Another case of parallelism is the recurring tendency to write syllabically instead of alphabetically. The Hindu inclination in this direction is discussed below (§ [146]). That the phonetic symbols of rebus systems should be largely syllabic is small wonder, for they are pictures of things named with whole words. But the Hindu script was derived from a Semitic letter alphabet, and its essentially syllabic nature thus represents a reversion. The Japanese in adding 47 purely phonetic characters to the Chinese ideograms in order to express grammatical elements, proper names, and the like in their speech, denoted a syllable by each character. A third as many consonant and vowel signs would have answered the same purpose. When Sequoya the Cherokee devised an alphabet for his people in order to equate them with the whites, he incorporated the forms of a number of the English letters, but the values of all his signs were syllabic. The same holds of the West African Vei writing invented in the nineteenth century by a native. He had had enough mission schooling to be stimulated by the idea of writing, but “instinctively” fell back on syllable signs even though this necessitated two hundred different characters.
There is an evident psychological reason for the uniformity of these endeavors: we image words, in fact produce them, in syllables, not in sounds. Any one, in slow speech, tends to syllabify, whereas few wholly illiterate people can be induced without patient training to utter the separate consonants and vowels of a word, even for the purpose of teaching a foreigner.
This case of parallelism rests, therefore, on a psychological fact of apperception. But it was the “accidents” of culture, not innate psychology, that determined the particular symbols, and their values, chosen by the Hindus, Japanese, Cherokee, and Vei, with the result that in these symbols there is no specific similarity.
106. Time Reckoning
Still another case of primary parallelism is provided by the Maya-Aztec system of time denotation by coupling two series of symbols in an overlapping system of permutations, as described below (§ [197]). This is as if we denoted the successive days of the year 1 January, 2 February, 3 March, and so on, until, having come to 12 December we went on 13 January, 14 February, and so once more around until 31 July was reached, when the next days would be 1 August and 2 September instead of February 1 and 2. Cumbersome and strange as this system appears, an exact parallel to it in principle was devised by the Hellenistic philosophers when they coupled the twenty-four hours of the day with the seven planets in a 168-hour cycle which gave the order and names to the days of the week (§ [124]). A third case occurs in China where ten “celestial stems” and twelve “terrestrial branches” were permutated to form a sixty year chronological cycle.[16] All three of these devices are based on the same mathematical principle and serve the same end of time reckoning. But their content and result is different. The Greeks combined 24 with 7, the Chinese 12 with 10, the Mayas 13 with 20 and 260 with 365; and the periods treated ranged from hours to years.
These cases of primary parallelism allow the inference that there are certain inherent tendencies of the human mind in certain directions, such as operation in rebus reading, syllabic writing, reckoning by least common multiples. Here, then, is a seeming approach for a definite psychological interpretation of the history of civilization. Yet the results of such a method of attack must not be overestimated. The generic manner of culture in these several instances is indeed uniform enough to permit the conclusion that it springs from a uniform impulse or bent of the mind. But all the particular, concrete content of these cultural manifestations is as diverse as their historical origins are separate; which means that psychology may explain what is psychological in the cases, but that a larger cultural constituent remains over before which the generically valid principles of psychology are ineffective as explanations. As in the case of the influence of physical environment it might be said that psychological factors provide the limiting conditions of cultural phenomena.
107. Scale and Pitch of Pan’s Pipes
A startling parallelism has been demonstrated between the Pan’s pipes of the Solomon islands in Melanesia and those of the northwest Brazilian Indians. The odd pipes differ, each from the next, by the interval of a fourth. The even pipes give notes half-way in pitch between the adjacent odd ones, and thus form another “circle of fourths.” But the similarity does not end here. The absolute pitch of the examined instruments from Melanesia and Brazil is the same. Thus, the vibration rates in successive pipes are 557 and 560.5; 651 and 651; 759 and 749; 880 and 879! This is so close a coincidence as to seem at first sight beyond the bounds of accidental convergence. The data have in fact been offered, and in some quarters accepted, as evidence of a historical connection between the western Pacific and South America. Yet the connection would have had to be ancient, since no memory of it remains nor is it supported by resemblances in race, speech, nor anything obvious in culture. The instruments are perishable. Primitive people, working by rule of thumb, would be unable to produce an instrument of given absolute pitch except by matching it against another, and perhaps not then. Moreover, it is not known that absolute pitch is of the least concern to them. It is therefore incredible that this correspondence rests on any ancient diffusion: there must be an error in the record somewhere, or the one accident in a million has happened in the particular instruments examined.
The identity of scale or intervals however remains, and may be a true case of parallelism. Only, as usual, it boils down to a rather simple matter. The circles of fourths evidently originate in the practice, in both regions, of overblowing the pipes. This produces over-tones; of which the second, the “third partial tone,” is the fifth above the octave of the fundamental, so that successive notes in either the odd or even series of pipes, would, on the octave being disallowed, differ by fourths. The basis of the resemblance, then, is a physical law of sound. The cultural similarity shrinks to the facts of pipes in series, the use of overblown tones, and the intercalating odd-even series. Even these resemblances are striking, and more specific than many cited cases of parallelism. In fact, were they supported by enough resemblances in other aspects of culture, they would go far to compel belief in actual connections between Melanesia and Brazil.