Phratry
| Dilby | Jeune. Old. |
Phratry
| Kupathin | Vieux. Young. |
Meanwhile, in our linguistic darkness, we are only informed with assurance that, in two cases, the class names denote animals, while we guess that this may have been so more generally.
According to Mr. Howitt, "in such tribes as the Urabunna, a man, say, of class" (phratry) A, is restricted to women of certain totems, or rather "his totem inter-marries only with certain totems of the other class" (phratry).[12] But neither in their first nor second volume do Messrs. Spencer and Gillen give definite information on this obscure point. They think that it "appears to be the case" that, among the northern Urabunna, "men of one totem can only marry women of another special totem."[13] This would seem prima facie to be an almost impossible and perfectly meaningless restriction on marriage. Among tribes so very communicative as the dusky friends of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, it is curious that definite information on the facts cannot be obtained.
Mr. Howitt, however, adds that "one totem to one totem" marriage is common in many tribes with phratries but without matrimonial classes.[14] Among these are some tribes of the Mukwara-Kilpara phratry names. Now this rule is equivalent in bearing to the rule of the phratries, it is a dichotomous division. But the phratries contain many totems; the rule here described limits marriage to one totem kin with one totem kin, in each phratry. What can be the origin, sense, and purpose of this, unless the animal-named divisions in the phratry called "totems" by our informants, are really not totem kins but "sub-phratries" of animal name, each sub-phratry containing several totems? This was Mr. Frazer's theory, based on such facts or statements as were accessible in 1887.[15] There might conceivably be, in some tribes, four phratries, or more, submerged, and, as bearing animal names, these might be mistaken by our informants for mere totem kins. With development of social law, such animal-named sub-phratries might be utilised for the mechanism of the matrimonial classes. In many tribes the meaning of their names, like the meaning of too many phratry names, might be forgotten with efflux of time.
Or again, when classes were instituted, four then existing totem names—two for each phratry—might be tabued or reserved, and made to act exclusively as class names, while new names might be given to the actual animals, or other objects, which were god-parents to the totem kins. Such tabus and substitutions of names are authenticated in other cases among savages. Thus Dr. Augustine Henry, F.L.S., tells me that, among the Lolos of Yunnan, he observed the existence of kinships, each of one name. It is not usual to marry within the name; the prohibition exists, but is decadent If a person wishes to know the kin-name of a stranger, he asks: "What is it that you do not touch?" The reply is "Orange" or "Monkey," or the like; but the name is not that applied to orange or monkey in everyday life. It is an archaic word of the same significance, used only in this connection with the tabued name-giving object of the kin. The names of the Australian matrimonial classes appear to be tabued or archaic names of animals and other objects, as we have shown that some phratry names also are.
For practical purposes, as we have shown, any four different class-titles would serve the turn, but pre-existing law, in phratries and totems, had mainly, for the reasons already offered, used animal and plant names, and the custom was, perhaps, kept up in giving such names to the new classes of seniority. Beyond these suggestions we dare not go, in the present state of our information.
The matrimonial classes are a distinct, deliberately imposed institution.