No. 16, Oombi Codfish, marries Kubbitha Flying Squirrel, Kubbitha Bandicoot, and Kubbitha Porcupine. There may be other totems not included in Table A into which each of the totems mentioned could marry, but as I am dealing only with the totems given in that table I do not at present wish to go outside of it. In the tribes under reference descent is reckoned through the mother, the class and totem names of the father having no influence in the matter, and may therefore be left out for the present. Ippatha's children-it matters not whether she be married to a Murri, a Kubbi, an Ippai, or an Oombi-are always Oombi and Butha; the children of Butha are always Ippai and Ippatha; Matha's children are Kubbi and Kubbitha, and the children of Kubbitha are always Murri and Matha. The children. also inherit a totem name in accordance with strict customary laws, which will be dealt with presently. This descent of the class names will be better understood by an example. Ippatha marries, but the descent of her children is not affected by the clan of her husband. Her children are Oombis and Buthas, as just stated. These little Buthas grow up to womanhood and marry, and their children are Ippais and Ippathas. This generation of Ippathas would grow up and in turn produce Oombis and Buthas. It is therefore apparent that the class Ippai produces Oombi, and Oombi produces Ippai in the next generation, and so on continually. An analogous result takes place with the other two classes. Matha's daughters are all Kubbithas, and Kubbitha's daughters are all Mathas. In other words, the class Murri produces Kubbi, and Kubbi produces Murri in continuous alternation. It now becomes evident that the men and women belonging to the pair of classes Ippai and Oombi are more nearly related to each other than to the members of the other pair, Murri and Kubbi, and the latter are more closely connected among themselves than with the Ippai and Oombi people. The reader will now be able to show whom any man given in Table A may marry and what will be the class and totem names of his children. In order to do this, however, we must know the class and totem names of the woman he selects as his wife. As 1 Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc. Aust. (Q.), x, 29. soon as this point is determined we can at once give the names of the children. Assuming that a man of the class Kubbi and totem Porcupine wishes to marry, a reference to the preceding pages will show that he has the choice between (1) Butha Goonhur, (2) Butha Gray Kangaroo, (3) Butha Codfish, (4) Kubbitha Flying Squirrel, and (5) Kubbitha Bandicoot. As already shown, the children take the class and totem name of their mother's mother, their father's names not being taken into consideration. If the Kubbi of our example elects to marry No. 1, Butha Goonhur, it is found that the mother of that animal is the Opossum, of the class Ippai; therefore the children of the Goonhur are Ippai and Ippatha Opossum; if he marry No. 2, the children are Ippai and Ippatha Eaglehawk; if he marry No. 3, the children are Ippai and Ippatha Jew Lizard; if he marry No. 4, the children will be Murri and Matha Emu, and if he marry No. 5, the children will be Murri and Matha Red Kangaroo. According to the strict class law already stated, the wife of a Kubbi of any totem should always be a Butha,' but owing to the irregularities which I have explained his choice of a wife is regulated by his totem as well as by his class name. Had the Kubbi in the above example been a Native Bee, he would have had the choice, among others, of an Ippatha or a Matha of certain totems, which would have altered the names of his children accordingly. If a man have more than one wife, which is permissible, and they happen to be of different totems or classes, this will further vary the names of his offspring. The foregoing examples will apply, mutatis mutandis, to the marriage of all the men of the other classes. Having now given the names of the classes and totems and explained the complicated laws which govern marriage and descent under them, it is hoped that this information, which has cost me much time and expense to obtain, may facilitate the labors of others who may be tempted to embark upon the same. line of investigation in regard to other tribes, or who may already be involved in the tangled mazes of the subject. Before laying down the pen, it may be interesting to state that among the Wiradjuri tribes, whose class system has been explained in this paper, there is a ceremony of initiation called the Burbung, by means of which the youths of the tribes are inaugurated into the status of manhood. During this ceremony they are taught the sacred traditions of their forefathers, their duties and responsibilities as tribesmen are inculcated, and they are instructed in the laws relating to the class and totemic divisions of their tribe. The whole ceremonial of the Burbung is described with considerable fullness in three papers contributed by me to the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain,' the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia,' and the AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST.3 In connection with their class systems may be mentioned the widespread custom among these tribes of painting and carving representations of their totems on the walls of caves and on the smooth surfaces of rocks. For descriptions of these totemic drawings the reader is referred to my papers on this subject already published in the AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST* and in other scientific journals. The class and totemic divisions are strongly manifested in all the principal ceremonies of the Australian aborigines; hence it is of the utmost importance that any one studying the customs of these people should have a knowledge of their class systems. BOOK REVIEW Die Maya-Sprachen der Pokom-Grappe. Zweiter Teil: Die Sprache der K'e' kchi Indianer, nebst einem Anhang: Die Uspanteca. Von Dr Med. Otto Stoll, Professor in Zürich. Leipzig, K. F. Köhler, 1896, viii-221 pp. The numerous dialects of the Maya family are spoken throughout Yucatan and Guatemala, and even adjacent territories, like Chiapas, harbor Indians belonging to the Maya race. About sixteen dialects have been determined by competent linguists to be clearly affiliated with the Maya of Yucatan, the only one of them which has been benefited by an extensive literary "cul 1 "The Burbung of the Wiradthuri Tribes," Journ. Anthrop. Inst., vols. xxv and XXVI. 2 Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc. Aust. (Q.), vols. X1 and XII. 3 Vol. IX, No. 10, October, 1896. 4"Australian Rock Pictures," American Anthropologist, VIII, 268–278. 5" Aboriginal Rock Paintings and Carvings in New South Wales," Proc. Roy. Soc. Victoria, vII, N. S., 143-156. ture." All these dialects are remarkable for the brevity and conciseness of their grammatic and lexical forms, to which the multiplicity of their personal pronouns forms a curious contrast. The epigraphical relics of this stock, when safely interpreted, are likely to lead us back into a more remote period of American history than those of any other aboriginal people. With the study of the Maya codices and inscriptions must go hand in hand the study of the dialects, and in this respect Huastec, Kiché, and Maya have been more deeply looked into than all the others. Prof. Dr Otto Stoll, a Swiss by birth, who explored Guatemala from 1878 to 1883, has published his grammars and vocabularies of the Ixil, Pokonchí, and Pokomam, and to these he has recently added a voluminous grammar of the K'e'kchí, spoken on the highlands in the central parts of the republic. Stoll's K'e'kchí" forms his second volume of the Pokom group, a group which consists of the following dialects: Pokonchí, Pokomam, K'e'kchí, and Uspantec. K'e'kchí is spoken at the present epoch by about 85,000 Indians, and the most striking characteristic of it appears to be an extraordinary grinding down of grammatic forms, which makes it look recent when compared with the more archaic languages of the K'iché group. Some of its forms can be explained only by comparison with the archaic forms of Cakchiquel and K'iché, especially in regard to the verbs derived by suffixation, and the types of more recent genesis than the above-mentioned dialects. Syntactic examples of the K'iché are given on pages 123 to 127; the vocabulary comprises pages 128 to 191. The grammar as well as the dictionary are both compiled on the basis of comparison with the other Maya dialects, the only scientific way which the author could adopt. The Uspantec, now limited to a single town, had been placed by Stoll in his former writings with the Qu'iché group, but after a clearer insight into its forms is now classified with the Pokom dialects. A. S. GATSCHET. No. 16, Oombi Codfish, marries Kubbitha Flying Squirrel, Kubbitha Bandicoot, and Kubbitha Porcupine. There may be other totems not included in Table A into which each of the totems mentioned could marry, but as I am dealing only with the totems given in that table I do not at present wish to go outside of it. In the tribes under reference descent is reckoned through the mother, the class and totem names of the father having no influence in the matter, and may therefore be left out for the present. Ippatha's children-it matters not whether she be married to a Murri, a Kubbi, an Ippai, or an Oombi-are always Oombi and Butha; the children of Butha are always Ippai and Ippatha; Matha's children are Kubbi and Kubbitha, and the children of Kubbitha are always Murri and Matha. The children also inherit a totem name in accordance with strict customary laws, which will be dealt with presently. This descent of the class names will be better understood by an example. Ippatha marries, but the descent of her children is not affected by the clan of her husband. Her children are Oombis and Buthas, as just stated. These little Buthas grow up to womanhood and marry, and their children are Ippais and Ippathas. This generation of Ippathas would grow up and in turn produce Oombis and Buthas. It is therefore apparent that the class Ippai produces Oombi, and Oombi produces Ippai in the next generation, and so on continually. An analogous result takes place with the other two classes. Matha's daughters are all Kubbithas, and Kubbitha's daughters are all Mathas. In other words, the class Murri produces Kubbi, and Kubbi produces Murri in continuous alternation. It now becomes evident that the men and women belonging to the pair of classes Ippai and Oombi are more nearly related to each other than to the members of the other pair, Murri and Kubbi, and the latter are more closely connected among themselves than with the Ippai and Oombi people. The reader will now be able to show whom any man given in Table A may marry and what will be the class and totem names of his children. In order to do this, however, we must know the class and totem names of the woman he selects as his wife. As 1 Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc. Aust. (Q.), x, 29. |