The first eunuchs?
Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2002 7:52 pm
Domestic Animals as Serfs
Even though metaphor has some objective background, as Lakoff and Johnson [1980] say, there are no a priori guidelines for a metaphorical extension. Metaphorical and analogical extension is often guided according to a culturally unique pattern of categorical proximity.
It may be pertinent to recall the following remark of Emile Benveniste, in "Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-europeenes" [1969: 48]. He is concerned with the term <pasu> found in an ancient Vedic text, which designates movable property in the form of living domestic animals. He observes that there is one expression for quadruped pasu and another expression for bipedal pasu. The former designates domestic animals, while the latter designates the subordinated domestic human beings as serf or slave. Under the term pasu, members of the two different semantic domains, domestic animals and subordinated domestic serfs or slaves, are classified in the same category. In this mode of categorization, we can discern the perspective of the dominator-owner, for whom both are identified as movable living property.
This viewpoint is dominus-centric. Given such a categorical view, it is easy to see how management techniques directed towards domestic animals could have been extended into the human domain.
I would like to show that such a viewpoint can be confirmed not only in the Vedic world but also in the ancient Sumerian world. Maekawa, a leading specialist on the Sumerian temple economy, has analysed certain groups of economic tablets from the Sumerian temple-state of Lagash in the third millennium BC. In his papers, he examines two different groups of economic texts, one consisting of records of the periodic provisioning of captured female slaves in the weaver's camp, and the other of records of cattle kept in the training centre to supply ploughing oxen to farmers under the temple economy [Maekawa 1979, 1980, 1982].
From the former texts, Maekawa reveals the following facts. Weavers from among captured female slaves were generally not allowed to marry. However, they often kept their children. Significantly, of these children, the daughters, when they had grown up, were recruited into the weaving groups of their mothers in order to make them, too, work as weavers. On the other hand, sons were castrated and left the groups of their mothers to work as labour-slaves pulling boats up the river. Their sons were called amarKUD, a term whose meaning will be explained below. We can find here two different courses of life: daughters remain in the group of their mothers whereas sons, after castration, leave the group in order to be used for bodily labour.
The other set of records, of the training centre for supplying ploughing oxen, show that mainly male calves were brought to the centre annually from local cattle-breeders as tribute to the temple. In this centre, these male calves were first castrated, then trained for ploughing and distributed to the temple farmers. Maekawa observes that it was this castrated ploughing ox that was originally called amarKUD (=bull cut), the term only later being applied metaphorically to the castrated weaver's son.
It was preferable for cattle-breeders to offer male calves to the Temple as tribute, since it was important to retain female calves in order to secure the reproduction of the herd and future milk supplies. Otherwise, male calves, except for a few kept for breeding, were superfluous. In the Mediterranean and Middle East regions, they were generally castrated and either slaughtered for meat or used for transport or ploughing. There were thus two different courses of life according to sex, the female remaining in the maternal group, the male being castrated and leaving it. This pattern was not unique to the Sumerian world, but has been a customary feature of pastoral herd management throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Note that the same pattern is attested among the children of captured female slaves in the Sumerian camps; the daughter remains in the maternal group while the son, after being castrated, leaves it. We are dealing here not only with a linguistic metaphor but also with a practical analogy.
FROM: "Domestic Animal as Serf: Ideologies of Nature in the Mediterranean and the Middle East" by Yutaka TANI. Published in Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication, edited by Roy Ellen and Katsuyoshi Fukui. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1996, pp. 387 - 415. (The quotation is from pp. 403 - 405.)
[Maekawa's articles, published an extremely hard to find technical journal, Zinbun (in English, at least), published in Japan, claim that these temple texts from Lagash are the earliest confirmed case of human castration. This may or may not be true, but I have found no claim of anything earlier. Were the first eunuchs castrated as an analogy to the temple oxen? --JA]
Even though metaphor has some objective background, as Lakoff and Johnson [1980] say, there are no a priori guidelines for a metaphorical extension. Metaphorical and analogical extension is often guided according to a culturally unique pattern of categorical proximity.
It may be pertinent to recall the following remark of Emile Benveniste, in "Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-europeenes" [1969: 48]. He is concerned with the term <pasu> found in an ancient Vedic text, which designates movable property in the form of living domestic animals. He observes that there is one expression for quadruped pasu and another expression for bipedal pasu. The former designates domestic animals, while the latter designates the subordinated domestic human beings as serf or slave. Under the term pasu, members of the two different semantic domains, domestic animals and subordinated domestic serfs or slaves, are classified in the same category. In this mode of categorization, we can discern the perspective of the dominator-owner, for whom both are identified as movable living property.
This viewpoint is dominus-centric. Given such a categorical view, it is easy to see how management techniques directed towards domestic animals could have been extended into the human domain.
I would like to show that such a viewpoint can be confirmed not only in the Vedic world but also in the ancient Sumerian world. Maekawa, a leading specialist on the Sumerian temple economy, has analysed certain groups of economic tablets from the Sumerian temple-state of Lagash in the third millennium BC. In his papers, he examines two different groups of economic texts, one consisting of records of the periodic provisioning of captured female slaves in the weaver's camp, and the other of records of cattle kept in the training centre to supply ploughing oxen to farmers under the temple economy [Maekawa 1979, 1980, 1982].
From the former texts, Maekawa reveals the following facts. Weavers from among captured female slaves were generally not allowed to marry. However, they often kept their children. Significantly, of these children, the daughters, when they had grown up, were recruited into the weaving groups of their mothers in order to make them, too, work as weavers. On the other hand, sons were castrated and left the groups of their mothers to work as labour-slaves pulling boats up the river. Their sons were called amarKUD, a term whose meaning will be explained below. We can find here two different courses of life: daughters remain in the group of their mothers whereas sons, after castration, leave the group in order to be used for bodily labour.
The other set of records, of the training centre for supplying ploughing oxen, show that mainly male calves were brought to the centre annually from local cattle-breeders as tribute to the temple. In this centre, these male calves were first castrated, then trained for ploughing and distributed to the temple farmers. Maekawa observes that it was this castrated ploughing ox that was originally called amarKUD (=bull cut), the term only later being applied metaphorically to the castrated weaver's son.
It was preferable for cattle-breeders to offer male calves to the Temple as tribute, since it was important to retain female calves in order to secure the reproduction of the herd and future milk supplies. Otherwise, male calves, except for a few kept for breeding, were superfluous. In the Mediterranean and Middle East regions, they were generally castrated and either slaughtered for meat or used for transport or ploughing. There were thus two different courses of life according to sex, the female remaining in the maternal group, the male being castrated and leaving it. This pattern was not unique to the Sumerian world, but has been a customary feature of pastoral herd management throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Note that the same pattern is attested among the children of captured female slaves in the Sumerian camps; the daughter remains in the maternal group while the son, after being castrated, leaves it. We are dealing here not only with a linguistic metaphor but also with a practical analogy.
FROM: "Domestic Animal as Serf: Ideologies of Nature in the Mediterranean and the Middle East" by Yutaka TANI. Published in Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication, edited by Roy Ellen and Katsuyoshi Fukui. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1996, pp. 387 - 415. (The quotation is from pp. 403 - 405.)
[Maekawa's articles, published an extremely hard to find technical journal, Zinbun (in English, at least), published in Japan, claim that these temple texts from Lagash are the earliest confirmed case of human castration. This may or may not be true, but I have found no claim of anything earlier. Were the first eunuchs castrated as an analogy to the temple oxen? --JA]
