Now, anthropologists are generally agreed, I think, that occasional sacrifices of and communion in the flesh of the totem or other sacred animals do occur among totemists. {84c} But Mr. Frazer and I both admit, and indeed are eager to state publicly, that the evidence for sacrifice of the totem, and communion in eating him, is very scanty.  The fact is rather inferred from rites among peoples just emerging from totemism (see the case of the Californian buzzard, in Bancroft) than derived from actual observation.  On this head too much has been taken for granted by anthropologists.  But I learn that direct evidence has been obtained, and is on the point of publication.  The facts I may not anticipate here, but the evidence will be properly sifted, and bias of theory discounted.

To return to my theory of the development of Dionysus into a totem, or of his inheritance of the rites of a totem, Mr. Frazer says, ’Of course this is possible, but it is not yet certain that Aryans ever had totemism.’ {84d} Now, in writing of the mouse, I had taken care to observe that, in origin, the mouse as a totem need not have been Aryan, but adopted.  People who think that the Aryans did not pass through a stage of totemism, female kin, and so forth, can always fall back (to account for apparent survivals of such things among Aryans) on ’Pre-Aryan conquered peoples,’ such as the Picts.  Aryans may be enticed by these bad races and become Pictis ipsis Pictiores.

Aryan Totems (?)

Generally speaking (and how delightfully characteristic of us all is this!), I see totems in Greek sacred beasts, where Mr. Frazer sees the corn-spirit embodied in a beast, and where Mr. Max Muller sees (in the case of Indra, called the bull) ’words meaning simply male, manly, strong,’ an ‘animal simile.’ {85a} Here, of course, Mr. Max Muller is wholly in the right, when a Vedic poet calls Indra ‘strong bull,’ or the like.  Such poetic epithets do not afford the shadow of a presumption for Vedic totemism, even as a survival.  Mr. Frazer agrees with me and Mr. Max Muller in this certainty.  I myself say, ’If in the shape of Indra there be traces of fur and feather, they are not very numerous nor very distinct, but we give them for what they may be worth.’  I then give them. {85b} To prove that I do not force the evidence, I take the Vedic text. {85c} ‘His mother, a cow, bore Indra, an unlicked calf.’  I then give Sayana’s explanation.  Indra entered into the body of Dakshina, and was reborn of her.  She also bore a cow.  But this legend, I say, ’has rather the air of being an invention, apres coup, to account for the Vedic text of calf Indra, born from a cow, than of being a genuine ancient myth.’  The Vedic myth of Indra’s amours in shape of a ram, I say ‘will doubtless be explained away as metaphorical.’  Nay, I will go further.  It is perfectly conceivable to me that in certain cases a poetic epithet applied by a poet to a god