The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 11 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 11 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
the Dyaks of Borneo and the Malays of the Peninsula believe that every man
has seven souls.(593) The Alfoors of Poso in Celebes are of opinion that
he has three.(594) The natives of Laos suppose that the body is the seat
of thirty spirits, which reside in the hands, the feet, the mouth, the
eyes, and so on.(595) Hence, from the primitive point of view, it is
perfectly possible that a savage should have one soul in his sex totem and
another in his clan totem. However, as I have observed, sex totems have
been found nowhere but in Australia; so that as a rule the savage who
practises totemism need not have more than one soul out of his body at a
time.(596)
(M172) If this explanation of the totem as a receptacle in which a man
keeps his soul or one of his souls is correct, we should expect to find
some totemic people of whom it is expressly said that every man amongst
them is believed to keep at least one soul permanently out of his body,
and that the destruction of this external soul is supposed to entail the
death of its owner. Such a people are the Battas of Sumatra. The Battas
are divided into exogamous clans (_margas_) with descent in the male line;
and each clan is forbidden to eat the flesh of a particular animal. One
clan may not eat the tiger, another the ape, another the crocodile,
another the dog, another the cat, another the dove, another the white
buffalo, and another the locust. The reason given by members of a clan for
abstaining from the flesh of the particular animal is either that they are
descended from animals of that species, and that their souls after death
may transmigrate into the animals, or that they or their forefathers have
been under certain obligations to the creatures. Sometimes, but not
always, the clan bears the name of the animal.(597) Thus the Battas have
totemism in full. But, further, each Batta believes that he has seven or,
on a more moderate computation, three souls. One of these souls is always
outside the body, but nevertheless whenever it dies, however far away it
may be at the time, that same moment the man dies also.(598) The writer
who mentions this belief says nothing about the Batta totems; but on the
analogy of the Australian, Central American, and African evidence we may
conjecture that the external soul, whose death entails the death of the
man, is housed in the totemic animal or plant.
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