cken by biting off the
head and then eats it in imitation of a vulture. Definite instances
of the sacrificial eating of the totem animal have not been found,
but it is said that the tiger and snake clans of the Bhatra tribe
formerly ate their totems at a sacrificial meal. The Gonds also
worship the cobra as a household god, and once a year they eat the
flesh of the snake and think that by doing so they will be immune
from snake-bite throughout the year. On the festival of Nag-Panchmi
the Mahars make an image of a snake with flour and sugar and eat
it. It is reported that the Singrore Dhimars who work on rivers and
tanks must eat the flesh of a crocodile at their weddings, while the
Sonjharas who wash the sands of rivers for gold should catch a live
crocodile for the occasion of the wedding and afterwards put it back
into the river. These latter customs may probably have fallen into
abeyance owing to the difficulty of catching a crocodile, and in any
case the animals are tribal gods rather than totems.

50. Terms of relationship.

Exogamy and totemism are found not only in India, but are the
characteristics of primitive social groups over the greater part
of the world. Totemism establishes a relation of kinship between
persons belonging to one clan who are not related by blood, and
exogamy prescribes that the persons held to be so related shall not
intermarry. Further, when terms of relationship come into existence it
is found that they are applied not to members of one family, but to
all the persons of the clan who might have stood in each particular
relationship to the person addressing them. Thus a man will address
as mother not only his own mother, but all the women of his clan who
might have stood to him in the relation of mother. Similarly he will
address all the old men and women as grandfather or grandmother or
aunt, and the boys and girls of his own generation as brother and
sister, and so on. With the development of the recognition of the
consanguineous family, the use of terms of relationship tends to
be restricted to persons who have actual kinship; thus a boy will
address only his father's brothers as father, and his cousins as
brothers and sisters; but sufficient traces of the older system of
clan kinship remain to attest its former existence. But it seems also
clear that some, at least, of the terms of relationship were first
used between persons really related; thus the word for mother must
have