Blood of circumcision and subincision; uses made of it.
Anodynes based on the principle of homoeopathic magic.
Further, it is worth while to notice some uses made of human blood in connexion with the ceremonies of circumcision and subincision, which all lads of the Central Australian tribes have to undergo before they are recognised as full-grown men. For example, the blood drawn from them at these operations is caught in a hollow shield and taken to certain kinsmen or kinswomen, who drink it or have it smeared on their breasts and foreheads.[310] The motive of this practice is not mentioned, but on the analogy of the preceding customs we may conjecture that it is to strengthen the relatives who partake of the blood. This interpretation is confirmed by an analogous use in Queensland of the blood drawn from a woman at the operation which in the female sex corresponds to subincision in the male; for that blood, mixed with another ingredient, is kept and drunk as a medicine by any sick person who may be in the camp at the time.[311] Moreover, it is corroborated by a similar use of the foreskin which has been removed at circumcision; for among the southern Arunta this piece of skin is given to the younger brother of the circumcised lad and he swallows {p93} it, in the belief that it will make him grow strong and tall.[312] In the tribe at Fowler’s Bay, who practise both circumcision and subincision, the severed foreskin is swallowed by the operator,[313] perhaps in order to strengthen the lad sympathetically. In some tribes of North-West Australia it is the lad himself who swallows his own foreskin mixed with kangaroo flesh; while in other tribes of the same region the severed portion is taken by the relations and deposited under the bark of a large tree.[314] The possible significance of this latter treatment of the foreskin will appear presently. Among the Kolkodoons of Cloniny, in Northern Queensland, the foreskin is strung on twine made of human hair, and is then tied round the mother’s neck “to keep off the devil.”[315] In the Warramunga tribe the old men draw blood from their own subincised urethras in presence of the lads who a few days before have undergone the operation of subincision. The object of this custom, we are told, is to promote the healing of the young men’s wounds and to strengthen them generally.[316] It does not appear that the blood of the old men is drunk by or smeared upon the youths; seemingly it is supposed to benefit them sympathetically without direct contact. A similar action of blood at a distance may partly explain a very singular custom observed by the Arunta women at the moment when a lad is being subincised. The operation is performed at a distance from, but within hearing of, the women’s camp. When the boy is seized in order to be operated on, the men of the {p94} party raise a loud shout of “Pirr-rr.” At that sound the women immediately assemble in their camp, and the boy’s mother cuts gashes across the stomach and shoulders of the boy’s sisters, her own elder sisters, an old woman who furnished the boy with a sacred fire at circumcision, and all the women whose daughters he would be allowed to marry; and while she cuts she imitates the sound made by the men who are subincising her son. These cuts generally leave behind them a definite series of scars; they have a name of their own (urpma), and are often represented by definite lines on the bull-roarers.[317] What the exact meaning of this extraordinary ceremony may be, I cannot say; but perhaps one of its supposed effects may be to relieve the boy’s pain by transferring it to his women-kind. In like manner, when the Warramunga men are fighting each other with blazing torches, the women burn themselves with lighted twigs in the belief that by so doing they prevent the men from inflicting serious injuries on each other.[318] The theory further receives some support from certain practices formerly observed by the natives inhabiting the coast of New South Wales. Before lads had their noses bored, the medicine men threw themselves into contortions on the ground, and after pretending to suffer great pain were delivered of bones, which were to be used at the ceremony of nose-boring. The lads were told that the more the medicine men suffered, the less pain they themselves would feel.[319] Again, among the same natives, when a woman was in labour, a female friend would tie one end of a cord round the sufferer’s neck and rub her own gums with the other end till they bled,[320] probably in order to draw away the pain from the mother to herself. For a similar reason, perhaps, in Samoa, while blood was being drawn from a virgin bride, her friends, young and old, beat their heads with stones till they bled.[321]
Fertilising virtue attributed to blood of circumcision and subincision.
Fertilising virtue attributed to foreskin.
Belief of the Central Australian tribes in the reincarnation of the dead.
Lastly, in some tribes the blood shed at the circumcision {p95} and subincision of lads is collected in paper bark and buried in the bank of a pool where water-lilies grow; this is supposed to promote the growth of the lilies.[322] Needless to say, this rude attempt at horticulture is not prompted by a simple delight in contemplating these beautiful bright blue flowers which bloom in the Australian wilderness, decking the surface of pools by countless thousands. The savages feed on the stems and roots of the lilies; that is why they desire to cultivate them.[323] In this last practice a fertilising virtue is clearly attributed to the blood of circumcision and subincision. The Anula tribe, who among others observe the custom, obviously ascribe the same virtue to the severed foreskin, for they bury it also by the side of a pool.[324] The Warramunga entertain the same opinion of this part of the person, for they place the foreskin in a hole made by a witchetty grub in a tree, believing that it will cause a plentiful supply of these edible grubs.[325] Among the Unmatjera the custom is somewhat different, but taken in connexion with their traditions it is even more significant. The boy puts his severed foreskin on a shield, covers it up with a broad spear-thrower, and then carries it in the darkness of night, lest any woman should see what he is doing, to a hollow tree in which he deposits it. He tells no one where he has hidden it, except a man who stands to him in the relation of father’s sister’s son. Nowadays there is no special relation between the boy and the tree, but formerly the case seems to have been different. For according to {p96} tradition the early mythical ancestors of the tribe placed their foreskins in their nanja trees, that is, in their local totem centres, the trees from which their spirits came forth at birth and to which they would return after death.[326] If, as seems highly probable, such a custom as that recorded by the tradition ever prevailed, its intention could hardly be any other than that of securing the future birth and reincarnation of the owner of the foreskin when he should have died and his spirit returned to its abode in the tree. For among all these Central tribes the belief is firmly rooted that the human soul undergoes an endless series of reincarnations, the living men and women of one generation being nothing but the spirits of their ancestors come to life again, and destined to be themselves reborn in the persons of their descendants. During the interval between two incarnations the souls live in their nanja spots or local totem centres, which are always natural objects such as trees or rocks. Each totem clan has a number of such totem centres scattered over the country. There the souls of the dead men and women of the totem, but of no other, congregate during their disembodied state, and thence they issue and are born again in human form when a favourable opportunity presents itself.[327] It might well be thought that a man’s new birth would be facilitated if, in his lifetime, he could lay up a stock of vital energy for the use of his disembodied spirit after death. That he did, apparently, by detaching a portion of himself, namely the foreskin, and depositing it in his nanja tree, or rock, or whatever it might be.
Circumcision perhaps intended to ensure reincarnation.
Subincision possibly also designed to secure rebirth.
Is it possible that in this belief and this practice we have the long lost key to the meaning of circumcision? In other words, can it be that circumcision was originally intended to ensure the rebirth at some future time of the circumcised man by disposing of the severed portion of his body in such a way as to provide him with a stock of energy on which his disembodied spirit could draw when the critical moment of reincarnation came round? The conjecture is confirmed by the observation that among the Akikuyu of {p97} British East Africa the ceremony of circumcision used to be regularly combined with a graphic pretence of rebirth enacted by the novice.[328] If this should prove to be indeed the clue to the meaning of circumcision, it would be natural to look for an explanation of subincision along the same lines. Now we have seen that the blood of subincision is used both to strengthen relatives and to make water-lilies grow. Hence we may conjecture that the strengthening and fertilising virtue of the blood was applied, like the foreskin at circumcision, to lay up a store of energy in the nanja spot against the time when the man’s feeble ghost would need it. The intention of both ceremonies would thus be to ensure the future reincarnation of the individual by quickening the local totem centre, the home of his disembodied spirit, with a vital portion of himself. That portion, whether the foreskin or the blood, was in a manner seed sown to grow up and provide his immortal spirit with a new body when his old body should have mouldered in the dust.