Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

140 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [ch.
The Communal Meal (haU).
In the light of totemistic ways of thinking we see plainly
enough the relation of man to food-animals, a relation strangely
compounded of mana and tabu. You need or at least desire flesh
food, yet you shrink from slaughtering 'your brother the ox 1 '; you
desire his mana, yet you respect his tabu, for in you and him alike
runs the common life-blood. On your own individual responsibility
you would never kill him ; but for the common weal, on great
occasions, and in a fashion conducted with scrupulous care, it is
expedient that he die for his people, and that they feast upon his
flesh.
Among many primitive peoples the eating of meat is always
communal. Among the Zulus, when a man kills a cow, which is
done rarely, with reluctance, the whole hamlet assembles, uninvited
but expected as a matter of course, to eat it. The Damaras of
South Africa look upon meat as common property. They have great
reverence for the ox, only slaughter it on great occasions, and every
slaughter is regarded as a common festival. When the Patagonians
sacrifice a mare, the feast on her flesh is open to all the tribe 2 .
This sanctity of the food-animal and the ordinance that the
meal should be communal is not confined to domestic animals, in
whose case it might be thought that such sanctity arose from daily
contact and usage. Among the Ottawas the Bear clan ascribe
their origin to a bear's paw and call themselves Big Feet. When-
ever they killed a bear they used to offer the animal a part of his
own flesh and spoke to him thus
Do not bear us a grudge because we have killed you. You are sensible,
you see that our children are hungry. They love you, they wish to put you
into their body. Is it not glorious to be eaten by the sons of a chief 3 ?
:
This strange and thoroughly mystical attitude towards the
sacrificed food-animal comes out very beautifully in the Finnish
Kalevala 4 , where a whole canto is devoted to recounting the
1 See Professor Murray's beautiful account of the relation between man and
beast in the normal condition of Greece and the contrast of this with the Homeric
scenes of animal slaughter, Rise of the Epic, pp. 59 ff.
2 These instances are taken from the collection in Dr Jevons's Introduction to
the History of Religion, p. 158.
3 Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, in. p. 67, and see also the pathetic account
of the bear-festival among the Ainos, too long for quotation here, in Dr Frazer's
Golden Bough 2 , n. pp. 375 ff.
4 Kalevala, translated by W. F. Kirby, Rune xlvi. , Vainonamoinen and the Bear.