hereditary, and all totems exist, or may exist, in division A and also in division B.
Mr. Frazer argues that the Arunta is the earlier state of affairs. He supposes that men acquired their totems, at first, by local accident, before they had laid any restrictions on marriage. Later, they divided their tribe, first into two, then into four, then into eight classes; and every one had to marry out of his class, or set of classes. All other known tribes introduced these restrictions after totems had been made hereditary. On passing the restrictive marriage law, they merely drafted people of one set of hereditary totems into one division, all the other totem kins into the other division. But the Arunta had not made totems hereditary, but accidental, so all the children of one crowd of mothers were placed in division A, all other children in division B. The mothers in each division would have children of all the totems, and thus the same totems now appeared in both of the exogamous divisions. If a man married into his lawful opposite class, the fact that the woman was of the same totem made no difference.
I have offered quite an opposite explanation. Arunta totems were, originally, hereditary among the Arunta, as everywhere else, and no totem occurred in both exogamous divisions. The same totems, later, got into both divisions as the result of the later and isolated belief in reincarnation plus the sacred haunted stones. That superstition has left the Kaitish practice of marriage still almost untouched. A Kaitish may, like an Arunta, marry a woman of his own totem, but he scarcely ever does so. The old prohibition, extinct in law, persists in custom; unless we say that the Kaitish are now merely imitating the usual practice of the rest of the totemic races of the world.
Moreover, even among the Arunta, certain totems greatly preponderate in each of the two exogamous intermarrying divisions of the tribe. This must be because the present practice has not yet quite upset the
