If I must offer a guess, it is that Greeks, and Indians of India, inherited a very ordinary savage idea. The gods in savage myths are usually beasts. As beasts they beget anthropomorphic offspring. This is the regular rule in totemism. In savage myths we are not told ‘a god’ (Apollo, or Zeus, or Poseidon) ‘put on beast shape and begat human sons and daughters’ (Helen, the Telmisseis, and so on). The god in savage myths was a beast already, though he could, of course, shift shapes like any ‘medicine-man,’ or modern witch who becomes a hare. This is not the exception but the rule in savage mythology. Anyone can consult my Myth, Ritual, and Religion, or Mr. Frazer’s work Totemism, for abundance of evidence. To Loki, a male god, prosecuting his amours as a female horse, I have already alluded, and in M. R. R. give cases from the Satapatha Brahmana.
The Saranyu-Erinnys myth dates, I presume, from this savage state of fancy; but why the story occurred both in Greece and India, I protest that I cannot pretend to explain, except on the hypothesis that the ancestors of Greek and Vedic peoples once dwelt together, had a common stock of savage fables, and a common or kindred language. After their dispersion, the fables admitted discrepancies, as stories in oral circulation occasionally do. This is the only conjecture which I feel justified in suggesting to account for the resemblances and incongruities between the myths of the mare Demeter-Erinnys and the mare Saranyu.
TOTEMISM
Totemism
To the strange and widely diffused institution of ‘Totemism’ our author often returns. I shall deal here with his collected remarks on the theme, the more gladly as the treatment shows how very far Mr. Max Müller is from acting with a shadow of unfairness when he does not refer to special passages in his opponent’s books. He treats himself and his own earlier works in the same fashion, thereby, perhaps, weakening his argument, but also demonstrating his candour, were any such demonstration required.
On totems he opens (i. 7)—
‘When we come to special cases we must not imagine that much can be gained by using such general terms as Animism, Totemism, Fetishism, &c., as solvents of mythological problems. To my mind, all such general terms, not excluding even Darwinism or Puseyism, seem most objectionable, because they encourage vague thought, vague praise, or vague blame.
‘It is, for instance, quite possible to place all worship of animal gods, all avoidance of certain kinds of animal food, all adoption of animal names as the names of men and families, under the wide and capacious cover of totemism. All theriolatry would thus be traced back to totemism. I am not aware, however, that any Egyptologists have adopted such a view to account for the animal forms of the Egyptian gods. Sanskrit scholars would certainly hesitate before seeing in Indra a totem because he is called vrishabha, or bull, or before attempting to explain on this ground the abstaining from beef on the part of orthodox Hindus [i. 7].’
Totemism Defined
I think I have defined totemism, [{71}] and the reader may consult Mr. Frazer’s work on the subject, or Mr. MacLennan’s essays, or ‘Totemism’ in the Encyclopædia Britannica. However, I shall define totemism once more. It is a state of society and cult, found most fully developed in Australia and North America, in which sets of persons, believing themselves to be akin by blood, call each such set by the name of some plant, beast, or other class of objects in nature. One kin may be wolves, another bears, another cranes, and so on. Each kin derives its kin-name from its beast, plant, or what not; pays to it more or less respect, usually abstains from killing, eating, or using it (except in occasional sacrifices); is apt to claim descent from or relationship with it, and sometimes uses its effigy on memorial pillars, carved pillars outside huts, tattooed on the skin, and perhaps in other ways not known to me. In Australia and North America, where rules are strict, a man may not marry a woman of his own totem; and kinship is counted through mothers in many, but not in all, cases. Where all these notes are combined we have totemism. It is plain that two or three notes of it may survive where the others have perished; may survive in ritual and sacrifice, [{72a}] and in bestial or semi-bestial gods of certain nomes, or districts, in ancient Egypt; [{72b}] in Pictish names; [{72c}] in claims of descent from beasts, or gods in the shape of beasts; in the animals sacred to gods, as Apollo or Artemis, and so on. Such survivals are possible enough in evolution, but the evidence needs careful examination. Animal attributes and symbols and names in religion are not necessarily totemistic. Mr. Max Müller asks if ‘any Egyptologists have adopted’ the totem theory. He is apparently oblivious of Professor Sayce’s reference to a prehistoric age, ‘when the religious creed of Egypt was still totemism.’