Kings and Councillors: An Essay in the Comparative Anatomy of Human Society (Classics in Anthropology)

210 Pages·1970·10.16 MB·English

by  Arthur Maurice Hocart

A.M.HOCART
KINGS AND COUNCILLORS
An Essay in the Comparative Anatomy
of Human Society
Edited and with an Introduction by
RODNEY NEEDHAM
Foreword by
E. E. EVA NS.PRITCHARD
Arthur Maurice Hocart 1883-1939
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Chicago & London
A. M. Hocart's original text was first published
in 1936 by the Printing Office Paul Barbey, Cairo To
E. C. H.
International Standard Book Number:
(clothbound) 0.226·34566·1; (tJaperbound) 0.226.34568.8
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 71·101297
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 1970 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved
Published 1970. Printed in the United States of America
CLASSICS IN ANTHROPOLOGY
RODNEY NEEDHAM, Editor
KINGS AND COUNCILLORS
Contents
Foreword ix
Editor's Introduction xiii
Preface 3
Abbreviations and Bibliography 7
I Rules of Evidence 11
2 The Witnesses 28
3 Opening the Case 30
4 Nature 41
5 The World 60
6 The Good 72
7 Centralization 81
8 The King 86
9 The Estates of the Realm 102
10 The Law 128
II War 156
12 The Church and the State 162
13 The Commander-in-Chief 180
14 The Priest 190
15 The Revenue 202
16 Public Works 215
17 Temples 226
18 Idols 238
19 The City 250
20 Heaven and Earth 262
21 Summing Up 291
Additional Notes 300
Appendix 303
Invdex 30 5
vii
Foreword
HOCART WAS an industrious student, prolific writer, and in
many respects an original thinker, but he does not appear
to have had as much influence on the anthropology of his
time as one might therefore have expected. There may have
been many reasons for this. He was shy and reserved and
some found him awkward and difficult also. I did not do so.
Then his close association with Perry and later with Raglan,
neither very critical in their contributions to the subject, gave
the impression that somehow he was in a backwater, outside
the mainstream of social anthropology. Also, he never occupied
a chair till he had one at Cairo at the end of his life, and
consequently was not able to influence students by personal
contact as well as by his pen. There may have been other
reasons, among tl,em what some may regard as a rather arid
style and a slightly testy, or at least a non-suffering-fools-
. gladly, tone in his writings.
Whatever may have been the reasons for a seeming failure
at the time, it was Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski who at
tracted more attention with their talk, which now appears
naIve, about functional interpretation of social phenomena.
Neither, however, made any serious attempt to base their
claims on anything that could be called a systematic use of
the comparative method, and neither could in any case have
used it as Hocart did, for neither was a scholar and Hocart
was. He had a knowledge of history that they lacked and
he, unlike them, could go to the original sources, for he had
a good knowledge of Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil, and
Sinhalese as well as of modern European languages.
His idea of functional interpretation was, if I understand
him correctly, to compare the manner in which social activities
of one sort or another are carried out in societies of different
types, e.g., Amnta, Winnebago, Jukun, ancient Greece and
Rome, the Hebrews, the ancient and modern Egyptians, our
selves. The same function may take widely divergent forms,
though Hocart regarded it as axiomatic that there is always
ix
FOREWORD FOREWORD
a tendency for function to determine structural form. So settle literature; also the implicit indication that everywhere the
ment of disputes by feud and in a court of law are functionally logic of the situation imposes on the actors in it what might
comparable; likewise are a professional man in our society be said to be, at least up to a pOint, an inevitable structural
earning money to buy in the market goods to maintain his form; and also, as in Fustel de Coulanges' The Ancient City,
family and an Australian aboriginal hunting kangaroos to the insistence that what we today regard as institutions estab
maintain his. This treatment makes it interesting for students lished for their utility have as often as not a sacred origin.
in that they learn to see fundamental similarity beneath a It is on account of these emphases, among others, that this
diversity of institutional forms and to appreciate that the form book is well worth a reissue, and it is to be both hoped and
they are familiar with in their own culture is only one of many expected that the new edition will bring to the attention of
possible modes of organizing social activities; and I think this students the importance of Hocart's writings.
hook must have grown out of lectures to the author's students
at Cairo. It is evident that the conclusions derived from com E. E. EvA NS-PRlTCHARD
parative analysis will depend on the criteria of classification.
If one classes whales with fish and bats with birds one is not All Souls College, Oxford
going to reach the same conclusions as one would if one
classed both with mammals. So we have to bear in mind that
Hocart's analysis is based on the sort of functional classification
that zoologists use when they class whales and bats among
the mammals.
I must here confess that personally I have not found that,
granted his method of functional classification, his technique
of analYSiS, rather loaded with conjecture, is one that I would
wish to follow. I find his anatomical analogy unenlightening,
and his use of words like "identity" and "equivalence" and
his constant use of equation signs in this book confuSing; like
wise such statements as "the king is the sun." But this is
a personal reaction, and it should be.bome in mind that when
Hocart speaks in such terms he does so in functional or sym
bolic senses, in the senses that in certain situations one thing
can be substituted for another. .
Having said that, I must add that I am not saying that
Hocart's analytical technique is not the right technique or One
of the right techniques but only that it does not appeal to
me. It may appeal more to others. What I find more valuable
than the dissection of a custom, the breaking down of it into
elements, which does not for me make it more intelligible
(though this procedure is perhaps more fashionable now than
it was in Hocart's day), is the sense of movement imparted
by his use of history, a sense so often lacking in anthropological
x xi
Editor's Introduction
It is not ... government that man wants.
It is life he wants. '
A. M. Hocurt
What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community . . . .
T. S. Eliot
I
ONE OF the most lively and grateful benefits of scholarship
is the immediacy of communication with remarkable men, and
very often with what is best and most admirable in them,
without consideration of time elapsed or any other distinctions
of circumstance. We are made members of an ideal community
in which the address of Aristotle or Kant, Descartes or Hume,
is a satisfaction more real than many things in the press of
actualities. When our resolution falters, or inspiration flags,
under the trials and distractions of commonplace affairs, these
clear voices and precellent talents restore the confidence that
there are yet ultimate values, of reason and humane concern,
to be worked for.
On the lesser plane of anthropology there have .been few
men who have spoken to us with such clarity, arresting direct
ness, and genial provocation as A. M. Hocart. Not many in
that subject have written with his intellectual candor and
displayed with so little self-regard the checks, turns, and pro
cessions of a mind at work. A classic might well have been
looked for from a thinker of his distinction, and the present
work now reissued in a series so entitled has indeed marks
of that quality; but it has not bee~ accorded so prominent
a place in the professional literature, it has exerted no great
theoretical influence, and it. cannot thus be said to mark a
point in the history of ideas. The intention pf this new edition
is to claim that significance for it.
Kings and Councillors was originally published in Cairo,'
and it made little stir. It is true that Elkin, congratulating
Hocart on the accomplishment of "an erudite and brilliant
1. Printing Office Paul Barbey, 1936.
xiii
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
contribution to our understanding of man," judged him to have
of his ideas.' Yet he had after all carried out extensive field
performed in it "a great service for all students of ritual,
research in the Pacific, before the First World War, and in
and . . . for all who are endeavouring to understand the rela
Ceylon; he had some two hundred publications to his credit,
tion of ritual to social order";' and that Hornblower paid the
including five books published during his lifetime;' and he
book the compliment of a respectfully long and careful review,
enjoyed the professional respect of such eminent personages
if also a rather dubious one.' But elsewhere it was not given
as W. H. R. Rivers and Marcel Mauss. By the ordinary stan
much notice, and its comparative rarity has since intensified
dards of estimation, therefore, he was certainly not a negligible
its neglect. It is moreover in some respects a difficult work
figure, and there is this justification at least to re-examine what
to comprehend, and it makes rather special demands on the
is his most systematic and challenging monograph.
concentration and synthetic capacity of the reader.' Its merits
There is another consideration, too, in including this book
have hence remained unproclaimed, it is little cited,. and it
in a series of "Classics in Anthropology." To bring forth again
has not been embalmed in the textbooks, any more than the
a work which is an undisputed classic is doubtless a com
author himself has been thus commemorated.5
mendable pedagogical service, though there may be some risk
For the most part Hocart has been relegated to almost as
that the editorial assessment will verge on the supererogatory;
obscure a position as Kings and Councillors has been. He is
and to make available once more a work of note which has
not to be found in contemporary directories or in the Dic
happened to fall out of print or circulation is a very convenient
tionary of National Biography; and even Lowie's learned and
enterprise of a practical kind. But to revive a slighted or un
judicious History of Ethnologiclil Theory mentions him only
known work .is a venture which promises a more marked and
twice, if approvingly.' His views form no part of the ordinary
original instruction, and it may contribute more emphatically
university syllabus~ and students of social anthropology can to the history of ideas; for if it is useful to establish the pedi
gain their certificates of competence while ignorant of Hocar!'s
gree and credentials of ideas which nave become firmly ac
very name. In a general purview he appear~ as a somewhat cepted, there is no less interest in examining the merits of
forlorn and idiosyncratic figure, out of the mainstream of an
other notions which were not so accommodated, and to conjec
thropological thought. He spent much of his life away from
ture the reasons for their neglect. There has to be some as
England, and in that country he was vastly overshadowed
surance, of course, that the arguments were worth considering
by Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski; his comparative and his
in the first instance, but in Hocar!'s case this is hardly a de
torical concerns were unfashionable in the heyday of func
batable issue. In latter years, moreover, his views have been
tionalism· and for most of his career he held no academic
adduced by a number of leading anthropologists, and these
post whi~h could have served as a rostrum for the exp;essiori
would be unlikely to bestow their regard where it was not
due. .
2. A. P. Elkin, review in Oceania 8 (1937): 120-21.
3. C. D. Hornblower, review in Man 38 (1938): 154-56, art. 175 Levi-Strauss has found Hocar!'s work relevant to his own
4. Less intent students may be advised to gauge what it is about by on such varied topiCS as dual organization, reciprocity, caste,
reading just the first three chapters and the last.
S. To take two representative examples, neither T. K. Penniman, A 7. For the influence which such a position may confer, properly or not,
Hundred Years of Anthropology (London: Duckworth, 1935; rev. ed., see Leslie A. White, The Social Organization of Ethnological Theory,
1952) nor J. H. M. Beattie, Other Cultures: Aims, Methods and Achieve Rice University Studies, vol. 52, no. 4 (Houston: vVilIiam Marsh Rice
ments in Social Anthropology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964), University, 1966).
so much as mentions this or any other work by Hocart. . 8. See A Bibliography of Arthur Mattrice Hocart (Oxford: Blackwell,
6. (New York: Rinehart, 1937), pp. 199, 237. 1967), by the present editor (hereafter cited as Bibliography).
xiv xv
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
cross-cousin marriage, the role of wife-takers in marriage con prescriptive alliance has been illuminated by what has been
tracts, and alternate generations; on structural analysis and called his "characteristic insight."" It has been found, further
linguistics, emotion and concepts, the analysis of ritual, and more, that university students very readily respond to Hocart's
feudal systems.' Dumont ranks Hocart as one of the immediate intellectual virtues and even to his expository quirks, and that
masters in the field of Indian studies, and ascribes to him they are speCially stimulated by the radical cast which he
the very inspiration by which he thinks these studies should can impart to even the most particular or esoteric of questions.
be directed; while in his own superlative work on caste he At the present time the attention of social anthropologists
pays repeated tribute to the quality of Hocart's perceptions is turned more than ever to the scrutiny of their own categories
and stresses how much is owed to him in the comprehension of description and analYSiS, the premises with which they op
of the system." Fortes, referring to "that neglected pioneer," erate, and mOre rigorously to the perennial issue of how best
writes that "Hocart's analysis of coronation ceremonies to come to terms With the distinctive features of alien cultures.
( 1927) has not, to my knowledge, been superseded as an at In this renewed examination of the conceptual foundations
tempt at a comparative and generalising study of ceremonies of the subject, Hocart's intranSigent genius, uncomfortable and
of this type," and he generously declares that the conclusions unfashionable though it was preViously found, may prove to
to his own inquiry into installation ceremonies are "No more, have a singular and inVigorating effect.
perhaps, than confirmation for the. thesis in Hocart's
study."" Other social anthropologists, too, have written with II
patent admiration of Hocart's "creative, synthesizing imagina Arthur Maurice Hocart was born on 26 April 1883 at Etter
tion," his "complex and contrary mind," and his intelligence;" beck, near Brussels." He came of a French family said to be
his brilliant essay on kinship systems" has been of decisive traceable to Domremy, birthplace of Joan of Arc, where a
relevance to modern theoretical debate, and the analysis of Hocart is reported to have been living in the time of the Maid.
A descendant removed from there to Guernsey, in the Channel
9. C. Levi-Strauss, Les structures eIementaires de la parente (Paris: Islands, where Hocart's forebears acqUired British nationality.
Presses Universitaires de France, 1949), pp. 89, 166 n. 1, 490, 500, 542, His grandfather, James Hocart, was born on Guernsey; he was
584 (cf. English rev. ed., The Elementary Structures of Kinship, ed. a high church clergyman, but became a Wesleyan Methodist.
Rodney Needham, trans. J. H. Bell, J. R. von Sturmer, and R. Needham
Hocart's father, also James, was born in France, at St. Pierre,
[Boston, Beacon Press, 1969]); Anthropologie structurale (Pari" PIon,
near Calais; he was a Wesleyan minister, but became a Uni
1958), pp. 38, 228, 263, 346.
10. Louis Dumont, La civilisation indienne et nous: Esquisse de sociologie tarian." These last two were both men of active intelligence
comparee, Cahiers des Annales, 23 (Pari" Colin, 1964), pp. 90-97,
108; idem, Homo hierarchicus: Essai sur le systeme des castes (Paris: 14. See editor's Structure and Sentiment (Chicago: University of Chi
Gallimard, 1966), index; see also references idem, Une sous-caste de cago Press, 1962), pp. 37, 97.
l'Inde du Sud: Organisation sociale et religion des Pramalai Kallar (Paris 15 .. Register of Exeter College, Oxford, 1891-1921 (Oxford, Blackwell,
and The Hague, Mouton, 1957). Cf. [D. F. Pocock], "A. M. Hocart on 1928), p. 79.
Caste-Religion and Power," Contributions to Indian Sociology 2 16. Information by kind courtesy of Hocart's sister, MIle E. Hocart
(1958), 45-63. (private correspondence, 17 March 1966). Marcel Mauss wlites that
11. Meyer Fortes, "Of Installation Ceremonies," Proceedings of the Hocart came of old Norman stock (introduction to A. M. Hocart. Les
Royal Anthropological Institute, 1967, pp. 5--20. castes [Paris: Musee Guimet, 1938], p. b). The name Hocart does not
12. Pocock, "Hocart on Caste," pp. 45, 59, 60. appear in Albert Dauzat, Dictionnaire etymologique des noms de famille
13. A. M. Hocart, "Kinship Systems," Anthrapos 32 (1937), 345-51; et prenoms de France, 3d ed., rev. by Marie-Then~se Morlet (Paris:
reprinted idem, The Life-giving Myth (London, Methuen, 1952), pp. Larousse, 1951), though there is a form Hocquart (p. 333, s.v.
172-84. "Hoquet").
xvi xvii
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
and wide learning. J ames Hocart the elder published consider 1909 to 1912 and which permitted him to acquire a profound
ably, in French and in equally exact English, on a variety understanding of Fijian culture." In the latter year he received
of religious questions. James Hocart the younger followed his from Oxford University a graduate research scholarship in
order to carry out investigations in Fiji, Rotuma, Wallis Island,
example, and with a serious eclecticism; he wrote, for instance,
a book on the pagan origins of monasticism, another about Samoa, and Tonga." In the spring of 1914 he was back at
Jews, and a forthright but calmly analytical paper on the ob Oxford, where he registered for the diploma course in anthro
stacles to Protestant faith in Belgium. pology, but there is no record of what instruction he received
H
A. M. Hocart was educated at the Athenee d'Ixelles, Brus and he did not sit the final examination." He is reported to
sels, at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, and at Exeter College, have deputized in 1915 for Wm. McDougall, then Wilde
Oxford. He matriculated at Oxford University in October 1902 Reader in Mental Philosophy," and in Hilary Term of that
and was a classical scholar of his college. He gained the year he delivered lectures on "Problems of Anthropology.""
Richards Prize in 1904 and a second in classical moderations From 1915 to 1919 he served in the Oxfordshire and Bucking
in the same year. He graduated in 1906 with second-class hamshire Light Infantry; he fought in France, where he was
honors in Literae Humaniores (Greek, Latin, ancient history mentioned in despatches, and reached the rank of captain.
and philosophy), and later studied psychology and philosophy Mter the war he was appointed Archaeological Commis
for a time at the University of Berlin." sioner for Ceylon. As preparation for the post he was first
In 1908-9, with the aid of a senior studentship provided sent back to Oxford in order to study Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil,
first by Exeter College and then by Jesus College, Oxford, and Sinhalese." He read Sanskrit with A. A. Macdonell, who
he did ethnographical research in the Pacific, as a member in 1905 had been one of the initial members of the Co~mittee
of the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Solomons, in close for Anthropology, the body responsible for the organization
association with W. H. R. Rivers, who found him "a disciple of anthropological teaching at the University of Oxford and
after his own heart."" Upon the recommendation of A. C. for the administration of the Diploma in Anthropology which
Haddon he was then appointed headmaster of the Lakemba was initiated in 1906.'" It has been said that Hocart ~lso had
school, in the Lau Islands, Fiji, a post which he held from some contact with Tylor, though if this is so it must have
17. James Hocart the Younger, Le Monachisme (Paris, 1903); idem, 20. C. K. Roth, review of A. M. Hocart, The Northern States of Fiji in
Man 53 (1953): 95-96, art. 148.
La question iuive: Cinq conferences avec un appendice sur la charite
iuive (Paris: 1899); idem, "The Struggle against Catho1icism in Bel 21. Evans-Pritchard, Hocart obituary.
gium," in Liberal Religious Thought at the Beginning of the Twentieth 22. Register of students for the Diploma in Anthropology, University
of Oxford.
Century, ed. W. Copeland Bowie (London, 1901), pp. 126-34. :rhe
works of both the elder and the younger James Hocart, incidentally, 23. S. Paranavitana, obituary notice of A. M. Hocart, Journal of the
Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic SOCiety 34 (1938): 264-68 (see p.
are run together, without separate attribution, in the catalog of the
264).
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, and probably therefore in the catalogs of
other libraries also. 24. "~apers of the Committee for Anthropology'! (University of Oxford),
Bodlelan Library, shelfmark: Hyp. K, no. 106.
18. Register of Exeter College, p. 79; E. E. Evans-Pritchard, obituary
25. Paranavitana, Hocart obituary, p. 265.
notice of A. M. Hocart, Man 39 (1939): 131, art. 115.
19. W. H. R. Rivers, The History of Melanesian Society, 2 vols. (Cam 26. "Papers ... ," no. 10. Another member of the committee was
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 1: vii; R. R. M[.rett], Hoca:t's tutor, L. R. FamelI, Fellow of Exeter College and Lecturer in
obituary notice of A. M. Hocart, The Stapledon Magazine 9 (June, C~asslcal Archaeology, who had also been a signatory (in company
1939): 289. Rivers announced (Melanesian Society, 1: 234) a joint WIth Tylor, Marett, Balfour. McDougal1, and others) to the "Memo
work on the Western Solomons, to be written in collaboration with randu~ on the PO~ition of Anthropology in the University" ("Papers
Hocart, but it never appeared, doubtless because of the war and then .. . , no. I), whIch led to the establishment of the Diploma as the
his own death (in 1922) not long after the war's end. first academic qualification at Oxford exclusively ill anthropology.
xviii xix