Note 126 — Introductory Essay on Caste (continued 2)

But primitive man not only considered the body as a homogeneous mass with the life and qualities distributed equally over it. He further, it may be suggested, did not distinguish between the individual and the species. The reason for this was that he could not count, and had no idea of numbers. The faculty of counting appears to have been acquired very late. Messrs. Spencer and Gillan remark of the aborigines of Central Australia:126 “While in matters such as tracking, which are concerned with their everyday life, and upon efficiency in which they actually depend for their livelihood, the natives show conspicuous ability, there are other directions in which they are as conspicuously deficient. This is perhaps shown most clearly in the matter of counting. At Alice Springs they occasionally count, sometimes using their fingers in doing so, up to five, but frequently anything beyond four is indicated by the word oknira, meaning ‘much’ or ‘great.’ One is nintha, two thrama or thera, three mapitcha, four therankathera, five therankathera-nintha.” The form of these words is interesting, because it is clear that the word for four is two and two, or twice two, and the word for five is two and two and one. These words indicate the prolonged and painful efforts which must have been necessary to count as far as five, and this though in other respects the Australian natives show substantial mental development, having a most complicated system of exogamy, and sometimes two personal names for each individual. Again, the Andamanese islanders, despite the extraordinary complexity of their agglutinative language, have no names for the numerals beyond two.127 It is said that the Majhwār tribe can only count up to three, while among the Bhatras the qualification for being a village astrologer, who foretells the character of the rainfall and gives auspicious days for sowing and harvest, is the ability to count a certain number of posts. The astrologer’s title is Meda Gantia, or Counter of Posts. The above facts demonstrate that counting is a faculty acquired with difficulty after considerable mental progress, and primitive man apparently did not feel the necessity for it.128 But if he could not count, it seems a proper deduction that his eye would not distinguish a number of animals of the same species together, because the ability to do this, and to appraise distinct individuals of like appearance appears to depend ultimately on the faculty of counting. Major Hendley, a doctor and therefore a skilled observer, states that the Bhīls were unable to distinguish colours or to count numbers, apparently on account of their want of words to express themselves.129 Now it seems clearly more easy for the eye to discriminate between opposing colours than to distinguish a number of individuals of the same species together. There are a few things which we still cannot count, such as the blades of grass, the ears of corn, drops of rain, snowflakes, and hailstones. All of these things are still spoken of in the singular, though this is well known to be scientifically incorrect. We say an expanse of grass, a field of corn, and so on, as if the grass and corn were all one plant instead of an innumerable quantity of plants. Apparently when primitive man saw a number of animals or trees of the same species together, the effect on him must have been exactly the same as that of a field of grass or corn on us. He could be conscious only of an indefinite sense of magnitude. But he did not know, as we do in the cases cited, that the objects he saw were really a collection of distinct individuals. He would naturally consider them as all one, just as children would think a field of grass or corn to be one great plant until they were told otherwise. But there was no one to tell him, nor any means by which he could find out his mistake. He had no plural number, and no definite or indefinite articles. Whether he saw one or a hundred tigers together, he could only describe them by the one word tiger. It was a long time before he could even say ‘much tiger,’ as the Australian natives still have to do if they see more animals than five together, and the Andamanese if they see more than two. The hypothesis therefore seems reasonable that at first man considered each species of animals or plants which he distinguished to have a separate single life, of which all the individuals were pieces or members. The separation of different parts of one living body presented no difficulties to his mind, since, as already seen, he believed the life to continue in severed fractions of the human body.