Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia

Origin in grouping of totems. Dr Durkheim on orig

he 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 t

so classifiable as reformatory and developmental respectively. The former labour under the same disadvantages, so far as they ass

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 mot

d that phratries and cla

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

fB

=fA fB=

=fB fA=

=fA fB=

. e

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 th

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

ges 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

ngle 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

tries 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 differ

e 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 actu

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 y

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

totem in tribes where female descent of the class names prevails, rests on too uncertain a basis to

ship 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 cl

r classes, Dr Durkheim will have difficulty in explaining why a tribe where the totem does not concern marriage at al

ory 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

and Gillen, Nor. Tr. p. 616; Howitt

249, cf. J. R. S.

witt,

R. G. S. Qu. XVI, 70; J. R.

Soc. VI

nd Gillen, No

r. Tr.

p.