Special Respect Paid to the Totem.
Next come instances of special respect paid to the totem. Some idea of the kind may be partly the origin of the worship of the cow and the serpent. Dr. Ball describes how some Khândhs refused to carry the skin of a leopard because it was their totem.[21] The Kadanballis of Kanara will not eat the Sâmbhar stag, the Bargaballis the Barga deer, and the Kuntiballis the woodcock. The Vaydas of Cutch worship the monkey god whom they consider to be their ancestor, and to please him in their marriage ceremony, the bridegroom goes to the bride’s house dressed up as a monkey and there leaps about in monkey fashion.[22] It is possibly from regard to the totem that the Parihâr Râjputs of Râjputâna will not eat the wild boar, but they have now invented a legend that one of their princes went into a river while pursuing a boar and was cured of a loathsome disease.[23] There is a Celtic legend in which a child is turned into a pig, and Gessa is laid on Diarmid not to kill a pig, as it has the same span of life as himself.[24]
The Bengal Bâwariyas take the heron as their emblem, and must not eat it.[25] The Orissa Kumhârs abstain from eating, and even worship the Sâl fish, because the rings on its scales resemble the wheel which is the symbol of their craft.[26] The peacock is a totem of the Jâts and of the Khândhs, as the Yizidis worship the Tâous, a half mythical peacock, which has been connected with the Phœnix which Herodotus saw in Egypt.[27] The Parhaiyas have a tradition that their tribe used to hold sheep and deer sacred, and used the dung of these animals instead of cowdung to plaster their floors. So the Kariyas do not eat the flesh of sheep, and may not even use a woollen rug. The same prohibition of meats appears to be a survival of totemism in Arabia.[28]
The Devak.
One of the best illustrations of this form of totemism is that of the Devak or family guardian gods of Berâr and Bombay. Before concluding an alliance, the Kunbi and other Berâr tribes look to the Devak, which literally means the deity worshipped at marriage ceremonies; the fact being that certain families hold in honour particular trees and plants, and at the marriage ceremony branches of these trees are set up in the house. It is said that a betrothal, in every other respect irreproachable, will be broken off if the two houses are discovered to pay honour to the same tree, in other words if they worship the same family totem and hence must belong to one and the same endogamous group.[29]
The same custom prevails in Bombay. “The usual Devaks are some animals, like the elephant, stag, deer, or cock, or some tree, as the Jambul, Ber, Mango, or Banyan. The Devak is the ancestor or the head of the house, and so families which have the same guardian do not intermarry. If the Devak be an animal, its flesh is not eaten; but if it be a fruit tree, the use of the fruit generally is not forbidden, though some families abstain from eating the fruit of the tree which forms their Devak or badge.”[30] Mr. Campbell gives numerous examples of these family totems, such as wheat bread, a shell, an earthen pot, an axe, a Banyan tree, an elephant. Oil-makers have as their totem an iron bar, or an oil-mill; scent-makers use five piles, each of five earthen pots, with a lighted lamp in the middle. The Bangars’ Devak is a conch-shell, that of the Pardesi Râjputs an earthen pot filled with wheat, and so on. Many of these are probably tribal or occupational fetishes, of which instances will be given in another place.