Germanic societies; it is a sanctuary of the totemic group, it is a veritable place of asylum.
But the virtues of the churinga are not manifested merely by the way in which it keeps the profane at a distance. If it is thus isolated, it is because it is something of a high religious value whose loss would injure the group and the individuals severely. It has all sorts of marvellous properties: by contact it heals wounds, especially those resulting from circumcision;[323] it has the same power over sickness;[324] it is useful for making the beard grow;[325] it confers important powers over the totemic species, whose normal reproduction it ensures;[326] it gives men force, courage and perseverance, while, on the other hand, it depresses and weakens their enemies. This latter belief is so firmly rooted that when two combatants stand pitted against one another, if one sees that the other has brought churinga against him, he loses confidence and his defeat is certain.[327] Thus there is no ritual instrument which has a more important place in the religious ceremonies.[328] By means of various sorts of anointings, their powers are communicated either to the officiants or to the assistants; to bring this about, they are rubbed over the members and stomach of the faithful after being covered with grease;[329] or sometimes they are covered with a down which flies away and scatters itself in every direction when they are whirled; this a way of disseminating the virtues which are in them.[330]
But they are not useful merely to individuals; the fate of the clan as a whole is bound up with theirs. Their loss is a disaster; it is the greatest misfortune which can happen to the group.[331] Sometimes they leave the ertnatulunga, for example when they are loaned to other groups.[332] Then follows a veritable public mourning. For two weeks, the people of the totem weep and lament, covering their bodies with white clay just as they do when they have lost a relative.[333] And the churinga are not left at the free disposition of everybody; the ertnatulunga where they are kept is placed under the control of the chief of the group. It is true that each individual has special rights to some of them;[334] yet, though he is their proprietor in a sense, he cannot make use of them except with the consent and under the direction of the chief. It is a collective treasury; it is the sacred ark of the clan.[335] The devotion of which they are the object shows the high price that is attached to them. The respect with which they are handled is shown by the solemnity of the movements.[336] They are taken care of, they are greased, rubbed, polished, and when they are moved from one locality to another, it is in the midst of ceremonies which bear witness to the fact that this displacement is regarded as an act of the highest importance.[337]
Now in themselves, the churinga are objects of wood and stone like all others; they are distinguished from profane things of the same sort by only one particularity: this is that the totemic mark is drawn or engraved upon them. So it is this mark and this alone which gives them their sacred character. It is true that according to Spencer and Gillen, the churinga serve as the residence of an ancestor's soul and that it is the presence of this soul which confers these properties.[338] While declaring this interpretation inexact, Strehlow, in his turn, proposes another which does not differ materially from the other: he claims that the churinga are considered the image of the ancestor's body, or the body itself.[339] So, in any case, it would be sentiments inspired by the ancestor which fix themselves upon the material object, and convert it into a sort of fetish. But in the first place, both conceptions—which, by the way, scarcely differ except in the letter of the myth—have obviously been made up afterwards, to account for the sacred character of the churinga. In the constitution of these pieces of wood and bits of stone, and in their external appearance, there is nothing which predestines them to be considered the seat of an ancestral soul, or the image of his body. So if men have imagined this myth, it was in order to explain the religious respect which these things inspired in them, and the respect was not determined by the myth. This explanation, like so many mythological explanations, resolves the question only by repeating it in slightly different terms; for saying that the churinga is sacred and saying that it has such and such a relation with a sacred being, is merely to proclaim the same fact in two different ways; it is not accounting for them. Moreover, according to the avowal of Spencer and Gillen, there are some churinga among the Arunta which are made by the old men of the group, to the knowledge of and before the eyes of all;[340] these obviously do not come from the great ancestors. However, except for certain differences of degree, they have the same power as the others and are preserved in the same manner. Finally, there are whole tribes where the churinga is never associated with a spirit.[341] Its religious nature comes to it, then, from some other source, and whence could it come, if not from the totemic stamp which it bears? It is to this image, therefore, that the demonstrations of the rite are really addressed; it is this which sanctifies the object upon which it is carved.
Among the Arunta and the neighbouring tribes, there are two other liturgical instruments closely connected with the totem and the churinga itself, which ordinarily enters into their composition: they are the nurtunja and the waninga.
The nurtunja,[342] which is found among the northern Arunta and their immediate neighbours,[343] is made up principally of a vertical support which is either a single lance, or several lances united into a bundle, or of a simple pole.[344] Bunches of grass are fastened all around it by means of belts or little cords made of hair. Above this, down is placed, arranged either in circles or in parallel lines which run from the top to the bottom of the support. The top is decorated with the plumes of an eagle-hawk. This is only the most general and typical form; in particular cases, it has all sorts of variations.[345]
The waninga, which is found only among the southern Arunta, the Urabunna and the Loritja, has no one unique model either. Reduced to its most essential elements, it too consists in a vertical support, formed by a long stick or by a lance several yards high, with sometimes one and sometimes two cross-pieces.[346] In the former case, it has the appearance of a cross. Cords made either of human hair or opossum or bandicoot fur diagonally cross the space included between the arms of the cross and the extremities of the central axis; as they are quite close to each other, they form a network in the form of a lozenge. When there are two cross-bars, these cords go from one to the other and from these to the top and bottom of the support. They are sometimes covered with a layer of down, thick enough to conceal the foundation. Thus the waninga has the appearance of a veritable flag.[347]
Now the nurtunja and the waninga, which figure in a multitude of important rites, are the object of a religious respect quite like that inspired by the churinga. The process of their manufacture and erection is conducted with the greatest solemnity. Fixed in the earth, or carried by an officiant, they mark the central point of the ceremony: it is about them that the dances take place and the rites are performed. In the course of the initiation, the novice is led to the foot of a nurtunja erected for the occasion. Someone says to him, "There is the nurtunja of your father; many young men have already been made by it." After that, the initiate must kiss the nurtunja.[348] By this kiss, he enters into relations with the religious principle which resides there; it is a veritable communion which should give the young man the force required to support the terrible operation of sub-incision.[349] The nurtunja also plays a considerable rôle in the mythology of these societies. The myths relate that in the fabulous times of the great ancestors, the territory of the tribe was overrun in every direction by companies composed exclusively of individuals of the same totem.[350] Each of these troops had a nurtunja with it. When it stopped to camp, before scattering to hunt, the members fixed their nurtunja in the ground, from the top of which their churinga was suspended.[351] That is equivalent to saying that they confided the most precious things they had to it. It was at the same time a sort of standard which served as a rallying-centre for the group. One cannot fail to be struck by the analogies between the nurtunja and the sacred post of the Omaha.[352]
Now its sacred character can come from only one cause: that is that it represents the totem materially. The vertical lines or rings of down which cover it, and even the cords of different colours which fasten the arms of the waninga to the central axis, are not arranged arbitrarily, according to the taste of the makers; they must conform to a type strictly determined by tradition which, in the minds of the natives, represents the totem.[353] Here we cannot ask, as we did in the case of the churinga, whether the veneration accorded to this instrument of the cult is
