[CHAPTER X]
MATRIMONIAL CLASSES
Matrimonial classes—Their working described—Prevent persons of successive generations from intermarrying—Child and parent unions forbidden in tribes without matrimonial classes—Obscurity caused by ignorance of philology—Meanings of names of classes usually unknown—Mystic names for common objects—Cases in which meaning of class names is known—They are names of animals—Variations in evidence—Names of classes from the centre to Gulf of Carpentaria—They appear to be Cloud, Eagle Hawk (?), Crow, Kangaroo Rat—Uncertainty of these etymologies—One totem to one totem marriages—Obscurity of evidence—Perhaps the so-called "totems" are matrimonial classes—Meaning of names forgotten—Or names tabued—The classes a deliberately framed institution—Unlike phratries and totem kins—Theory of Herr Cunow—Lack of linguistic evidence for his theory.
The nature of the sets called Matrimonial Classes has already been explained (Chapter I.). In its simplest form, as among the Kamilaroi, who reckon descent in the female line, and among the adjacent tribes to a great distance, there exist, within the phratries, what Mr. Frazer has called "sub-phratries," what Mr. Howitt calls "sub-classes," in our term "matrimonial classes," In these tribes each child is born into its mother's phratry and totem of course, but not into its mother's "sub-phratry," "sub-class," or "matrimonial class." There being two of these divisions in each phratry, the child belongs to that division, in its mother's phratry, which is not its mother's. That a man of class Muri, in Dilbi phratry, marries a woman of class Kumbo, in Kupathin phratry, and their children, keeping to the mother's phratry and totem, belong to the class in Kupathin phratry which is not hers, that is, belong to class Ipai, and so on. Children and parents are never of the same class, and never can intermarry. The class names eternally differentiate each generation from its predecessor, and eternally forbid their intermarriage.
But child-parent intermarriages are just as unlawful, by custom, among primitive tribes like the Barkinji, who have female reckoning of descent, but no matrimonial classes at all. By totem law, among the Barkinji, a man might marry his daughter, who is neither of his phratry nor totem, but he never does. Yet nobody suggests that the Barkinji once had classes and class law, but dropped the classes, while retaining one result of that organisation—no parent and child marriage. The classes are found in Australia only, and tend, in the centre, north, and west, under male descent, to become more numerous and complex, eight classes being usual from the centre to the sea in the north.
One of the chief obstacles to the understanding of the classes and of their origin, is the obscurity which surrounds the meaning of their names, in most cases. Explorers like Messrs. Spencer and Gillen mention no instance in which the natives of Northern and Central Australia could, or at all events would, explain the sense of their class names.
In these circumstances, as in the interpretation of the divine names of Sanskrit and Greek mythology, we naturally turn to comparative philology for a solution of the problem. But, in the case of Greek and Sanskrit divine names, say, Athênê, Dionysus, Artemis, Indra, Poseidon, comparative philology almost entirely failed. Each scholar found an "equation," an interpretation, which satisfied himself, but was disputed by his brethren. The divine names, with a rare exception or two, remained impenetrably obscure.
If this was the state of things when divine names of peoples with a copious written literature were concerned; if scholars armed with "the weapons of precision" of philological science were baffled; it is easy to see how perilous is the task of interpreting the class names of Australian savages. Their dialects, leaving no written monuments, have manifestly fluctuated under the operation of laws of change, and these laws have been codified by no Grimm.