Shrines, cults and society in North and Central Africa |
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(c) 2006 Wim van Binsbergen
Wim M.J. van
Binsbergen
Shrines,
cults and society in North and Central Africa
A comparative
analysis
paper read at
the Conference on Regional Cults and Oracles
(Annual
Conference, Association of Social Anthropologists)
Manchester,
March - April 1976.
Contents:
1.
Introduction.
2. The
Khumiri of Tunisia. 2.1, Segmentation; 2.2. Shrines; 2.3. The
ecstatic cult; 2.4. Historical and political aspects.
3. The Nkoya
of Zambia. 3.1. The Nkoya village; 3.2. The village shrine; 3.3.
The valley and its shrine; 3.4. Non-ancestral cults of
affliction; 3.5. Historical and political aspects.
4. Comparison
of the Khumiri and Nkoya data.
5.
Conclusion: towards a theory of communal and non-communal cults
in their social context.
Appendix 1:
Systematic comparison of Khumiri and Nkoya society, shrines and
cults.
Notes.
References
cited.
In
recent years a considerable amount of research has been carried
out on cults and oracles, in various parts of the world and
within various theoretical approaches. Much of this work is
represented at this conference. We are confronted with a growing
need to compare notes, particularly with the aim of arriving at
such theoretical explicitness and accumulation as are still
lacking in this field. For a century or more, anthropologists,
historians and students of comparative religion have been writing
on cults, oracles and on shrines that tend to constitute the
material focus of both. Yet, so far, we have (to my knowledge)
little in the way of useful and general definitions, and less of
a systematic theory.[2]
This is unfortunate especially since many of us believe the
phenomena studied at this conference to play a pivotal role in
society.
The purpose of this paper is not in the least to go ahead and
propound the general, systematic theory I hope we are all waiting
for. I merely intend to search for a descriptive and comparative
framework out of which such a theory may one day evolve. I shall
use that simplest form of comparative analysis, in which an
anthropologist compares two societies in which he has himself
collected extensive data on the subject under study. Comparative
studies move in and out of fashion, and anyway one could imagine
a more sophisticated comparative approach than the one I adopt
here (Köbben 1966, 1970). Simple comparison is used here mainly
as a heuristic device, to highlight some of the theoretical
problems, and the potential, in this field. For this purpose, it
is immaterial that the two societies (the Khumiri of the
highlands of N.W. Tunisia, and the Nkoya of the woodland plateau
of central W. Zambia) have been selected on rather trivial
ground: because I happen to know them.
To these limitations in theoretical pretensions and ethnographic
scope, must be added those concerning subject matter. I propose
to concentrate on the social-organisational aspects of shrines
and cults, and largely ignore moral and symbolic aspects. The
latter were intently studied in my researches. However,
social-structural aspects lend themselves more easily to
generalised, summary description, and cross-cultural comparison.
Behind this lurks however an enormous problem which I can only
briefly indicate here.
Religion, including the types concerning us here, takes shape
within the social process that goes on between signifying,
interacting, moralising and manipulating individuals. It is one
of the greatest promises in the religious anthropology of the
last few decades, that it has begun to formulate approaches -
e.g. in Victor Turners work (1957, 1967, 1968, 1969) -
which seek to interpret ritual in terms of the shifting and often
inchoate social process, involving a highly specific setting of
individuals whose interrelations and biographies are traced in
great detail and time depth (extended case method)
This signals the emergence of alternatives to the hitherto
dominant, Durkheimian heritage of interpreting ritual by
reference to an abstract and rather immobile, total social
structural order (Durkheim 1912; cf. van Binsbergen 1976a). When
it comes to cross-cultural comparison, the very specificity of an
extended-case approach to religious phenomena presents complex
methodological problems, for which no solution has yet been
worked out. For this reason, I shall presently remain within the
safe grounds of the dominant tradition, and study religious and
non-religious phenomena primarily as clearly definable,
persistent and comparable institutions, elements of social order.
This illusion of monolithic units of analysis conceals how the
actual social process (as well as history on a larger scale) in
various parts of the world works at cultural and environmental
material so as to produce more variation, manipulation and
innovation of both meaning and action, than the comparativist can
ever take into account. If it is the specific, local social
process, instead of the generalised institutions, that really
matters in religion, then an institutional approach, comparative
or not, is likely to yield insights in social structure more than
in religion. Some of us have accepted this limitation gladly
(e.g. Gellner 1969: 138 and passim; cf. van Binsbergen 1971b:
208f). Others have indicated that here, precisely, lies the main
shortcoming of current religious anthropology (Geertz 1966: 42).
Anyway, the problem is there.
I shall now proceed to describe the social-structural aspects of
shrines and cults among the Khumiri and the Nkoya, in preparation
for the comparative and theoretical parts of the argument. The
unavailability, as yet, of comprehensive accounts of my
researches in English, necessitates rather extensive description
here. The reader pressed for time may wish to skip sections 2 and
3, glance at appendix 1, and move on to section 4.
The
Khumiri highlands (Van Binsbergen 1970, 1971a, 1971c; Jongmans
1968! 1973; Demeerseman 1964; Souyris-Rolland 1949; Creyghton
1969; Hartong 1968) form a system of narrow valleys, separated by
wooded maintain ranges. Each valley contains a small number of
villages (50 - 250 inhabitants each). Villages are surrounded by
fields, and separated from each other by stretches of forest.
Within each village, smaller units define themselves by: spatial
clustering; by particular amenities (house threshing-floor,
spring, mens assembly ground (raquba) exclusively used by
one unit; by collective economic action (horticulture, animal
husbandry, food preparation); by common recreation; and by common
identity and a name. The smallest of these residential units is
the individual house. A few houses together constitute a
compound, which has its own threshing-floor. A few adjacent
compounds constitute a hamlet, which has its own spring. A few
neighbouring hamlets constitute a village, which has its own
raquba. This amounts to a system of territorial segmentation. On
various hierarchical levels, well-defined and non-overlapping
units exist which are in segmentary opposition vis-à-vis similar
units at the same level; on a higher level these opposing
segments are united as belonging to one higher-order segment.
Spatial lay-out and visible, exclusive attributes from house to
raquba wholly define the system of territorial segmentation from
the smallest unit up to the village level. Above the village
level, two more local levels are operative in the contemporary
Khumiri society: the valley (segmented into a number of villages)
and the chiefdom, a colonial creation segmented into a number of
valleys. On still higher levels lies the government
administration, with its districts, provinces, and the national
state.
The spatial arrangement of dwellings and the exclusive use of the
characteristic attributes by their segments, demonstrate that
this model of territorial segmentation corresponds to an implicit
structuring in the Khumiri conceptual system. Yet the
Khumiri explicit participants model of social
organisation is a different one. All territorial segments bear
names, derived from an ancestor: Mayziya (from Bu-Maza), Zrayqiya
(from Zarruq) etc. Participants view their social organisation in
terms of a segmentary system of patrilineal descent groups.
Mythical ancestors associated with the highest segmentary levels
(chiefdom, valley, village) are, through a putative genealogical
chain of an unspecified number of generations, linked to the
historical ancestors (who died within four generations of the now
living). The participants ideology provides a skeleton
model in which they rarely press for specific genealogical and
residential details, and which is therefore allowed to be utterly
non-consensual, contradictory, and historically inaccurate. The
present-day function of the Khumiri unilineal segmentation model
is mainly to comment on actual social relations. Claims with
regard to rights of residence, land and assistance are peripheral
to the unilineal models application: these claims primarily
spring from actual, close relationships and current transactions,
featuring the total bilateral kindred. Crucial relationships are
only secondarily underpinned by reference to a genealogical
charter, which is sufficiently flexible to be manipulated and
altered along with the rapid shifts in the pattern of actual
relationships. Such shifts are brought about by the competition
for honour and informal leadership, factionalism, individual
geographical mobility, marriages, people engaging in or dropping
dyadic[3]
contracts, etc. Genealogical manipulation, aided by the ideal of
patrilateral parallel cousin marriage,[4]
tends to conceal the actual historical diversity of peoples
origins under the convenient fiction of common patrilineal
descent. Why should this fiction exist at all? It provides an
idiom of kinship obligations, to support the actual need for
close co-operation between members of territorial segments at
various levels. At the lower levels (up to the hamlet), members
of segments have common interests in the fulfilment of vital
economic needs: domestic budgeting and food preparation (house),
horticulture (compound), water (hamlet). Beyond this, there are
common interests in terms of social relationships. Politics and
conflict settlement mainly take place at village level and centre
on the raquba.
In addition, local men, as bride-givers and bride-takers, share
an interest in local women, most of whom marry within the valley
and even within the village (50%). Marriage is mostly (95%)
virilocal. Adult men frequently move to join more profitable
dyadic partners as neighbours, but these removals are mostly
intra-village. Nowadays, most men, and almost half of the women,
live and die in their village of birth, amongst people most of
whom they have known all their lives.
Whether viewed as territorial or as unilineal descent
segmentation, the segmentary alignment of groups, and the
distribution of characteristic attributes at each segmentary
level, is therefore pertinent to the total economic and social
dynamics of Khumiri society.
As elsewhere in the world, segmentation is process as much as it
is structure. Environmental, demographic, economic and local
political factors determine at which segmentary level a given,
named unit will function. As these factors vary over time, units
acquire or lose personnel and functions, and this demands a
redefinition of their segmentary relations vis-à-vis
neighbouring segments. Segments are known to develop within a few
decades from e.g. compounds to villages, thus dissociating
themselves from the village of which they originally formed part.
Likewise hamlets and villages can dwindle to compound and even
house level. The outwards signs of these segmentary dynamics are
not only changes in the spatial lay-out of houses within a
valley, but also a redistribution of the other characteristic
attributes: threshing-floors, springs, raqubas will be abandoned,
or new ones created, as beacons in the altered segmentary
structure.
Shrines[5]
come into this overall segmentary structure in a variety of ways.
In the Khumiri highlands, shrines vary from a venerated tree or
source (marked by rows of stones and pieces of textile tied in
knots), via miniature huts built of large stones and arboreal
material, to the white-washed, domed qua well-known from
throughout the Islamic world. For the Khumiri, shrines are
associated with deceased human beings: saints. For almost any
local shrine people can quote the name of the saint associated
with it. A simple myth links saint and shrine: allegedly he lived
there, was buried there, stopped there in the course of a
journey, or the shrine was created upon relics brought from other
shrines having such mythical connotations. Myths may also link
various saints associated with the shrines in a valley: a saintly
pantheon of close kinsmen and servants. But such myths are used
inconsistently and without consensus, and they comprise only a
selection of the many shrines in a valley. Therefore these myths
only roughly represent the hierarchical, tree-like structure of
segments by an analogous model of mythical relationships between
the segments saints. The myths quote as contemporaries of
the saints, other saints and mythical ancestors.
Saints associated with local shrines lived in the mythical past,
they rarely feature in the skeleton genealogies, and are not
supposed to have descendants amongst present-day people (even if
analytical historical reconstructions suggest the contrary). Yet
people refer to the saints by kinship terms: jaddi (grandparent),
uboi (father), sidi (elder brother), lalla (elder sister) - the
standard terms of address also used for unrelated, senior living
people. Dealings with the local saints are usually Characterised
by an excited fondness rarely seer. in the dealings between
living kinsmen. Shrines feature as additional characteristic
attributes of territorial segments from the lowest level upwards.
A minority of houses have a tiny shrine as their characteristic
segmentary attribute. Most compounds, and all higher-level
segments up to the valley level, have a neighbouring shrine
attached to them. No shrines are attached to the higher
administrative levels from the chiefdom upwards.
The association between shrine and segment takes a number of
expressions. Individual households in the segment dedicate meals
to the saint. Individuals enter into contractual relationships
with the saint: they promise him an offering (candles, incense, a
flag, an animal sacrifice) in exchange for a major saintly
service (curing from illness and barrenness, protection of
domestic animals, a job). Members of the segment may visit the
shrine individually, particularly on occasion of childbirth,
marriage, departure for military service, illness. Twice a year
the women of the segment pay a collective visit to the shrine,
directed by the senior women, who also co-ordinate the day-to-day
economic activities by which the segment is bound together.
Village and valley shrines have a twice-yearly festival, when the
shrine structure is repaired, and sheep and cattle are sacrificed
and distributed. On this occasion all male members of the segment
assemble for some days around the shrine to recreate
themselves with tea drinking, card playing, music and ecstatic
dancing (see 2.3.). Around the same time, three sets of women pay
compulsory visits to the shrine: all present female members of
the segment; all women born into this segment but since married
or otherwise migrated to a different segment at the same level;
and women who have belonged to a different segment since birth
but who have entered into a personal relationship with the
shrines saint at one stage in their lives (e.g. a visit to
cure barrenness) - or who have inherited such a relationship from
their mothers or mothers-in-law.
In years of extreme drought another collective shrine ritual can
be enacted for the shrines at the highest segmentary levels: an
animal sacrifice to request rain.[6]
Only valley shrines have a shrine keeper. He performs a ritual at
the shrine at Thursdays, co-ordinates the festival and receives a
share of the offerings. Ideally a close agnate of a former
incumbent to this office, the shrine keeper is usually recruited
from among a Somewhat larger set, including close matrilateral
and affinal kinsmen of a predecessor. Raqubas are always located
within view of the major village and valley shrines, and the
latters saints are frequently invoked to strengthen oaths;
in very grave cases parties will visit the shrine to swear upon
the sacred objects therein.
Finally, many shrines attached at levels from the hamlet upwards
are surrounded by cemeteries to bury, again, three sets of
people: present members of the segment; people born into the
segment but emigrated; ant people born elsewhere but tied to the
shrine and the segment by a family tradition, based on emigration
in a near preceding generation. Usually, the cemetery and the
festival function of the shrine are spatially apart. One
higher--level segment has then at least two shrines attached to
it; these may be associated with the same saint and bear the same
name.
Khumiri
shrines appear to have the following social-structural functions.
They reinforce the system of territorial segmentation. This is a
dialectical function, integrative and divisive at the same time.
Within one segment, the shrine ritual clearly makes for
integration. It supports the demarcation of the segments
social group vis-à-vis the outside world, reinforces the
collective identity, corroborates (though not:
legitimates)leadership, makes for a religious focus and religious
collective action in addition to the collective action focused on
amenities (from house to raquba) with direct economic and social
connotations. But true to the segmentary principle, all this
implies divisiveness with regard to the relation between two
neighbouring segments at the same level. Myths emphasise rivalry
between saints whose shrines are of equal segmentary importance.
One cannot visit or celebrate their shrines on the same day.
Members of rival segments compete over the power and splendour of
their respective saints, shrines and festivals; and negative
stereotypes between rival segments are phrased in reference to
their saints and shrines. On a higher level, however, this
divisiveness tends to be balanced by the fact that rival segments
together constitute a higher segment, at the village and valley
level, where they are united again by a common shrine and common
ritual. This is all the more important since on the segmentary
level of the valley, no non-religious characteristic attribute
exists as focus of collective activities and identification
(cemeteries providing a borderline case). However, beyond the
valley level even shrine cults fail to create much integration of
highest-level segments; thus valleys and chiefdoms oppose each
other as segments without effective means of identification and
collective action at any higher segmentary level.
In so far as the Khumiri shrine cult stipulates not only ritual
for members of segments collectively, but also ritual behaviour
of individuals vis-à-vis shrines of other segments than these
individuals belong to at any level, the shrine cult also cuts
across the system of territorial segmentation. Festivals,
home-pilgrimages of out-married women, optional visits of
individuals, and incidental burials at distant shrines, bring
together individuals of non-adjacent segments who would otherwise
have very little opportunity to come into contact and develop
more permanent relationships.
These cross-cutting contacts are very important. Although the
segmentary arrangement of relationships (in which geographical
distance is a crucial factor) regulates most aspects of social
life, there remains a need for more distant, dyadic contacts L22
which may offer resources locally not available: friendship
untroubled by day-to-day close scrutiny of partners and third
parties; marriage partners; information on and access to economic
opportunities and specialist services elsewhere. Cross-cutting
shrine ritual helps to open up and sustain this interlocal field
of social relations. Moreover, cross-cutting shrine ritual forms
the main opportunity to remain informed on kinsmen in distant
places, and to assert ones claims on them. The pilgrim from
an other valley not just visits the shrine but also his (more
typically her) kinsmen. He imposes himself as someone who has
latent claims locally, who belongs there too. This is
particularly the case for an out-marrying woman. Khumiri
marriages rarely end in divorce, and women rarely remarry. In
theory a woman has a right on her parents land equal to her
resident brothers right.[7]
These rights are allowed to become dormant when she marries into
a different segment (even if within the same village). But by
coming back, annually, to her original segments shrine, and
bringing her children, she asserts these rights, and introduces
her children to their maternal uncle who in future may not be
able to turn them away if need forces them to ask his support. A
similar argument applies to those who keep visiting a distant
shrine in view of a personal relationship with the saint, or a
memory of migrating from his segment in a previous generation. At
the same time, the distant pilgrimage implies a challenge to the
local segment to which these pilgrims now belong. It brings out
that they are not wholly dependent upon their present segment,
that they have still claims and obligations (both ritual and
otherwise) elsewhere. Thus the distant pilgrimage assumes the
character of a declaration of independence which is resented by
the fellow-members of the pilgrims present segment. Hon
-pilgrimages (reinforced by the idea of heavy supernatural
penalties in case of neglect) form almost the only occasion, the
only pretext if you like, on which husband and in-laws allow an
out-married woman to go and visit her kinsmen in her original
segment. Other visits, lacking such supernatural sanctions, are
taken as indications of her marriage breaking down. Similarly,
men are bound to their segments on sanction of arousing the
saints anger in case of emigration. Cases of affliction in
men and women are often diagnosed[8]
as caused by a saint who feels slighted by people moving away
from him or failing to celebrate his festival.
Clearly this set-up has great potential for the symbolic enacting
of cleavages in the local group and amongst kinsmen, in the idiom
of the saints of present and original segments. This falls
outside our present scope. I should however emphasise that no
local saint (nor any other supernatural agent except the High
God, Allah), is believed ever to exert direct moral censure on
the interaction between the living.
The saint is considered a powerful ally, who can be mobilised
through ritual and promises of ritual. He can be insulted by
perjury, attacks on pilgrims, failure to honour promises to him -
and then he will strike. Not visiting his shrine invokes
punishment, but neglecting obligations vis-à-vis people living
near his shrine does not. Symbolically, the saintly cult does
provide an idiom to express and mend breaches in human relations
- but indirectly so.
Every
member of Khumiri society engages in the cult of local saints,
although women much more frequently and deeply than men. In
addition to this cult complex, a sizeable proportion of adult
men, and much fewer women, have been initiated into a religious
specialism (faqir, druish) whose main manifestation is their
entering into trance or ecstasy during public, ritual musical
sessions. Upon his initiation, every faqir has selected for
himself one cult song (triq) out of about twenty available in the
area. Only with this song and the proper musical accompaniment
will he be able to enter into trance. The texts feature local
saints, more universal Islamic saints, and other supernatural
entities venerated throughout the Islamic world (Sidi Abd
el-Qadir, Sidi Hamad, Umm Lehana, the Prophet Mohammed,
Allah). This cult complex is the Khumiri variant of Sufism
(Islamic mysticism). Most fuqra are considered members of one of
several Islamic brotherhoods (foremost the well-known Qadiriyya)
that have regional centres or lodges (zawiyya) in the Khumiri
highlands and in the town of El Kef,[9]
and which have ramifications throughout the Islamic world.
Nowadays, these cults organization is extremely weak
locally. Few fuqra have in fact visited the lodge and have been
initiated there. Most have acquired their status and skills
through personal intuition of members in the course of sessions
held in the villages; only a minority of such mentors maintain
themselves close relations with the lodge.
Village faqir sessions are held on two occasions: to add
splendour to saintly ritual, and to diagnose and treat
affliction. On all occasions the more experienced fuqra, while in
trance, may divine on such issues as saintly intervention,
imminent death, and disrupted relationships within the segment
organising the session. When affliction is the occasion, the
session may start off a process by which one afflicted is
gradually initiated into faqirship. Underneath such affliction
(marked by psychosomatic, neurotic or psychotic symptoms) severe
psycho-social tensions can be identified, bearing on the
patients immediate consanguineal and affinal relationships.
However, such crises are neither a necessary nor a sufficient
condition for faqirship.[10]
Outside the lodge fuqra mostly perform alone or in very small
numbers. Fuqra have no common identity, never act as a group, and
display no preference for intermarriage or for dyadic contracts
amongst themselves rather than with non-fuqra. But the ecstatic
ritual does Catalyse other group processes. Faqir session are
freely attended by all members of the segment that has invited
the faqir; the session has a rallying function. The lodge is a
building located in the village where the descendants live of the
founder of a local branch of a brotherhood. Though most fuqra are
now outside lodge control, there is still a rudimentary
Organisation operating in the area. In each valley near the lodge
there is one representative who frequents the lodge and the
establishment at Le Kef. this representative regularly visits the
villages in his area to collect small donations and occasionally
stage faqir sessions. The lodge leader does the same; in addition
he has a large practice as a diviner, diagnosing affliction as
caused by saints or land spirits (jenun). He also stages the
actual treatment for the more severe affliction cases. This
treatment takes place twice a year at the lodge. Patients from
all over the area, who have previously visited the lodge for
diagnosis, come and bring animals for sacrifice; they will spend
the night being led into ecstasy, in a bid to allay their
possessing spirit. In the lodge ritual, local Khumiri saints are
ignored and all attention focuses on universal Islamic saints,
spirits, the Prophet, and Allah .
Khumiri
shrines and the ecstatic cult can only be understood against the
background of universal Islam - of which Khumiri religion is a
localised, popular version not unlike the ones encountered
amongst peasants in other Islamised parts of the world.
The proliferation of faqirship independent from the lodge; the
substitution, outside the lodge, of universal Islamic
supernatural agents by local Khumiri ones; the weak integration
of local faqirship into the international brotherhood
Organisations: these are all manifestations of a dominant feature
of Khumiri society - the strong tendency towards local
particularise and autonomy. Distant parent units (be they distant
segments from which people emigrate; distant lodges; or distant
parental shrines) are only for a short time acknowledged in a
hierarchical relation vis-à-vis their social offspring.
Not unlike the High Atlas as described by Gellner (1969), Khumiri
society is the scene of a continuous battle between ideology and
historical truths: the actual history of diverse origins,
migrations, dependence, offspring, - upon which ideology imposes
a system of segmentary opposition and integration, claiming
common origins, mutual equality between segments performing
similar functions, competition for relative autonomy and equal
segmentary status irrespective of historical, genealogical ties.
In such a segmentary context, religious power and religious foci
apparently tend to be atomistic and unrelated.
Local saints and independent fuqra are more in line with the
local social structure than universal Islamic supernatural
agents, and an international formal brotherhood Organisation. The
same pattern applies to the saints themselves. In so far as they
were historical local residents,[11]
they seem to have been immigrant, adherents to a more strict and
formal version of Islam than prevailing in the Khumiri highlands:
representatives, mainly, of the various Islamic brotherhoods that
have time and again attempted to replace, in the rural Maghrib
(N.W. Africa), the local popular version of Islam by their own,
more formal variant (Bel 1938; Brunel 1926; Dupont and Copolani
[ check Coppolani ] 1898; Montet 1909; André 1956; Anawati and
Gardet 1961). Caught in the dynamics of local Khumiri society,
these pious strangers after their deaths ended up as cornerstones
of the very popular religion they came to transform.
Once the saints, through shrines, had become attached to
segments, the localising principle again explains much of the
specific local history of the distribution of shrines over
contemporary segments. Detailed historically study of a few
adjacent valleys since the early 19th century reveals how this
distribution was brought about by fission, fusion and migration
mainly in the last century. Small family groups would, for
political and ecological reasons, leave their localised clan
segment and settle in a different valley. They would be in need
of a shrine, as a focus of identity and ritual. In case they
immigrated as clients, dependent upon their hosts, they would
have to orientate themselves towards their hosts local
shrines. But when they arrived as an autonomous immigrant group,
securing land rights through purchase, exchange or conquest, then
they would create a new shrine, often as branch of the shrine of
their parent segment. In the latter case the shrine would be
erected upon relics brought from the parent shrine, and be given
the same name. Initially, immigrants of either type would keep
visiting the festivals of their parent segment but as the
immigrants became more securely settled locally, this contact
would be allowed to lapse, and one would concentrate on local
festivals as a sign of the immigrants incorporation into an
other valley. As a groups size, power and wealth increased,
its festival and shrine would be made more important and take
precedence over other shrines in the valley. Likewise, decline of
the local group would lead to its shrine losing prominence. In
the past the segmentary, localising tendencies created local
saints out of Islamic "missionary" strangers, and
demolished, after initial success, such lodge-type cult
Organisations as these strangers may have come to found locally.
This process is likely to have been going on for many centuries.
No doubt ecstatic ritual has a very ancient history locally,[12] but the main present-day
Khumiri lodge was founded in the 1880s only. In its early
decades, the lodge had formal representatives in many surrounding
valleys. These officials organised impressive annual collections
of tribute, to be sent on to El Kef via the twice-annual
convention at the lodge. Moreover, some of them were in charge of
the major local shrines.
With the limited effectiveness of non-religious
conflict-regulation agencies (peace councils, jamaa, whose
members were often themselves parties to conflicts), these
pacifist officials intervened in battles and provided a venue for
peace negotiations between feuding groups. /This has been not In
less than a century, the economic and political functions of the
lodge have virtually disappeared This has been not merely as an
effect of localising segmentary tendencies, which are inimical to
an interlocal Organisation. For in the same period, the
segmentary system was confronted with a unifying, bureaucratic
power complex of such military and organisational superiority,
that the very dynamics of feuding, conquest and ecological
competition, the backbones of the segmentary system, were cut
out. Up to the French Colonisation (1881) the Khumiri had
succeeded in keeping the Tunis central government out - although
occasionally tribute was exacted by armed tax-collectors, who
often were associated with Islamic brotherhoods (e.g. the
Shabbiya). In an until then acephalous polity, the first chiefs
("sheikhs") were appointed in 1883 from amongst locals
outside the politico-religious power complex of lodge and major
shrines. Though backed by a colonial garrison, it took the chiefs
a quarter of a century to effectively impose the central power
they represented upon the segmentary system, banning warfare, and
usurping the conflict-regulatory functions of the shrine keepers
and lodge. As a means towards both power and prestige, the
colonial and post-colonial chiefs gained control over the shrines
by pushing poor kinsmen, their own clients, to be appointed as
shrine keepers; and by opposing (aided by governmental
regulations against the brotherhoods,[13]
the lodge representatives and leaders whilst allowing their own
client kinsmen to embark upon careers as village fuqra unattached
to the lodge. The lodge Organisation collapsed partly in response
to segmentary localisation, but mainly as a result of the
segmentary system being overcome by a more powerful central
government.
Under colonialism, the banning of warfare and the increase of
population froze the segmentary dynamics to a point where
migration, and assimilation of immigrants, could only take place
at the lowest segmentary level: the individual household. Instead
of movable tents, dwellings became immobile stone constructions,
and the distribution of groups over land stuck to the situation
at the turn of the century. After 1930 no new shrines were
created, merely some hut shrines were embellished to become
qubbas. If the modern Khumiri highlands displays segmentation,
and distribution of shrines, mainly along territorial instead of
descent lines, this may be largely due to the Colonisation of the
area. The colonial impact upon the areas politico-social
structure is particularly manifest in the preposterous fact that
Khumiri segmentation crucially affects all aspects of life except
politics.[14]
One wonders why the lodge, deprived of most of its political and
economic powers has retained and most likely further developed
the affliction aspect. What are the links between Colonisation,
peripheral stagnation, individual suffering and an idiom of
ecstasy and mystical liberation? Whilst statistical analysis
shows that Khumiri fuqra are not deprived in wealth and prestige,
as compared to their non-faqir neighbours, is it possible that
their performances enact a collective deprivation syndrome of
Khumiri society: colonial experience internalised ? or is it
rather that the affliction aspect was harmless enough from the
viewpoint of the colonial and post-colonial central power, to be
endured - in contrast with the lodges political aspects
(cf. 3.5.)? Or both?
Nkoya is
an ethnic and linguistic label applying to about 50t000 people
inhabiting the wooded plateau of Central Western Zambia (Van
Binsbergen 1972a, 1975a, 1975b, 1976a, 1976b, and forthcoming a,
b; Clay 1945; McCulloch 1951; Mainga 1969; Anonymous n.d.). At
the village level, their society shows much of the familiar
Central-African pattern. In addition to migrant labour, the
economy hinges on shifting horticulture with a fringe of animal
husbandry wherever the fly-infested environment allows this.
Villages are small: up to a hundred inhabitants, but usually a
score or less. Villages continually emerge, mature and decline in
response to ecological, demographic and social vicissitudes. The
rural male career model stipulates the competition for village
leadership and glorious titles. This causes senior men belonging
to different villages to compete for patrilateral, matrilateral
and affinal junior kin (no matter how remotely related) as
co-residing followers. In most other Central-African societies
bilateral tendencies are concealed under a formal matrilineal
ideology; the Nkoya however are explicitly bilateral, which
amounts t) children having equal claims concerning support,
residence and land on a rather large pool of geographically
scattered bilateral kindred, including remote and putative
kinsmen (bathukulu, "grandfathers"). Marriage is
unstable, many marriages end in divorce, and successive marriages
are common practice. Therefore both women and junior men (up to
their forties) tend to live in a number of villages successively,
staying on for a number of years as long as they are effectively
attached to senior men, and moving on (after divorce, death,
disruption of good relationships with their patrons)when local
support is failing or when better opportunities arise elsewhere.
Adults rarely live and even more rarely die in the place where
they were born. The cultural and ecological similarity in the
wider area and a clan system providing means of identification
beyond traceable or putative genealogical ties, allow individual
geographical mobility (in the pursuit of marriage and clientship)
to cut across ethnic and linguistic boundaries, over several
hundred kilometres.
With only moderate exaggeration the Nkoya village could be
characterised as a small, ephemeral conglomerate of strangers who
have not grown up together, are genealogically heterogeneous, and
are ready to leave as soon as misfortune befalls them locally
and/or they can get better opportunities elsewhere.[15] At the same time, people
thrown together in a village share vital interests: in land, the
production and distribution of food, a measure of harmony in
day-to-day interaction, assistance in individual life crises,
conflict regulation to mitigate internal strife and to prevent
sorcery, and finally the maintenance (through food exchanges,
mutually visited ceremonies, and martial ties) of good
relationships with other villages in order to create a pool out
of which material support and personnel can be drawn in case
village survival is in danger.
How are these vital interests served? First, the senior
membership (headman, elders, elder women) spend, in exchange for
economic and prestige benefits, most of their time in organising
and checking the social process in the desired direction.
Secondly> an ideological construction counteracts the
heterogeneity and opportunism of individual village membership.
In terms of this ideology, all members of the village are close
kinsmen. Precise genealogical details, and other historical facts
such as historical slave status of part of the membership, are
suppressed. The ideology has elaborate religious aspects. Nkoya
belief that in addition to the actual living membership, a
villages affairs are the concern of all deceased former
members both of this village and of all villages from which ever
members were drawn. Whatever their names and wherever buried,
these ancestors (mipashi) are held to keep the affairs of the
living in constant scrutiny and to dish out success and health,
respectively failure and illness, commensurate to the living
peoples performance.
Various
actions and material substances allow for communication between
the living and the death: beer and meat stock; application of
white meal, clay, cloth, or water; divination; clapping of hands;
prayer. The main material focus for rituals involving these
elements is the village shrine (chihanda, mushuwa), an
inconspicuous shrub or forked pole situated in the centre of the
village, near the mens shelter which is the organisational
headquarters of the village.
Any restoration or enlargement of the villages strength and
unity forms occasion for a small ritual at the shrine:
Childbirth, return after long absence, the tracing of a distant
kinsman and potential co-resident of whose existence one was not
aware, the settlement of internal conflict, recovery from illness
that was diagnosed as caused by the ancestors, success in
hunting, etc. Ancestors are prayed to at the shrine in cases of
illness. Very rarely, named ancestors are addressed; this is only
the case if divination has pointed at a recently deceased as
causing the illness.
In all other cases, the supernatural entities associated with the
shrine are addressed as a nameless collectivity, or as
"Thou, our ancestor". Name-inheriting ritual represents
the most elaborate collective rituals in which the Nkoya village
shrine plays a part. On all other occasions only current members
of the village (and migrants on visit) take part in the ritual.
No outsider is under obligation to visit the village shrine and
make an offering. But in the name inheriting rituals, for which a
beer party and nocturnal dance are staged, members of surrounding
villages in the same and adjacent valleys participate in great
number (up to several hundred, if the title of a chief or senior
headman is to be inherited).[16]
In addition to local visitors, geographically distant members of
the extended bilateral kindred of the deceased come and
participate in the ritual; many of these have never belonged to
this village but have latent claim of membership there, whilst
others may once have belonged to the village but moved away -
often because they were in conflict with the former, now deceased
headman whose title they might now inherit. After long
deliberations a heir is appointed by the elders so assembled, and
inaugurated at the shrine.
The village shrine forms the main focus of village identity and
autonomy, legitimates village authority, and is the material
focus of a device to enforce conformity and loyalty by reference
to supernatural sanctions. No village can do without a shrine.
The ritual of planting a shrine by the headman makes the
selection of a site for a new village definitive. New village
sites are occupied on two occasions: when after the death of a
headman the whole village moves away; and as a result of fission,
usually followed by the attraction of geographically distant
followers from other villages than the one that has split. On all
occasions village shrines are created directly from forest
material, and no relic from the parent villages shrine is
brought to the new site. Nor is there any other way in which
Nkoya village shrines become associated with each other or
incorporated into a wider structure. The nameless shrine comes
into being and falls into decay along with the material structure
of the village.
The cult
complex of the village shrine mainly refers to communal life. Its
ecological connotations[17]
are limited to hunting; horticulture, the land, rain are outside
the scope of this ritual complex.
Ignoring such supralocal organisational devises as have been
superimposed by the Lozi (Barotse) and British Colonisation of
the Nkoya area (cf. 3.5.), Nkoya society has few effective
organisational levels above the village level. The main named
territorial unit besides the village is the valley, which takes
its name from the river flowing through it. Rivers yield great
quantities of fish in the wet season. Near the river, the wet
gardens of the valleys villages lie close to each other;
they are rich in yield but cannot be expanded, and therefore are
heavily contested. The less fertile, dry gardens are situated
around the villages and further uphill, as clearings in the
forest which separates valleys from each other. Villages are
located halfway the gentle slopes. They are connected by paths
along and across the river. Most day-to-day interaction of an
economic ritual or recreational nature, and most marital ties, of
a village are confined to the other villages in the same valley.
While a chief is appointed over a number of adjacent valleys,
each valley has a sub-chief, whose main function is the
regulation of such conflicts (including occasional referral to
the distant Local Court) as could not be settled within the
village. Thus the valley is the highest effective social and
ecological unit in Nkoya society; its inhabitants have a certain
density of interaction, social and economic common interests,
common identity and a name.
A valley shrine cult exists which has primarily reference to the
valleys ecology. The cult focuses on the grave of the most
recently deceased, most senior headman or chief of the valley.
The place (in the midst of the previous, deserted chiefly
village) is marked by a pole.
In years when the first rains are delayed or stop too soon, the
sub-chief and two or three other senior headmen of the valley
visit the shrine, clap hands, and ask the deceased and the High
God (Nyambi) for rain. To make their need clear, they pour water
on the grave and display seeds or faded seedlings. No other
people share in the ritual or visit the shrine at other times. No
other ritual is performed for this deceased headman. Not the
valley shrine, but the shrine of the last-living chiefs
village features in chiefly succession ritual. No ritual (except
a greeting prayer) is performed either for the other deceased
headmen whose burial shrines one may come across if their deaths
were yet recent enough to prevent these traces from being
completely swallowed by forest regeneration.
Besides
village and valley shrines a third type of shrines exist: shrines
erected and owned by individual specialists. These specialists
fall into two main categories: ecological specialists (hunters,
fishermen, honey-collectors, ironworkers), and those who, as
leaders or adepts, belong to one of the many non-ancestral cults
of affliction existing in the area. It is on the latter type that
I shall concentrate now.
It is relatively rare for illness and other misfortune to be
attributed to troubling ancestor who can be approached through
village shrine ritual. Besides such recognised causes as sorcery
and forest beings, for which specialist treatments exist, a large
and increasing number of affliction cases is diagnosed as being
caused by vague and rather impersonal "disease
principles". In the Nkoya area, at least twenty disease
principles are distinguished; some major ones are: biyaya,
kasheba, mayimbwe, songo, muwa, bituma. Each principle is the
subject of a cult. A local senior adept of the cult diagnoses
whether peoples illness has been caused by the cults
disease principle; if so, they may provide minor treatment to
alleviate the affliction, or, more typically, they stage a
healing session (ngoma) during which the patient (through
dancing, singing, music, sweating baths, private therapeutic
conversations, manipulation of the leaders paraphernalia,
and ecstasy) is initiated to become an adept of the cult. Often
the ecstatic ritual serves as both diagnosis and treatment.
Through the ritual the patient acknowledges his special relation
vis-à-vis the disease principle, honouring and placating the
latter so as to be troubled no longer. Once initiated, the adept
may continue to visit sessions and may begin to diagnose and
treat others.
Cult sessions are held in the novices or the leaders
village. In the former case a newly erected cult shrine is the
focus of the session. Musicians and a chorus are recruited in the
same or neighbouring villages. Beer and specialist fee are
furnished by the sponsor, usually a senior kinsman or the spouse
of the novice, who in most cases is female. Neighbours and
kinsmen may attend in smallish numbers, seldom more than a score.
The whole setting suggests a social drama in which tensions and
cleavages in crucial social relationships in the village and the
kindred are brought to the fore and ritually resolved. This is in
fact the case, but a discussion falls outside the scope of this
paper.
The various cults follow this general pattern whilst differing in
details: paraphernalia, texts and music of the songs, vegetal
medicines used, form and adornment of the leaders shrine,
specific ideas on the nature and symptomatic manifestations of
their particular illness principle, etc. Almost all women and
many men have been initiated in one cult, many in several. All
cults of this type now occurring among the Nkoya are claimed to
be recent innovations, which only in the twentieth century, have
been either introduced from surrounding areas or locally
developed. They have spread like fashions or epidemics, quickly
gaining momentum in a wide area, losing vigour soon, to be
overtaken by a similar cult only a few years later.
A combination of characteristics enables these cults to spread
rapidly, even across linguistic and ethnic boundaries, as they
[ check ] have been doing in Western Zambia.[18] Affliction is attributed
to abstract, impersonal supernatural entities, which are free
from all reference to local social-structural or ritual
peculiarities. Contrary to other locally prevailing
interpretations of illness, the cults have an emphatically
a-moral nature: misfortune is explained not in terms of malice,
guilt or neglect (as in the case of sorcery and ancestral
affliction), but in terms of accidental possession by an unknown
entity with whom one had no relation previously. The cults
therefore offer a venue for healing and collective ritual without
disrupting local relations by the search for a culprit. The
cults main symbolic idiom is easily understood, lying in
line of the ancestral and chiefly ritual throughout Central
Africa. Esoteric knowledge, or complex mental or bodily
techniques which it takes years to acquire, do not come in. These
are some of the factors explaining the great receptivity of the
modern Nkoya and their neighbours to these cults of affliction.
An extra impetus, on the side of the leader, form the high
prestige and financial benefits; but these can only exist, of
course, if for other reasons there is a need for this type of
cult among the population in general.
Most of the non-ancestral cults of affliction described here,
have only the most rudimentary organisation. This fact may
largely explain why each separate cult subsides quickly.
Diffusion through individual adepts who after mastering the
cults idiom establish themselves as leaders makes it
possible for these cults to expand over a large area without any
\ organization above the local level. There are however minimal
organisational requirements. Sufficient adepts must be available
locally to form a chorus; these adepts must be mobilised to
attend the session and must be prepared to accept the
leaders authority during the session. Virtually every
session is devoted to recruitment of new adepts, of whom the
leader keeps thinking as his own patients- although, once the
fees have been paid, they will only meet at sessions if they live
in each others proximity, and even then rarely. Whilst the
sessions have a rallying function for non-adept attendants, there
are no indications that adepts, as such, have a tendency to
develop, outside ritual, closer relationships among themselves,
or with the leader, than with non-adepts. Yet for each leader the
local adepts represent an indispensable ritual following, which
is jealously guarded against the encroachment of other leaders
within the same or similar cults. The general pattern however
allows for variation in two directions. Given the decisive role
of individual adepts in the diffusion `of the cult, and the lack
of a supra-local organisation, there is much room for personal
innovation. Many leaders have added a personal touch to the
paraphernalia and the song texts of the cults they were
transmitting. In a few cases, visionary individuals reach further
than that and, in the course of a personal crisis, devise what
amounts to a prophetic cult of affliction. Such an innovation
retains the material of the general pattern, but adds to this
elements from the personal vision of the prophet: a more
elaborate conception of the illness principle, particular
medicines, food taboos, and myths linking all these. These
prophetic versions are highly syncretistic, and combine the
general affliction-cult pattern with elements springing from
Christianity and local ancestral cults. Two examples from the
area are Sambaing (founder of the bituma cult), and a prophet who
later in life was known as Moray, after the moya illness
principle featuring in his cult (cf. Ikacana 1952). Both started
in the 1930s.
In both cults a second direction for variation can be noted: a
supra-local Organisation. Once the prophetic vision has reshaped
the general pattern into a very specific and elaborate cult,
there is a basis for orthodoxy. The prophet and the story of his
vision can act as a charter and focus for the adepts, thus
lending the cult much more identity than the non-prophetic cults
of affliction can derive from their abstract, impersonal illness
principle.
Leaders of the latter cults are mainly regarded as skilful
doctors who get good payment for their indispensable services;
the awe-inspiring nature of the illness principle they deal with,
does not emanate onto them. In the prophetic cults the situation
is different. In the eyes of those adepts who got cured by the
prophet or his representatives, the prophet acquires a personal
charisma. This seems to form the main basis on which a supralocal
Organisation is developed. Adepts in distant places are appointed
representatives for the cult; they keep in touch and have to
forward part of the income they derive from the cult sessions
they stage. Both Sambaing and Moya set up such a supra-local
Organisation, with a small number of representatives dispersed
over an area of thousands of km2.[19]
Nowadays the bituma and Maya organisations still exist but the
former has declined enormously. An early schism within the cult
between the rival factions of the founder and his cousin Kapata,
has estranged most original representatives from the present
leader. These dissidents no longer forward money or visit the
annual convention. Neither have they retained any organisation
among themselves Simbingas original vision means little to
them now, and instead they have allowed bituma to routinise into
just another, non-prophetic cult of affliction whose local
leaders they are. It is thus that bituma is viewed nowadays by
most adepts and other Nkoya.
The
present-day religious situation of the Nkoya can be interpreted
in the light of the areas history over the last centuries.
From the 18th century onwards, the penetration of militant
immigrants and new political concepts mainly from the North, and
the related expansion of regional and long-distance trade, caused
a marked increase of political scale. Chiefs began to control
larger areas and assumed a more exalted status. A royal cult
complex focusing on chiefly paraphernalia, medicines and graves
appears to have greatly expanded at that time - if it had already
existed before. Among neighbouring groups (Ila, Kaonde, Kwanga)
similar processes took place. And particularly among the Lozi,
where the development was stimulated by the eminently favourable
ecology of the Zambezi flood plain and by the Kololo invasion
from Southern Africa. Much of the Nkoya area came under Lozi
political influence during the last century: tribute was paid,
chiefs drums (symbols of autonomy) and captives were taken
to the Lozi capital, Lozi representatives were stationed at the
Nkoya chiefs courts. The Lozi royal cult was boosted along
with Lozi political expansion, and became the central focus of
identity and chiefly legitimacy in the Lozi kingdom (Mainga
1972). But Nkoya chieftainship and chiefly ritual declined, due
to the expansion of the Lozi and to a lesser extent, through
Kaonde and Ila raids. This decline seems the main reason why
today the Nkoya chiefly cult (at valley level) is a very modest
affair, as compared to that of the Lozi. To this should be added
that Nkoya from outside the Zambezi flood plain never
participated in the Lozi royal cult -except as court musicians or
occasional human sacrifices; coming under Lozi political
influence did not imply adopting the Lozi royal cult. Viewed as a
neighbourhood ecological cult, the Nkoya valley cult is also much
less elaborate than that of neighbouring peoples (Ila, Tonga)
who, lacking a pre-colonial state organization, have made
neighbourhood shrines the key element in their supra-local order
(Smith and Dale 1921; Jaspan 1953; Colson 1962, 1969; Fielder
1965).
In the second half of the last century the expansion of the slave
trade and raiding (both from neighbouring groups and from distant
Ndebele and Yeke) threw together in the fly-infested, less
hospitable parts of Western Zambia, concentrations of refugees
from a variety of ethnic and linguistic groups (Gielgud, n.d.).
They boosted the villages of petty local chiefs, and gave these a
considerable heterogeneity. Present-day Nkoya are largely
descendants of these people. The present heterogeneity of the
Nkoya village has therefore a precedent at least in those days.
And so has, probably, the crucial function of the village shrine
as a device to create unity, conformity, identity and authority,
amongst a heterogeneous set of co-residents. This however
suggests that, prior to the political expansion and general
upheaval during the last century, village shrines may have played
a lesser role. It is not unlikely that, before the 19th century,
more elaborate supra-local shrine cults existed among the Nkoya;
of these the contemporary valley shrines may then form a dim
reminiscence, drawn into the realm of the locally more recent,
chiefly cult (Van Binsbergen, forthcoming a).
It is equally difficult to fix the time dimension of the general
pattern of the non-ancestral cults of affliction, although it is
fairly certain that all the specific cults now occurring among
the Nkoya are recent innovations. The great similarity in details
between these cults and the village shrine ritual suggests that
these cults are partly modern mutants of older village shrine
cults; this point was first made by C.M.N. White (1949). on the
other hand, these cults of affliction contain elements
(mediumship) reminiscent of cults of forest beings and of
deceased chiefs such as have been recorded in other parts of
Central and Southern Africa (Van Binsbergen, 1972b), and fear
which a very recent origin is hardly likely. Elsewhere
(forthcoming a) I have argued in detail why, amongst the
religious variation in Western Zambia over the last few
centuries, the cults of affliction in their present form
represent a truly modern innovation: geared to the type of
society which emerged in Central Africa as a result of thorough
changes in the 19th and early 20th century. I shall not repeat
the argument here. I do however wish to draw attention to the
fact that, with their extremely weak organisational structure,
these cults represent a form of religion which cannot accumulate
and exert social power - beyond the face-to-face relationship
between leader and local adepts, and then mainly during the
ritual. It is almost as if these cults were devised so as to
preserve the peace of mind of colonial administrators who ever
since the early colonial uprisings in Southern Rhodesia (Ranger,
1966, 1961) and Tanganyika (Gwassa 1972) had been afraid of the
anti-colonial political potential of African religion. For this
reason the administration had very strongly acted against the
prophet Mupumani, African Watchtower, and witchcraft eradication
movements (mcape) in the period 1910 - 1940, most of which had
only rather weak supralocal Organisations too (Rotberg 1967;
Hooker 1965; Shepperson and Price 1958; Ranger 1972; Van
Binsbergen forthcoming a). Significantly, when Simbinga founded
the bituma cult, the Nkoya area had just seen three crises
rapidly succeeding each other within a few years: the ceasing of
migrant labour recruitment due to the international Depression;
famine due to locust plagues; and massive spread of the
Watchtower movement, which because of the anti-government and
anti-Lozi statements of the preachers had been forcibly repressed
by both the administration and the Lozi paramount chief. Had the
religious idiom of Simbingas movement pursued any of these
lines, his cult would not only have been better documented in
tile archives than it is now - it would also have been prohibited
to develop and maintain even the rudimentary Organisation
Sambaing worked out for it. This does not explain, of course, the
positive reasons why the people of Western Zambia adopted bituma
and similar cults so eagerly; but it does suggest that the
colonial situation imposed, as conditions for survival, certain
types of content and Organisation upon religious movements. Cults
of affliction could flourish only if they did not present a
political threat. They did lack an Organisation that might be
mobilised for African political action; and even if they had,
like the prophetic cults, the rudiments of such an Organisation,
the ideological dimension of the cults wholly concentrated on
suffering and treatment - an extreme individual-centredness which
sharply contrasts with the other cults from Mupumani to
Watchtower, and in which an eschatological blueprint of a
radically transformed social order formed the main source of mass
inspiration. If the cults of affliction were to function in a
rural society where a central government and its recognised
African associates (chiefs) held a rigid monopoly of power, they
could hardly have developed an effective supra-local
Organisation. On the other hand, what extra-religious functions
could a more effective Organisation have had? I cannot see any
conditions in Nkoya colonial societal which could call for such
supra-local yet non-political Organisation. Conflict regulation
above the village level was already included in the central power
monopoly, and such relationships (mainly with kin) as existed
above the valley level were sufficiently reinforced by occasional
visits, name-inheriting ritual, and frequent individual removals
over wide distances.[20]
I realise however that in social science, the explanation of the
absence of a feature on the basis of the absence of a need for
it, is hardly less dangerous than explaining the presence
of a feature on the basis of its being needed!
The
preceding sections provide sufficient data for a detailed and
systematic comparison between Khumiri and Nkoya society and cults
(App. 1). Data of this kind must be treated with reservation. I
have scored both societies on over 40 variables, most of which
dichotomous. These variables were suggested to me by my analysis
of each society, by preliminary intuitive comparison between both
societies, and by my general theoretical views on society and
ritual. Other researchers in this field might have selected a
rather different set of variables as crucial and then differences
and similarities between Nkoya and Khumiri society and ritual
might have shown themselves in an entirely different way.
Although it is in most respects an advantage that I myself
collected the data in both societies and did the scoring, an
element of personal bias may have crept in. Among other things,
discussion of this paper may consider the merits of my selection
of variables and scoring. Meanwhile the comparison yielded the
following results. In terms of macro structure and history,
Khumiri and Nkoya society have some striking points in common.
Each is similar in language, culture and religion to neighbouring
groups over a large area. Each has existed for some time in the
periphery of distant states, until recent European Colonisation
imposed upon them a Centralised polity, which after the
nation-states attainment of political independence
underwent few changes at the local level. Local social structure
is similar in that valleys constitute the main effective local
communities; in that they have a predominantly horticultural
subsistence economy; are not stratified; are dominated by
multiplex, inclusive relationships; and have a bilateral
underlying kinship structure. They differ however greatly in the
density of population, the social organisational density within
the community, the stability of community membership, local
leadership pattern, the marriage pattern (endogamy, stability and
seriality of marriage, effective incorporation of women in their
husbands group), and the economic opportunities of women.
As regards communal shrine cults[21]
the two societies seem to display a common basic pattern. Shrines
are attached to residential groups, for which they are a focus of
identity and collective ritual; by virtue of this, communal
shrines have a major rallying function for community members and
outside contacts; shrines at the maximum community level have
keepers; if affliction is attributed to beings associated with
communal shrines, this symbolically reflects the in-group social
process. But upon that basic pattern, Khumiri and Nkoya cults
show marked differences, in the following respects: permanency of
shrines; their being linked to other communal shrines through
myths and ritual; the extent to which the cult at the maximum
community level involves all community members in collective
ritual; the cults providing a device (through compulsory,
supernaturally sanctioned pilgrimages) for the maintaining of
outside contacts; the preponderance of women in cults;
and the extent to which supernatural beings associated with the
shrine are believed to take a moral interest in the interaction
between community members. In addition there are minor aspects in
which the Khumiri shrine cult now resembles the Nkoya village
shrine cult, then the Nkoya valley shrine cult. These aspects
include: the material form of the shrine; is the shrine the
burial place of an important person; are shrines named and
associated with individual supernatural beings; and has the cult
strong ecological connotations?
As regards the non-communal cults which in both societies occur
along with the communal shrine cult, here again a striking
similarity between both societies suggests an underlying basic
pattern, including: involvement of a sizeable minority of the
male population; membership through initiation; ecstasy; cult
readers are associated with shrines; cult sessions have a
moderate rallying function, which does not encompass the -total
maximum community; a strong political aspect is absent; u d the
cults extension beyond the ethnic and linguistic confines
of the societies under study. To this may be added the historical
point that current versions of the cults all appear to be of
recent origin. Variations of this basic pattern, making for
differences within either society as well as between societies,
include such aspects as: the cults concentration on
individual affliction; the rituals requiring more than one
officiant, in a role structure of leader and adepts; the extent
to which cult membership is exclusive; the extent to which the
cults ritual concentrates on recruitment as the major
treatment of affliction; and the extent to which the non-communal
cult is linked to the communal shrine cult in the same society.
Only three major differences stand out between Khumiri and Nkoya
non-communal cults: the percentage of the female population
involved; the cult leaders making, or not making, public
moral pronouncements concerning the sponsoring community; and the
occurrence of major cash transactions between cult leader and
sponsors.
My
comparison of Khumiri and Nkoya cults in their social context
suggests a number of theoretical and historical questions. How
general and basic are the common patterns I tentatively
formulated for both the communal and the non-communal cults? To
answer this question, we shall have to refer to additional
comparative data from many other societies - much of which will
become available during this conference. Comprehensive
comparative analysis may be somewhat facilitated by my series of
variables (appendix 1), which forms a heuristic device to ask
apparently relevant questions about societies where cults of this
type occur. But, no doubt, some variables could be omitted and
others will have to be added.
From a wider comparison, I expect two outcomes.
First, in addition to the basic cult patterns now formulated,
other irreducible varieties may be brought to light, peculiar to
types of societies greatly different from Khumiri and Nkoya
society - which despite their being 6,000 km apart have much in
common. Secondly, the two basic patterns formulated now may turn
out to be far from basic, but instead to include some secondary
features which these two societies just happen to have in common,
and to lack other essential features present in both societies
but overlooked in my analysis. Thus the political aloofness of
both Khumiri and Nkoya non-communal shrine cults may well turn
out to be a secondary feature some of the cults to be discussed
at this conference having great political significance, even
though otherwise they are similar to Khumiri and Nkoya cults and
operate within a colonial and post-colonial framework similar to
that affecting Khumiri and Nkoya [ check ]. The next question is
then: how can we make Sense, social-scientifically, of the
combination of features in the two basic patterns now formulated?
With the uncertain status of these patterns, I think we should
not try to propound a speculative theory at this stage. We should
wait for the outcome of further comparison. But it is not just a
matter of more data To link the various features in the basic
patterns, we need nothing less than a general theory linking:
social structure; the on-going social, economic and political
process; material religious objects (shrines); religious
symbolism; ritual; and altered states of consciousness. In short,
an integrated theory of shrines and cults in society. Prolegomena
for such a theory are available throughout the anthropology of
religion, from Durkheim (whose ideas on the relation between
group and symbol are clearly relevant here) to modern work,
including my own. But I shrink from pursuing this line of
argument at the end of an already too long paper.
Once we shall have succeeded in identifying one, or very few,
universal basic patterns of communal and non-communal cults, the
perennial question of cross-cultural comparison will have to be
faced: are similarities due to a similar functional set-up in
synchronic conditions, or to historical diffusion which at best
reflect functional similarities at the time of transmission? In
other words, is there a type of society which will, sui generis,
produce the basic cult patterns as encountered among the Khumiri
and the Nkoya; or is the distribution of this basic pattern due
to diffusion? A combination of answers can be envisaged. Cults
are not the only aspects of societies to have a history; and by
attempting a time series of synchronic functional analysis
interesting hypotheses can be generated - and perhaps verified.[22] On the other hand, data
now available on spirit mediumship in Africa and its apparent
spread throughout the continent in the last few centuries
(Beattie and Middleton 1969; Carter 1972) suggest that at least
in the ecstatic variety of non-communal cults diffusion is
important; not, I think, out of any impetus of its own, but
largely because such diffusion is sustained by fundamental
processes of change which constitute, outside religion, major
related themes in the continents modern history: expansion
of long-distance contacts and trade; state formation; and
Colonisation. Strictly speaking, any ad hoc generalisations
suggested by the analysis of one or two societies, should be
carefully considered in the light of a larger comparative sample
before they can be accepted as valid even for the case study for
which they were advanced.[23]
But while waiting for a theory and for enlargement of our
comparative mini-sample, I am yet inclined to attach some
explanatory value to the social-structural similarities
concomitance with the similarities in basic cult patterns between
Nkoya and Khumiri. Non-communal cults might not have crossed
(either way) the boundaries of Khumiri respectively Nkoya
society, if these local societies had not been embedded into a
general linguistic, cultural and social-structural complex of
considerable homogeneity, comprising neighbouring societies over
a very large area.[24]
Moreover, the difficulty these non-communal cults have in both
societies to develop or maintain a supra-local organisation with
major political functions, seems definitely related to two
social-structural factors: the tendency to localisation
(springing, I am inclined to say, from the limited size, the
sharp delimitation, and relative isolation of the maximum
effective community, the valley), and the confrontation with a
Centralised political system. Likewise there is an intuitive link
between the communal shrine cults providing, in both societies, a
focus of identity, collective ritual and a rallying point both
within and between communities - and such social-structural
aspects as subsistence economy, absence of stratification,
predominance of multiplex, inclusive relationships, and bilateral
kinship. Without too much effort, these hints could lead to
fertile hypotheses which, once subjected to wider cross-cultural
comparison and built into a coherent theory, may enhance our
understanding of communal and non-communal cults in any human
society. Those aspects in which Nkoya-Khumiri differences in
communal, and non-communal cults occur in conjunction with
social-structural differences, offer equally fascinating fields
for exploration. The rather different parts women play in the
cults in both societies appears to be closely related to the
marked differences in the marriage pattern, womens
membership of their groups of orientation and procreation, and
their access to economic opportunities independent from men.
Similarly, if shrines are so intimately linked to residential
groups, the extent to which these groups membership (both
male and female) is stable will directly bear on the form and
function of communal shrine cults, on the beliefs concerning
communal shrines, and even on the material form of the shrines,
their permanency etc. In the same vein, if shrine-owning
residential communities are hardly integrated in specific ways
with other such communities at a higher level, we hardly expect
the associated shrines to be linked to each other through myths
and ritual; if there is high social-organisational density, then
we expect the reverse to be true. If the local leadership is
articulate and operative, communal shrine cults are more likely
to support such leadership than when local leadership is diffuse
and eclipsed by the Central power of the national state. Whilst
in both societies both communal and non - communal cults
symbolically reflect on the in-group social process, a
penetrating analysis of social control mechanisms, symbolism and
sex roles is required before the differential distribution of
moral aspects over communal respectively non-communal cults can
be understood. Finally, further analysis may also provide
insights into the interrelation between the two major types of
cults encountered in both Khumiri and Nkoya society. Is their
co-occurrence mere coincidence? Are there societies where only
the communal shrine cult, or the non-communal cult, exists? And,
if both types co-exist in a given society, are moral aspects, and
personnel of either sex, allocated to either cult type by a blind
game of functional and historical free variation? Or is there (as
I suspect) a more intimate and systematic relation between
communal and non-communal cults?
This
paper does little more than proposing a research programme, and
hinting at some of the possible results It leaves the reader with
a limited and inconclusive argument, and two too sketchy case
studies. However, the fascination, if not the progress, of social
science lies not in the occasionally stumbling upon a correct
answer, but in the sustained pursuit of meaningful questions.
Such value as my argument may have, I hope lies in this
direction.
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[1]
This paper is based on fieldwork carried out in Tunisia, 1968 and
1970, and in Zambia, 1972-1974. In addition to my informants and
the Tunisian, and Zambian, authorities, I am indebted to the
following persons and institutions: to Hasnaui ben Tahar and
Denes Shiyowe for excellent research assistance; to Henny van
Rijn, my wife, for sharing much of the fieldwork and the
analysis; to the University of Amsterdam, the Centre des Arts et
Traditions Populaires (Tunis ), the University of Zambia, the
latters Institute for African Studies, the Netherlands
Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO), and
the State University of Leyden, for financial support and
research facilities ; to Douwe Jongmans, Marielou Creyghton,
Jeremy Boissevain, Jaap Van Velsen, Klaas Van Der Veen, André
Köbben, Matthew Schoffeleers, Terence Ranger, Maud Muntemba, Bob
Papstein and Dick Werbner, who over the years have been my
partners in stimulating discussions on parts of the present
argument; to John Beattie for cowmen
[2]
Such standard reference books as the Encyclopaedia off the Social
Sciences (Macmillan), or Kolb and Gould s Dictionary of the
Social Sciences, do not contain items on any of the central
topics in this conference .
[3]
The concept of dyadic relationships, which has great
applicability in Khumiri society (cf. Jongmans 1968, 1973) is
taken here in the sense it has been introduced by Foster (1961,
1963).
[4] In two adjacent villages where I obtained a close to complete insight in the complex genealogical networks between the inhabitants, 65 marriages were in existence in 1968. of these, 10 (15%) were between effective agnates (people who can trace their genealogical relationship in distinct, patrilateral links ; on the complex problems involved, cf. Van Binsbergen 1970a, 1970b); out of these 10 marriages, only 5 (8% of 65) were with FFBD, the other 5 involved more distant agnatic links (Van Binsbergen 1970 : 138 ) .
[5]
4A shrine is a particular spot in the landscape, where a
concentration of ritual takes place, and which is marked as such
by external, observable features defined within the local culture
(Van Binsbergen 1971a : 72 ) .
[6]
This ritual is called uriya. More frequently it is directed to
the Prophet Mohammed, who otherwise is not a subject of ritual
action among the Khumiri, although he features in some pious
songs.
[7]
Khumiri inheritance law differs on this point from Qoranic law.
[8]
In the Khumiri highlands, divination of causes of illness is
performed by various types of specialists : prominent members of
the ecstatic cult, particularly those attached to the cult
s local lodge (cf. 2.3); Qoranic teachers (maddab), of whom a few
live scattered over the Khumiri area; migrating diviners who once
a year visit the area and who are supposed to descent from
non-Khumiri saints; and finally diviners (takaza) whose technical
skills have no special religious connotations, and who are mainly
found near the weekly markets .
[9]
A small town 100 km south of the Khumiri highlands.
[10]
Statistical analysis suggests occurrence of faqirship amongst one
s close matrilateral kinsmen as the single main factor in
the recruitment of faqirs - a fact which, given the patrilineal
ideology of this society, reminds us of Fortes classic
generalisation claiming "interests, rights and loyalties ( .
. . ) that rely on religion ( . . . ) to be generally tied (...)
to the complementary line of filiation"" 01953:34).
[11]
Not all of them were: e.g. Sidi Abdallah and Sidi Salah are
Khumiri representatives of universal maghrebine saints ; cf.
Marçais and Guiga 1929a5.
[12]
The ecstatic element in North-African religious brotherhoods is
said to derive from three sources : early Islam in the Middle
East (cf. Molé 1963) ; ecstatic cults in sub-Saharan Africa (cf.
Brunel 1926; Trimingham 1965); and autochthonous ecstatic cults
dating back to Antiquity (cf. Bertholon and Chantre 1913). In
addition to anthropological studies, much more historical
research is needed on this point.
[13]
For the early colonial era, cf. Ling 1967:59; for the
post-colonial era, cf. Speight 1966.
[14]
Apart from the competition for honour and informal leadership of
lower segments - which is rather futile in comparison with the
enormous power invested in the local representatives of the
central government and the national political party.
[15]
For a similar view of Luapula villages in N.E. Zambia, cf.
Cunnison 1956.
[16]
In the area, the only other occasions bringing together this
number of people, are girls puberty ceremonies, and burial.
[17]
By ecological I mean all activities (and the accompanying
cognitive processes) by which Man acts upon, structures and
transforms his natural, non-human environment, so as to create
for himself lie material basis of human society (food, shelter,
materials, skills, technology etc.)(Van Binsbergen
1971:239f;forthc.-a). 16a. Many cult songs are bilingual (e.g.
Nkoya/Luvale, Nkoya/Mbunda); adepts and leaders of most cults are
found among several of the many ethnic groups of Western Zambia,
although most cults are considered to originate from one such
ethnic group.
[18]
A much more developed example from outside the Nkoya area is the
Nzila sect, the bureaucratised healing cult (claiming nearly
100,000 adepts), which developed out of the vision of Chief Chana
in 1940 (Muntemba 1972), [ CHECK, DIT IS NOOT 17 NIET 16A, DIE IS
NIET TE VINDEN ]
[19]
In this paper, the emphasis is on rural communities, I have
decided not to discuss rural-urban ties. Both village shrine
cults and non-ancestral cults of affliction play however an
important role in Shaping rural-urban relations (Van Binsbergen
1972b;1976a; forthcoming - b); at least among the contemporary
Nkoya. affliction diagnosed as ancestral makes urban migrants
refer to their home villages or treatment, thus binding
them effectively to the economic and political process of the
village in which they are forced td) keep a stake, e.g. because
of the paucity of` urban retirement opportunities for low-class
migrants. Non-ancestral affliction binds urban migrants to cult
leaders both in town and in their home area (many rural cult
leaders occasionally visit town to stage sessions; a few leaders
live in town permanently); in addition, the urban cult sessions
provide a major rallying point for urban migrants from the Nkoya
area and from Western Zambia in general, and is therefore a major
force in shaping these urban migrants into an urban ethnic group
with frequent interaction and common identity among the members
who live dispersed over a large city, These aspects hardly
received attention in my Khumiri studies. [ CHECK IF PLACEMENT OF
NOTE IS CORRECT HERE ]
[20] [ check for repetition ] In this paper, the emphasis is on rural communities, I have decided not to discuss rural-urban ties. Both village shrine cults and non-ancestral cults of affliction play however an important role in Shaping rural-urban relations (Van Binsbergen 1972b;1976a; forthcoming - b); at least among the contemporary Nkoya. affliction diagnosed as ancestral makes urban migrants refer to their home villages or treatment, thus binding them effectively to the economic and political process of the village in which they are forced td) keep a stake, e.g. because of the paucity of` urban retirement opportunities for low-class migrants. Non-ancestral affliction binds urban migrants to cult leaders both in town and in their home area (many rural cult leaders occasionally visit town to stage sessions; a few leaders live in town permanently); in addition, the urban cult sessions provide a major rallying point for urban migrants from the Nkoya area and from Western Zambia in general, and is therefore a major force in shaping these urban migrants into an urban ethnic group with frequent interaction and common identity among the members who live dispersed over a large city, These aspects hardly received attention in my Khumiri studies.
[21] I have some doubt about the concept of regional cult, as it was defined by Werbner and Garbett (1975) for the purpose of this conference. Their definition runs along the following lines: a regional cult is a cult which (a) reaches beyond a political or ethnic community; (b) whose membership tends to be recruited across major socio-economic divisions; (c) whose staffs capacity to pronounce on matters of moral and ritual concern is effective both within and between communities.
"A regional cult is thus intermediate in span and falls between the extremes of an exclusive, parochial cult whose congregation is drawn from a single ethnic, political or narrowly localised community, and a universal church which, in principle, recruits members irrespective of their meet specific communal affiliations".
Communal Shrine cults among the Khumiri (saintly shrines) and the Nkoya (village and valley shrines) have a maximum catchment area with a radius of about 10 km: the valley and adjacent valleys. This amounts to a maximum catchment area of over just over 300 km2 (= p * (10 km)2) . Is this enough to qualify as "intermediate in span"? I should think so. Yet in neither case is there (cf. criterion (a)) any reaching beyond the political and ethnic community, which in both cases is much wider (valleys being ecological and interactional, but not political or ethnic communities). In both non-stratified societies the major socio-economic divisions are along sex and generation; participation in the communal shrine cult includes all community members, so I suppose criterion (b) is met;. I Cannot see how criterion (c) is met in either case. The suggestion is that criteria (a), (b) and (c) represent different typological dimensions which only rarefy coincide. A similar argument can be presented for the ecstatic cults in both societies, although there Werbner and Garbetts definition fits somewhat better. I therefore opt for the simpler concepts of communal cult (involving shrines associated with a residential group characterised by internal interaction and common identity), and non-communal cults (all others).
[22] I have done something like this for communal shrine cults and political change in Central Africa (Van Binsbergen, forthcoming = 1981 ch. 3)
[23]
This is the extreme comparativist position, based on the perhaps
controversial methodological view that, as explanation implies
generalisation, the power of an explanation depends on the extent
to which it can be generalised.
[24]
In the Khumiri highlands, the local inhabitants nominal
adherence to the universal religion of Islam, in conjunction with
the local segmentary autonomy, provided (together with clientship
/herdsmanship) the main entrance for individual strangers to
settle : they were welcome as specialists in the universal
religion, could develop local esteem, security and ability t+)
act as conflict-resolving outsiders on that basis, to the extent
of being turned into local saints after their deaths .
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