Andrew Lang - The Secret of the Totem

I am ready to allow that the Kandri ceremony, a symbol of recognised union, like our wedding ring, or the exchanged garlands of the Indian Ghandarva rite, constitutes, in a sense, marriage, or a qualified union recognised by public opinion. But it is a form of union which is arranged subsequent to the Tippa Malku ceremony of permanent betrothal and wedlock. Moreover, it is, without a shadow of doubt, subsequent in time and in evolution to the "specialising" of one woman to one man in the Tippa Malku arrangement. That arrangement is demonstrably more primitive than Pirrauru , for Pirrauru is unthinkable, except as a later (and isolated) custom in modification of Tippa Malku .

This can easily be proved. On Mr. Howitt's theory, "group marriage" (I prefer to say "status marriage") came next after promiscuity. All persons legally intermarriageable ( Noa ), under phratry law, were originally, he holds, ipso facto , married. Consequently the Kandri custom could not make them more married than they then actually were. In no conceivable way could it widen the area of their matrimonial comforts, unless it enabled them to enjoy partners who were not Noa , not legally intermarriageable with them. But this the Kandri ceremony does not do. All that it does is to permit certain persons who are already Tippa Malku (wedded) to each other, to acquire legal paramours in certain other wedded or Tippa Malku women, and in men either married or bachelors. Thus, except as a legalised modification of individual Tippa Malku , Pirrauru is impossible, and its existence is unthinkable. 56 56 Will any one say, originally all Noa people were actual husbands and wives to each other? Then the Kandri ceremony and Pirrauru were devised to limit Tom, Dick, and Harry, &c., to Jane, Mary, and Susan, &c., all these men being Pirrauru to all these women, and vice versa . Next, Tippa Malku was devised, limiting Jane to Tom, but Pirrauru was retained, to modify that limitation. Anybody is welcome to this mode of making Pirrauru logically thinkable, without prior Tippa Malku : if he thinks that the arrangement is logically thinkable, which I do not.

Pirrauru is a modification of marriage ( Tippa Malku ), Tippa Malku is not a modification of "group marriage." If it were, a Tippa Malku husband, "specialising" (as Mr. Howitt says) a woman to himself, would need to ask the leave of his fellows, who are Noa to his intended fiancée . 57 57 Or his seniors would hare to ask it. But his kin could not possess the tight to betroth him before kinship was recognised, which, before marriage existed, it could not be. The reverse is the case. A man cannot take his Pirrauru woman away from her Tippa Malku husband "unless by his consent, excepting at certain ceremonial times" – feasts, in fact, of license. Pirrauru secures the domestic peace, more or less, of the seniors, by providing the young men (who otherwise would be wifeless and desperate) with legalised lemans. By giving these Pirrauru "in commendation" to the young men, older men increase their property and social influence. What do the Tippa Malku husbands say to this arrangement?

As for "group" marriage, there is nothing of the kind; no group marries another group, the Pirrauru literally heap hot coals on each other if they suspect that their mate is taking another of the "group" as Pirrauru . The jealous, at feasts of license, are strangled ( Nulina ). The Rev. Otto Siebert, a missionary among the Dieri, praises Pirrauru for "its earnestness in regard to morality." One does not quite see that hiring out one's paramours, who are other men's wives, to a third set of men is earnestly moral, or that jealousy, checked by strangling in public, by hot coals in private, is edifying, but Pirrauru is not "group marriage." No pre-existing group is involved. Pirrauru may (if they like jealousy and hot coals) live together in a group, or the men and women may often live far remote from each other, and meet only at bean-feasts.

You may call Pirrauru a form of "marriage," if you like, but, as a later modification of a prior Tippa Malku wedlock, it cannot be cited as a proof of a yet more pristine status-marriage of all male to all female intermarriageable persons, which supposed state of affairs is called "group marriage." 58 58 I have here had the advantage of using a MS. note by Mr. N. W. Thomas.

If Pirrauru were primitive, it might be looked for among these southern and eastern tribes which, with the pristine social organisation of the Urabunna and their congeners, lack the more recent institutions of circumcision, subincision, totemic magic, possess the All Father belief, but not the belief in prehuman predecessors, or, at least, in their constant reincarnation. (This last is not a Dieri belief.) But among these primitive south-east tribes, Pirrauru is no more found than subincision. Nor is it found among the Arunta and the northern tribes. It is an isolated "sport" among the Dieri, Urabunna, and their congeners. Being thus isolated, Pirrauru cannot claim to be a necessary step in evolution from "group marriage" to "individual marriage." It may, however, though the point is uncertain, prevail, or have prevailed, "among all the tribes between Port Lincoln and the Yerkla-mining at Eucla," that is, wherever the Dieri and Urabunna phratry names, Matteri

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Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 41. 1904.

Cf. for example Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia , p. 26. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia , pp. 88, 89.

Howitt, ut supra , pp. 511, 513.

Hale, U.S. Exploring Expedition , p. 410. 1846.

Howitt, ut supra , p. 89.

Op. cit., p. 89.

There are exceptions, or at least one exception is known to the rule of animal names for phratries, a point to which we shall return. Dr. Roth ( N.W. Central Queensland Aborigines , p. 56) suggests that the phratry names Wutaru and Pakuta mean One and Two (cf. p. 26). For Wutaru and Yungaru, however, interpretations indicating names of animals are given, diversely, by Mr. Bridgman and Mr. Chatfield, Kamilaroi and Kurnai , pp. 40, 41.

That reckoning descent in the female line, among totemists , is earlier than reckoning in the male line, Mr. Howitt, Mr. Tylor, Dr. Durkheim, and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, with Mr. J. G. Frazer, till recently, are agreed. Starcke says "usually the female line only appears in connection with the Kobong (totem) groups," and he holds the eccentric opinion that totems are relatively late, and that the tribes with none are the more primitive! ( The Primitive Family , p. 26, 1896.) This writer calls Mr. Howitt "a missionary."