With these facts in mind such suggestions as an attentive study of vocabularies has disclosed are naturally put forward with a full sense of their uncertainty, they are of a purely tentative nature.

For the Koobaroo (var. Obur) of the Goorgilla set I find in the same group the homophone obur (gidea tree), which is also a totem of the group of tribes in question121. The Wotero of Halifax Bay suggests Wutheru, for which I am unable to find a meaning, unless it be emu, as given by one observer, who however on another occasion gave a different translation. Korkoro in the same set may be the same as korkoren (opossum) of a tribe some 150 miles away122. The muri123 and kubbi of the Kamilaroi and Turribul (?) mean kangaroo and opossum in the latter language, and ibbai means Eaglehawk in Wiraidhuri124. The Kamilaroi bundar (= kangaroo) may give us a clue to the meaning of the Dippil Bundar125; the Kiabara Bulcoin has a homophone in the Peechera tribe, where it means kangaroo; on the Hastings River it means red wallaby. Balcun however means native bear according to Mathew126.

If we turn to the eight-class tribes the results are hardly more striking. The Dieri Pultara, Palyara and Upala127, are homophones of the class names which we have seen as alternative forms; but this very fact makes it certain, or nearly so, that one of the homophones is due to chance coincidence. Bearing in mind that the Arunta alone have the form Bulthara, we may perhaps see in the change undergone by the word in their language the result of attraction, though it must be confessed that the hypothesis is far-fetched in the case of a non-written language. On the other hand it tells against the Palyeri = Palyara equation that the Arunta, who are by far the nearest to the Dieri, use the form Bulthara. The equation Kanunka = Panunga is not backed by any evidence that the p-k change is admissible. Finally three of the four words mentioned seem to be compounded with a suffix; and if this is so it is clearly useless to equate them with words in which this suffix is a component part.

One class name only, Ungilla, is found in the Arunta area itself (and far beyond it, as far as the Gulf of Carpentaria) with the meaning crow128. If we may regard the j and k of the forms jungalla, kungalla, as a prefix, the equation seems justified; otherwise it seems an insuperable difficulty that not the original form of the class name, but the derivative and shortened form is the one to which the equation applies. Our very defective knowledge of the languages of the eight-class tribes makes it possible that when we know more of them other root words may be discovered. At present it can only be said that in very few instances have we either in the four-class or the eight-class areas any warrant for saying that we know the meaning of the class names, much less that we know them to be derived from the names of animals.

One piece of evidence on the subject we need mention only to reject. The Rev. H. Kempe, of the Lutheran Mission among the southern Arunta, has on two occasions stated that the classes in signalling to each other use as their signs the gestures employed to designate animals129. On one occasion however he assigns to the Bunanka class the eaglehawk gesture, on another the lizard gesture; the remaining three, which he added only on the second occasion, were ant, wallaby and eaglehawk. It may be noted that the eaglehawk sign is attributed by him to the two classes which would form the main part of the population of a local group; in the second place all four animals are among the totems of the tribe; it seems therefore probable that Mr Kempe has merely confused the sign made to a man of the given kin with a sign which he supposed to be made to a man of a certain class. If he paid little attention to the subject, and especially if on the second occasion he gained his information at a large tribal meeting, the large number of totems would render it improbable that conflicting evidence would lead him to discover his mistake. If he pursued his enquiries far enough he might, it is true, get more than one sign for a given class; but if he contented himself with asking four men, one of each class, the probability would be that he would get four separate gestures. In any case we have no warrant for arguing that the gesture in any way translates the class name.

CHAPTER VIII.

In dealing with the origin of the classes it is important to bear in mind that they are undoubtedly later than the phratries. This is clear, not only from the considerations urged on p. 71, but also from the fact that the areas covered by the same classes are in the three most important cases immensely larger than any covered by a phratriac system. We may therefore dismiss at the outset Herr Cunow's theory, which makes the classes the original form of organisation.

To explain the origin of the classes, as of the phratries, two kinds of theories have been put forward, which are in this case also classifiable as reformatory and developmental respectively. The former labour under the same disadvantages, so far as they assume that particular marriages were regarded as immoral or objectionable, as do the similar hypotheses of the origin of phratries.

What is the effect of dividing a phratry into two classes? Firstly and most obviously, to reduce by one half the number of women from whom a man may take his spouse. Secondarily, to put in the forbidden class both his mother's generation and his daughters' generation. It must however not be overlooked that it is the whole class of individuals that are thus put beyond his reach and not those only who stand to him in the relation of daughters in the European sense. Now it is certain that the savage of the present day distinguishes blood relationship from tribal relationship; of this there are plenty of examples in Australia itself130. In fact the hypothesis that the introduction of class regulations was due to a desire to prevent the intermarriage of parents and children, more especially of fathers and daughters, the mothers being of course of the same phratries as their sons in the normal tribe, depends for its existence on the assumption that consanguinity was recognised. But it is clearly a clumsy expedient to limit a man's right of choice to the extent we have indicated solely in order to prevent him from marrying his daughter, when the simple prohibition to marry her would, so far as we can see, have been equally effective.

Dr Durkheim has suggested that phratries and classes originated together.

If we start with two exogamous local groups in which the determinant spouse removes, the result is two groups in which both phratries are found, as is evident from the following graphic representation. The two sides represent the local grouping, the letters A and B the phratry names, and m or f male or female; the = denotes marriage, the vertical lines show the children, the brackets show that the person whose symbol is bracketed removes, and the italics that the symbol in question is that of a spouse introduced from without.

We see from this that the alternate generations are in each group A and B, whose spouses are in the same alternation B and A, the male remaining in the group, the female removing in each case, if we assume that the matrilineal kinship is the rule. The permanent members of each group therefore, and in like manner the imported members, are by alternate generations A and B, though of course there is no difference of age actually corresponding to the difference of generation.

By the simple phratry law that A can only marry B, and may marry any B, local group mates are marriageable. The law however which forbids the marriage of phratry mates is on Mr Lang's original theory founded on the prohibition to marry group mates. If we suppose that the primal law or the memory of it continued to work, we have at once a sufficient explanation of the origin of the four-class system. The tribes or nations in which the instinct against intra-group marriage was strong enough to persist as an active principle after the law against intra-phratry marriage had become recognised, may have proceeded to create four classes at a very early stage, while those in whom the feeling for the primal law was less strong adhered to the simple phratry system.

But it is an insuperable objection to this theory that it makes the four-class system originate simultaneously with, or at any rate shortly after, the rise of the phratries. For we cannot suppose that the feeling for the primal law remained dormant for long ages and then suddenly revived. On the other hand we have seen that if the difference in the distribution of the phratry and class names is any guide, a considerable interval must have separated the rise of the one from the rise of the other. Unless therefore it can be shown that some other explanation accounts for the non-coincidence of phratry and class areas, we can hardly accept any explanation of the origin of classes which makes them originate at a period not far removed from the introduction of the phratries.

The fact that a certain number of class names are in character totemic, that is, bear animal names, suggests that the class system may be a development of the totem kins, which in certain cases are grouped within the phratries or otherwise subject to special regulations. In the Urabunna the choice of a man of one totem is said to be limited to women of the right status in a single totem of the opposite phratry. Among the similarly organised Yandairunga the limitation is to certain totems, and Dr Howitt gives other examples of the same order. In the Kongulu tribe these totemic classes seem to have been known by special names. In the Wotjoballuk tribe there are sub-totems, grouped with certain totems, which again seem to be collected into aggregates intermediate between the phratry and the simple totem kin. But it is difficult to see why, if the classes have arisen out of such organisations, there should be found over the great part of Australia four, and only four, classes from which the eight have obviously developed. In any case we have no parallel in these modifications to the alternate generations of the class system.

These find an analogue, according to an old report, not subsequently confirmed, in the Wailwun tribe, where, however, it is supplementary to the classes. We are told that there are four totems in this tribe, though this does not agree with other reports, and that they are found in both phratries indiscriminately. A woman's children do not take her totem, nor, apparently, the totem of her brother, who belongs to a different kin, but are of the remaining two totems according to their sex131. From this it follows that the totems alternate, precisely as do the classes; the difference in the arrangement consists in the distinction of totem falling to males and females, which has no analogue in the class system. But such arrangements, even if we may take them as established facts, are clearly of secondary origin, and can hardly give a clue to the origin of the classes.

There is an important difference between the four-class and eight-class organisations in respect of the totem kins. In the former systems the kins are almost invariably divided between the phratries; but within them they do not belong to either of the classes, though certain classes claim them132; but on the contrary, of necessity are divided between them. In the eight-class tribes this seems to be the case in some tribes also; in others, like the Arunta, abnormalities of development cause the totems to fall in both phratries. But in the Mara, the Mayoo, and the Warramunga133 they fall, or are stated to fall, in the first case into groups according to the four classes, in the other cases according to the "couples," i.e. the two classes which stand in the relation of parent and child (the son of Panunga is Appungerta, his son is again Panunga, and so for the other pairs). This suggests that totemism has something to do with the division of the four classes into eight, as was pointed out by Dr Durkheim in 1905134. His argument is that as long as descent was in the female line, the rule was that a man could not marry a woman of his mother's totem. When the change to male descent took place, the mother's totem, as we see by actual examples135, did not lose the respect which it formerly enjoyed; there is in more than one tribe a tabu of the mother's as well as of the father's totem. That being so, it is natural to suppose that the new marriage organisation according to male descent might be modified to take account of this fact. By dividing the classes and arranging that one member of a couple should be debarred not only from intermarrying with the class of his mother, for which the four-class system also provides, but also from intermarrying with the second member of the same couple too, this result was attained, in the view of Dr Durkheim.

It remains however to be established that this segregation of totems is actually found in the tribes in question. For the Warramunga Spencer and Gillen distinctly state136 that the arrangement is dichotomous, in which case the alleged result would not be brought about. The Anula and Mara are exceptional tribes with direct male descent; it is hardly likely that the eight-class system spread from them. The Mayoo have not yet been reported on by an expert. Finally some of the tribes have not even the dichotomous arrangement of totems but distribute them in both phratries. The basis of the hypothesis, therefore, is hardly established.

Singularly enough, Dr Durkheim137 expresses his adherence to a previous theory of his own as to the method of effecting the change from female to male descent in four-class tribes. This he supposes to have been done by transferring one of the two classes from each phratry to the opposite one; and in the former discussion (Année Soc. V, 82 sq.) he showed that this procedure would result in scattering the totems through both phratries, as we find them to be in the case of the Arunta. It is therefore singular to find that he adheres to this theory when his new hypothesis demands that the totems, so far from being more widely distributed, should be actually confined to the members of one couple. Beyond the Urabunna custom in intertribal marriages, however, which is hardly decisive evidence, there does not appear to be any proof that the transference from one phratry to the other ever took place.

The further support claimed by Dr Durkheim for his hypothesis from the alleged male descent of the totem in tribes where female descent of the class names prevails, rests on too uncertain a basis to make it necessary to deal with it at length; some criticism of the evidence will be found elsewhere.

We have seen above that the Dieri rule is precisely parallel to that of the eight-class tribes in practice; it is however expressed, not by a class system, but by enacting that people standing in a certain degree of kinship or consanguinity shall marry. If Dr Durkheim's theory of the origin of the eight-class system is correct, it should also apply to the Dieri. Now the rule that a man must marry his maternal great-uncle's daughter clearly prevents intermarriage with one of the mother's totem; but this cannot be the object of the rule, for it is prevented already by the phratry system. Dr Durkheim's theory therefore finds no support in the Dieri rule.

On the other hand, unless the totems have been scattered through the phratries since the southern Arunta divided their classes, Dr Durkheim will have difficulty in explaining why a tribe where the totem does not concern marriage at all has found it necessary to split the classes; and that though the child does not take its totem from mother or father.

Herr Cunow has advanced the view that the classes correspond to distinctions of age; but he took as his basis, not the differentia of elder and younger, but the distinction made by the initiation customs, which divide the community, in his view, into three strata—young, adult and old. Into the difficulties created by this theory we need not here enter. Suffice it to say that the theory depends on the supposition that an age-grade had to marry within itself. Now the age-grade is not a fixed body, but is continually changing its personnel; not only so, but it is difficult to see how marriage could take place, given the initiation ceremonies, in any other way; unions of "old men" with adult women apart, which are not, in fact, prohibited, so far as is known, the only marriages possible are those within the adult grade. Although father and son can rarely belong to the adult grade simultaneously, mother and daughter can readily do so. If not, these grades are clearly generation classes, and what Herr Cunow really takes as the basis of his theory is the generation in each family. This can readily be shown by a consideration of the kinship terms.

CHAPTER IX.

Unfortunately but few Australian lists of kinship terms have been drawn up, and the anomalous tribes like the Kurnai have absorbed a large share of attention. It is however possible to give tables for the three classes of tribes with which we have been in the main concerned. Those given are in use among the Wathi-Wathi of Victoria, the Ngerikudi-speaking people of North Queensland and the Arunta138.

Wathi-Wathi Tribe: two-phratry.

Ngerikudi: Four-class.

So far as deficiencies in our information would allow, these tables have been drawn up on corresponding lines, and the first point which strikes us is the great similarity between the three tables, in spite of the apparent wide divergence in the kinship organisation of the tribes. To facilitate comparison the Wathi-Wathi terms have been arranged, not only according to the system in use in the tribe, but in such a way as to show how the terms would be arranged under the four-class system.

Arunta: Eight-class.

In the Wathi-Wathi system, we observe that in each generation there are two groups of males and two of females, corresponding to the two-phratry system, which are distinguished by names differing for each generation. Precisely the same arrangement is found in the four-class tribe. The four-class are therefore simply a systematisation of the terms of kinship in use under the two-phratry system.

Comparing now the eight-class with the four-class system, we do not see at a glance the essential principle of the former. The clue is given by the fact that classes I and IV, II and III in phratry A, I and II, III and IV in phratry B, are what we have termed a couple, that is to say stand in the relation of parent and child alternately. Marriage being between classes of corresponding numbers, it follows that Kumara-Bulthara and Appungerta-Umbitchana are the maternal and paternal grandparents of the man EGO. The grandparents of his wife are in the same classes but with reversal as regards the sex. Bulthara is the cousin of Appungerta, Kumara of Umbitchana and so on. We see therefore that, just as among the Dieri, a man may not marry his cousin, but must marry his second cousin, to use ordinary terms, which in this case are not misleading.

Looking now at the Ngerikudi system, we see that elder and younger sisters are distinguished in the generations of EGO and his parents. Possibly they are the eight-class tribe of Queensland to which Dr Howitt alludes. If not, we have in them a tribe one stage earlier than the southern Arunta, who have their four classes divided but as yet without any corresponding names.

The Dieri rule is that of the eight-class tribes. The person designated as the proper spouse for a male is his mother's mother's brother's daughter's daughter, in other words, the grandchildren of brother and sister intermarry. This, as we have already seen, is precisely the effect of the eight-class rules. We are therefore confronted with three possibilities. Either the Dieri regulations are aberrant or they have introduced these rules under the influence of the neighbouring eight-class system; or the eight-class organisation is a systematisation of the Dieri rule, adopted perhaps to facilitate the determination of marriageableness or otherwise in the case of persons residing at some distance from each other and therefore less likely to be acquainted with genealogical niceties than the members of a small community. Now if the second of these hypotheses is correct, it is by no means clear why the Dieri, having in view the attainment of the object of the eight-class system, did not simply adopt it; for this we can find no reason; and it is clearly more reasonable on other grounds to suppose that these regulations are of independent origin. But we know the eight-class rule to have arisen from a division within a generation, which the Dieri rule is not. Therefore the latter must be sporadic.

The same is probably true of the Urabunna, but here our information is very scanty and the precise working of the rules is far from clear. What happens is that an elder brother (A) of a woman (B) marries an elder sister (D) of a man (C); the daughter of this elder sister (D) is the proper mate for the son of the younger sister (B) of her husband; this younger sister's husband is the younger brother, C. Now the term elder brother, elder sister, does not seem to refer to age; the rule appears to be—once an elder brother, always an elder brother from generation to generation.

We learn from Spencer and Gillen, that all the women of a generation in the one phratry, and presumably within the right totem only, are to a man either nupa (= marriageable) or apillia. In the case given by Dr Howitt the younger sister is nupa to the younger brother, the elder to the elder brother; but we do not learn how elder and younger are distinguished, if it is not by descent. Apparently it cannot be by descent, however; for we find that the son of the younger brother and sister marries the daughter of the elder brother and sister. As to what would happen if the younger brother and sister have a daughter, the elder a son, we have no information; but apparently they cannot marry. Such a daughter must find the son of two people who stand to her father and mother as they stood to A and D.

From this example it is clear that the boundaries of the nupa and apillia groups are not fixed in a given group of women; it is not possible to divide the women and the men into elder brothers and sisters on the one hand, younger brothers and sisters on the other. But if this is the case, we are quite in the dark as to the meaning of the marriage regulations.

One thing however seems certain; viz., that the Urabunna regulations do not give the same result as the four-class regulations. With them the division is within the generation. There is no class of women, who, with their descendants, are the normal spouses of a class of men, with their descendants. That being so, the Urabunna case can hardly throw light on the genesis of the four-class system.

Among the Urabunna, however, like the Wathi-Wathi, we find the rule that a man must marry in his own generation; and this is primâ facie the meaning of the four-class rule. It is true that the origin of the eight-class rule was not what its primâ facie meaning suggests, viz., the desire to prevent the marriage of cousins, for we know that it originated in the distinction between elder and younger sisters. But no similar theory appears to fit the case of the four-class tribes. No division within the generation could possibly produce an alternation of generations.

The Red Indians have in many cases different names for the elder and younger sister; the Hausa impose on persons standing in these relations certain prohibitions and avoidances, which are not the same for both elder and younger; in Australia a man may speak freely to his elder sisters in blood, but only at a distance to his tribal ungaraitcha. To his younger sisters, blood and tribal, he may not speak save at such a distance that his features are indistinguishable. In many parts the elder brother has special rights with regard to the younger, and many similar customs might be quoted139.

The question why marriage within the generation—the rule of four-class and two-phratry tribes alike—should have come into existence is a complicated one and involves that of the origin of kinship terms. If we take a crucial case of kinship terminology, we find that a child applies the same term to its actual mother as to all the women whom its father might have married, to its potential mothers in fact. If therefore we have to choose between the gradual extension of the terms from the single family to the group or their original application to a group, this instance seems decisive in favour of the latter theory.

Now if marriage was originally not "group" but individual, a question to be fully discussed in later chapters, we can hardly doubt that parent-child marriage was forbidden or perhaps instinctively avoided. But this would be equivalent to prohibiting marriage with one of a number of men or women embraced under a common kinship term. In the lower culture generally and especially among the Australians there is a tendency to follow things out to their logical conclusions. If this were done in the present case, the result would be to extend the prohibition to all the persons embraced under the kinship term.

In any case the natural tendency in a small group would be to marry within the generation, and this might readily become crystallised in the kinship terms.

The eight-class system, as we have seen, resulted from the distinction between elder and younger sister. What is the meaning of this and what analogies do we find to it?

Widely extended also are the systems of age-grades. In all parts of the world the men, and sometimes the women, are or have been divided into associations, to which reference was made in Chapter I, which begin by being co-extensive with the tribe for all practical purposes, since all pass through the initiation ceremonies. The various initiation ceremonies during what may be termed the involuntary stage of these associations, no less than in their later form of secret societies, determine the rights and duties of the individuals who undergo them. The period at which they take place is determined, broadly speaking, by the age of the individual. It is therefore clear that for the peoples in the lower stage of culture considerations of age are of the highest importance.

We find that in practice the elder brother has much authority, both over the younger brother and the sister. In Victoria he decides whom they are to marry. As we have seen in the tables of terms, the Wathi-Wathi man distinguishes both elder and younger of either sex by special terms, which points to their having special rights or duties140.

If therefore we cannot see why primitive man should have enacted that the elder rather than the younger, or the daughter of the elder rather than the daughter of the younger, should be preferred, it is at any rate of a piece with his other customs.

From the terms of kinship tabulated above various conclusions have been drawn. It will be seen that a man applies to all the women in the other phratry on the level of his generation the same term as he applies to his actual wife. On this basis it has been argued that at one time all the men in one phratry were united in marriage with all the women in the other within the limits of the generation. Before this again a stage of absolute promiscuity is supposed to have existed. This alternative explanation of the kinship organisations demands to be considered.