The reason given by members of a clan for
abstaining from the flesh of the particular animal is either that
they are descended from animals of that species, and that their
souls after death may transmigrate into the animals, or that they or
their forefathers have been under certain obligations to the
creatures. Sometimes, but not always, the clan bears the name of the
animal. Thus the Bataks have totemism in full. But, further, each
Batak believes that he has seven or, on a more moderate computation,
three souls. One of these souls is always outside the body, but
nevertheless whenever it dies, however far away it may be at the
time, that same moment the man dies also. The writer who mentions
this belief says nothing about the Batak totems; but on the analogy
of the Australian, Central American, and African evidence we may
conjecture that the external soul, whose death entails the death of
the man, is housed in the totemic animal or plant.
Against this view it can hardly be thought to militate that the
Batak does not in set terms affirm his external soul to be in his
totem, but alleges other grounds for respecting the sacred animal or
plant of his clan.
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