Page 59 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

1836 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Further Reading anthropologists with the bulk of their ideas on clanship
Arabshah, A. (1936). Tamerlane or Timur the great amir. Lahore, India: and totemism.
Progressive Books.
Clavijo, G. (1928). Embassy to Tamerlane. London: George Routledge & Everyone is a member of one or another of a large
Sons. number of clans, usually the clan of his or her father.The
Hookham, H. (1962). Tamburlaine the conqueror. London: Hodder & number fluctuates historically: Some clans are known
Stoughton.
Manz, B. F. (1991). The rise and rule of Tamerlane. New York: Cambridge only by name, others have only one or two female mem-
University Press. bers, who could not, according to local custom, transmit
Nicolle, David. (1990) Mongol Warlords Ghenghis Khan, Kublai Khan, membership to their children. Clans of the latter sort, pre-
Hulegu, and Tamerlane. New York: Sterling.
sumably, will be the ones known to future anthropolo-
gists by name only, and those of the former sort will be
unknown to both anthropologists and the Aboriginal
people.The older men of each clan control certain sacred
Tobacco objects (totems), the myths that describe the origins of

these objects during the Creative Period (Dreamtime),
See Drugs and the right to transmit the knowledge to the younger
men of the clan and to men of other clans.
Some totems, but not all, take animal form in myth:
Rock Python, Crayfish, and Duck are examples, but
Totemism there are also the Wagilak Sisters (who appear to be
human females) and the Mast of the Indonesian Ship (a
otemism is the positing of an association between a supposedly inanimate object whose memory is meta-
Tsystem of social divisions and a system of objectifi- morphosed from centuries of commercial contact with
cations. An example close to home is the association of Asians to the north). However, the animate-inanimate
the Democratic Party and the donkey, coupled with that and the animal-human dichotomies are not important in
of the Republican Party and the elephant. Crucial here is Aboriginal myth, wherein animals become humans (and
the expression coupled with: Involved are not two sepa- vice versa), and inanimate objects are animated (and vice
rate associations but rather a system of associations.This versa). The textbook notion that totems are necessarily
is the conclusion of the French anthropologist Claude animals or plants misses this point and, moreover, feeds
Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908), drawing heavily on the ideas of into the romantic (and false and racist) idea that Aborig-
earlier scholars. inal Australians and other “tribal” people see themselves
as, literally, kin to or descended from natural forms.
Clan Systems
The word clan in everyday English usually pertains to a Subject-Object-Subject
collectivity of people whose members are assumed to be Transformation
related by blood and/or marriage: The emphasis is on As noted, in Aboriginal Australian myth, totems meta-
people, not ideology.Anthropologists have employed the morphose from one form to another and back.This trans-
same term in their studies of “tribal” communities, but formative ability is crucial to a comprehension of clan
here just the opposite is true: The emphasis is on ideol- totemism because it connects the Dreamtime to the Pre-
ogy, with the people “in” the clans often being treated as sent Order. During and especially at the end of every
aspects of ideology. Consider the following from research myth, Dreamtime Beings either die or deposit body
in a part of Aboriginal Australia, where native theorizing emanations—words, footprints, feces, droppings of men-
about human social and conceptual life has provided strual blood, and so forth—at particular sites. These