Frazer. 

 Totemism and 



EXOGAMY IN CHINA 135 



exhausted they occasion each other disease" — the words 

 "as relatives" do not, it is submitted, give the correct 

 connotation. It is "as relatives" that they were be- 

 lieved to give each other disease. 



The sick Marquis asked the help of a physician 

 from the State of T'sin, and one was sent to> him. 

 The physician, after an exhaustive diagnosis of the 

 illness, as to which the Tso Chuen should be consulted, 

 found that the Marquis was suffering from excessive 

 sexual indulgence. 



One of the possible origins of exogamy, considered 

 by Frazer, is that it arose from the fear of harm to the 

 whole tribe consequent on incest by any members of it. 



In the Summary and Conclusion of Totemism and 

 Exogamy, it is said : — 



"What then can be the great social wrong which 

 was supposed to result from incest? How were the Exogamy" Vol 

 guilty persons believed to endanger the whole tribe by ,v * pp * 167 " 9, 

 their crime. A possible answer is that the intercourse 

 of near kin was thought to render the woman of the 

 tribe sterile and to endanger the common food-supply 

 by preventing edible animals from multiplying and 

 edible plants from growing; in short, that the effect of 

 incest was supposed to be sterility of women, animals, 

 and plants." 



After reference to the holding of such beliefs by 

 peoples of the Malayan stock in the Indian Archipelago 

 and their kindred in Indo-Chinese, and as found 

 amongst the Ancient Greeks, the ancient Latins and 

 Irish, Frazer says: — 



"The only serious difficulty in the way of supposing 

 that it was so, is the absence of evidence that such 

 notions are held by the most primitive exogamous 

 peoples, the Australian aborigines, amongst whom we 

 should certainly expect to find them if they had indeed 

 been the origin of exogamy." 



May it not be that as the home of the Australian 

 aborigines has suffered desiccation so has their civilisa- 

 tion dried up: and may it not be that their "two," 

 "four" or "eight" exogamous class systems are survi- 

 vals of a state of society far from primitive and from 

 which in other matters the natives have retrograded. 



Be this as it may, there is evidence in the primi- 

 tive usages and beliefs embodied and preserved in the 

 earliest calendars of China, notes on the happenings 

 appropriate to each season of the year, that it was 

 believed by the Chinese race that incest inflicted injury 



