Orlanthi society, and that cat stuff

From: Joerg Baumgartner <joe_at_sartar.toppoint.de>
Date: Mon, 01 Jan 1996 14:18:20 MET


David Hall made much ado about Yinkin

Michael Raaterova
>>it might also be the other way around - orlanthi devolving into hsunchen?

> Hmm... so you think the myths are new ones made up for a reason? What
> reason? What external influence is leading to the need for new cat
> myths and new hsunchen customs and practices? Are the forests
> returning? Are the crops failing?

Actually, I believe that during the Greater Darkness there were indeed quite a few Orlanthi peoples who let themselves adopt by suitable Hsunchen peoples, especially when Orlanth was off gallivanting in Hell, and I Fought We Won had not yet occurred.

In current time there is Enjeem Leopard, who installs a sister cult to Yinkin among the Tarshites. This would influence the Yinkin cult somehow...

Are the crops failing? They are failing to nourish the family, with Lunar taxes in Sartar starving the more reticent tribes. A lot of staunch Orlanthi farmers may well have been reduced to eating starving mice, and what better cult than Yinkin to do this? <g>

And no, I do not think that the cult of Yinkin is a Hsunchen cult, not any more than the cult of the Dinosaur Mother Maran Gor.

> In Orlanthi society there is increasingly less need for a link to
> nature, to man's hidden perceptions, to the beast within.

Actually, this is a very recent development (brought about by Sartar and his heirs, or in Tarsh by Phoronestes and his heirs). The Orlanthi are still _much_ closer to nature than they were in the times of Harmast and Alakoring, IMO. The late Second Council era, and the EWF/counter-EWF era both were born by an urban Orlanthi society as "civilised" as Otkorion in Ralios, or southern Heortland. The kind of society urban Jrusteli scholars took root in in the early Second Age...

> Orlanthi
> don't need to hunt and gather any more - they don't need the Old Way
> to survive. They increasingly have farming, crafting, cities, trade,
> roads, laws, and institutions. They're evolving into a more "civilised"
> and modern society.

Re-evolving. They had more civilised and modern societies in the (late) First and most of the Second Age. Until Alakoring introduced the cult of Orlanth Rex, they weren't even tribal any more, but rather similar to Lunar Tarsh with its quite feudal nobility.

> Peter Michaels:

>>You're starting to BELIEVE those lies about "the barbarians" being >>"descended from beasts!" ;-)

> Oh, but they are! If you count "descended from beasts" as being
> descended from Hsunchen hunter gatherers.

From hunter-gatherers: Yes. But as I was told in the notorious Hsunchen discussion about a year ago, hunter-gatherer does not automatically mean Hsunchen. For a start, look at the Men-and-a-half of Prax who definitely are hunter-gatherers but no Hsunchen. Then go on to the Votanki of Balazar and the goat hunter/herders of Eol whose life isn't that different from the Hsunchen Uncolings in Fronela, but who definitely do not qualify as Hsunchen.

> And, of course, so are
> all the Westerners as well - though they'd tar and feather me if
> they heard me say it.

No problems with the Seshnegi and Akemites, but what about the Brithini and the Vadeli?

End of Glorantha Digest V2 #303


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