Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum,
Cum faber incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum,
Maluit esse deum.
Horace, Sat. I. viii. 1–3.
“A totem is a class of material objects, which a savage regards with superstitious respect, believing that there exists between them and every member of the class an intimate and altogether special relation.”[1] As distinguished from a fetish, a totem is never an isolated individual, but always a class of objects, generally a class of animals or plants, rarely a class of inanimate objects, very rarely a class of artificial objects.
Origin of Totemism.
As regards the origin of totemism great diversity of opinion exists. Mr. Herbert Spencer considers that “it arose from a misinterpretation of nicknames; savages first took their names from natural objects, and then confusing these objects with their ancestors of the same name, paid the same respect to the material totem as they were in the habit of doing to their own ancestors.”[2] The objection to this is, as Mr. Frazer shows, that it attributes to verbal misunderstandings far more influence than, in spite of the comparative mythologists, they ever seem to have exercised.
Sir J. Lubbock derives the idea from the practice of naming persons and families after animals, but “in dropping the intermediate links of ancestor-worship and verbal misunderstanding, he has stripped the theory of all that lent it even an air of plausibility.”[3]
Recent inquiries in the course of the Ethnographical Survey of Bengal and the North-Western Provinces enable us perhaps to approach to a solution of the problem.