totem-animal

As Reinach and others suggest, it was the Taboo (bred by Fear) which by first forbidding contact with the totem-animal or priest or magician-chief gradually invested him with Awe and Divinity.

Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning 1920

As a rule, as may be imagined, the savage tribesman will on no account eat his tribal totem-animal.

Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning 1920

He could sin against his totem-animal by eating it; he could sin against his ` brother the ox 'by consuming its strength in the labor of the plough; he could sin against the corn by cutting it down and grinding it into flour, or against the precious and beautiful pine-tree by laying his axe to its roots and converting it into mere timber for his house.

Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning 1920

Clearly the wrong done could only be expiated by an equivalent sacrifice of some kind on the part of the man, or the tribe -- that is by the offering to the totem-animal or to the corn-spirit of some victim whom these nature powers in their turn could feed upon and assimilate.

Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning 1920

In many cases also the totem-animal only appeared at a certain season of the year, in consequence of the habit of hibernation or migration in search of food, while trees only bore fruit in their season.

The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) Robert Vane Russell 1894

Generally in the relations between the totem-clan and its totem-animal, and in all the fables about animals, one animal is taken as representing the species, and it is tacitly assumed that all the animals of the species have the same knowledge and qualities and would behave in the same manner as the typical one.

The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) Robert Vane Russell 1894

Two features of the Khond sacrifice of a human victim as a corn-spirit appear to indicate its derivation from the sacrifice of the domestic animal and the eating of the totem-animal, the ties uniting the clan and tribe: first, that the flesh was cut from the living victim, and, second, that the sacrifice was communal.

The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) Robert Vane Russell 1894

Afterwards, when they had obtained the idea of a soul or spirit, and of the survival of the soul after death, and when, on the introduction of personal names, the personality of individuals could be realised and remembered after death, they frequently thought that the spirits of ancestors went back to the totem-animal, whence they derived their life.

The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) Robert Vane Russell 1894

The whole of this rite and the intense importance attached to it are inexplicable except on the supposition that the tie which had originally constituted the totem-clan was the eating of the totem-animal, and that this tie was perpetuated in the tribe by the communal eating of the domestic animal.

The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) Robert Vane Russell 1894

The totem-animal was regarded as a kinsman, and the domestic animal often as a god.

The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) Robert Vane Russell 1894