among Aryans be accepted as genuine, then the Aryans have distinctly come through a period of kinship reckoned through women, with all that such an institution implies.  For indications that the Aryans of Greece and India have passed through the stage of totemism, the reader may be referred to Mr. M’Lennan’s ‘Worship of Plants and Animals’ (’Fortnightly Review,’ 1869, 1870).  The evidence there adduced is not all of the same value, and the papers are only a hasty rough sketch based on the first testimonies that came to hand.  Probably the most important ‘survival’ of totemism in Greek legend is the body of stories about the amours of Zeus in animal form.  Various noble houses traced their origin to Zeus or Apollo, who, as a bull, tortoise, serpent, swan, or ant, had seduced the mother of the race.  The mother of the Arcadians became a she-bear, like the mother of the bear stock of the Iroquois.  As we know plenty of races all over the world who trace their descent from serpents, tortoises, swans, and so forth, it is a fair hypothesis that the ancestors of the Greeks once believed in the same fables.  In later times the swan, serpent, ant, or tortoise was explained as an avatar of Zeus.  The process by which an anthropomorphic god or hero succeeds to the exploits of animals, of theriomorphic gods and heroes, is the most common in mythology, and is illustrated by actual practice in modern India.  When the Brahmins convert a pig-worshipping tribe of aboriginals, they tell their proselytes that the pig was an avatar of Vishnu.  The same process is found active where the Japanese have influenced the savage Ainos, and persuaded them that their bear- or dog-father was a manifestation of a deity.  We know from Plutarch (’Theseus’) that, in addition to families claiming descent from divine animals, one Athenian [Greek], the Ioxidae, revered an ancestral plant, the asparagus.  A vaguer indication of totemism may perhaps be detected in the ancient theriomorphic statues of Greek gods, as the Ram-Zeus and the Horse-headed Demeter, and in the various animals and plants which were sacred to each god and represented as his companions.

The hints of totemism among the ancient Irish are interesting.  One hero, Conaire, was the son of a bird, and before his birth his father (the bird) told the woman (his mother) that the child must never eat the flesh of fowls.  ’Thy son shall be named Conaire, and that son shall not kill birds.’ {265a} The hero Cuchullain, being named after the dog, might not eat the flesh of the dog, and came by his ruin after transgressing this totemistic taboo.  Races named after animals were common in ancient Ireland.  The red-deer and the wolves were tribes dwelling near Ossory, and Professor Rhys, from the frequency of dog names, inclines to believe in a dog totem in Erin.  According to the ancient Irish ‘Wonders of Eri,’ in the ‘Book of Glendaloch,’ ‘the descendants of the wolf are in Ossory,’ and they could still transform