THE BACKGROUND OF TOTEMISM. 1 



By E. Washburn Hopkins, 

 Yale University. 



The secret of the totem has been successfully veiled for many years 

 through the ingenious efforts of would-be interpreters, some of whom 

 have even ventured to explain all religion as an outgrowth of totem- 

 ism. Others, less rash, have been content to find totemism where it 

 never existed. A typical case of invented totemism may be seen in 

 the Hindu deluge story, where Mann is rescued by a fish and the fish 

 is interpreted as "probably a totem." This tale really illustrates the 

 "grateful animal" category of folklore. A fish, saved by Maim, in 

 turn saves him. It is a fish that grows too rapidly to be a normal fish, 

 yet it is identified with the jhasha, of which genus the makara is the 

 best species. Manu does not revere it; it is at first no divinity. Only 

 long afterwards, when the chief god becomes Brahman, and again 

 when Vishnu is exalted, does the fish become a divine form and 

 Avatar. 



The people of the Vedic age knew the boar, the wolf, the monkey, 

 the swan or goose, the eagle, the crocodile, the serpent, and before its 

 close the elephant, and the tiger, yet they worshiped none of them, 

 nor showed any sign that they felt themselves akin to any one of 

 these animals. It is true that sometimes a Vedic god is said to 

 "rage like a terrible beast," but only a perverted intelligence could 

 find in this statement evidence that the god had previously been the 

 animal. 2 Divinity of real animals is borrowed afterwards from the 

 wild tribes (who have totems) or is a later growth which recognizes 

 divinity as in a cow because the cow gives food. The (cloud) cows 

 of the air like the (lightning) snake of the sky may be ignored as due 

 to poetic diction. So the fact that the sun is a bull, an eagle, a horse, 

 is no indication that any one of the three was regarded qua animal 

 as a totem or even as divine. 



Most attempts to find totemism where it is not remind one of the 

 clever old Brahman who instructed Madam Blavatsky that all things 

 were known to the seers of the Rig Veda. "Even the steam engine?" 



1 Reprinted by permission from the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 38, 

 pages 145-159. 



2 This is the absurdity to which Wundt is led, who says that because Homer's heroes 

 are like lions therefore they are totemistic survivals (My thus und Religion, 2, 285). 



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