
In The Golden Bough (ii. 37) Mr. Frazer, whose superior knowledge and acuteness I am pleased to confess, has a theory different from that which I (following McLennan) propounded before The Golden Bough appeared. Greece had a bull-shaped Dionysus. [{83a}] ‘There is left no room to doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival, his worshippers believed that they were killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.’ [{83b}] Mr. Frazer concludes that there are two possible explanations of Dionysus in his bull aspect. (1) This was an expression of his character as a deity of vegetation, ‘especially as the bull is a common embodiment of the corn-spirit in Northern Europe.’ [{84a}] (2) The other possible explanation ‘appears to be the view taken by Mr. Lang, who suggests that the bull-formed Dionysus “had either been developed out of, or had succeeded to, the worship of a bull-totem.”’ [{84b}]
Now, anthropologists are generally agreed, I think, that occasional sacrifices of and communion in the flesh of the totem or other sacred animals do occur among totemists. [{84c}] But Mr. Frazer and I both admit, and indeed are eager to state publicly, that the evidence for sacrifice of the totem, and communion in eating him, is very scanty. The fact is rather inferred from rites among peoples just emerging from totemism (see the case of the Californian buzzard, in Bancroft) than derived from actual observation. On this head too much has been taken for granted by anthropologists. But I learn that direct evidence has been obtained, and is on the point of publication. The facts I may not anticipate here, but the evidence will be properly sifted, and bias of theory discounted.
To return to my theory of the development of Dionysus into a totem, or of his inheritance of the rites of a totem, Mr. Frazer says, ‘Of course this is possible, but it is not yet certain that Aryans ever had totemism.’ [{84d}] Now, in writing of the mouse, I had taken care to observe that, in origin, the mouse as a totem need not have been Aryan, but adopted. People who think that the Aryans did not pass through a stage of totemism, female kin, and so forth, can always fall back (to account for apparent survivals of such things among Aryans) on ‘Pre-Aryan conquered peoples,’ such as the Picts. Aryans may be enticed by these bad races and become Pictis ipsis Pictiores.