Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion

Michael Banton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136538360
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

As the basic questions of social structure were elucidated there came a quickening of interest among social anthropologists in the study of religion. Chapters in this book include:
· Religion as a Cultural System (Clifford Geertz)
· Colour Classification in Ndembu Religion (Victor W. Turner)
· Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation (Melford E. Spiro)
· Fathers, Elders and Ghosts in Edo Religion (R.E. Bradbury)
· Territorial Groupings and Relgion among the Iraqw (Edward H. Winter).
First published in 1966.

Victor W. Turner

Colour Classification in Ndembu Ritual

A Problem in Primitive Classification

There has recently been a marked revival of interest in what Durkheim (1963) called ‘primitive forms of classification’, a revival in which the names of Lévi-Strauss, Leach, Needham, and Evans-Pritchard have been prominent. Much attention has been focused on dichotomous classification in kinship and religious systems or on other kinds of isometrical arrangement such as quaternary and octadic divisions. Needham’s resuscitation of Robert Hertz’s (1960) work and Needham (1960) and Beidelman’s (1961) recent studies in the symbolism of laterality, of the opposition of right and left and its sociological implications, represent this interest. During my own investigations of Ndembu ritual symbolism I came across many instances of lateral symbolism and indeed of other forms of dual classification with which the opposition of right and left might or might not be correlated. Since one of my major lines of inquiry was into the problem of social conflict and its resolution, I was sensitive at the time to the symbolization and formalization of such conflict. Many disputes involved opposition between the principles of matriliny and virilocality, and it seemed, therefore, reasonable to suppose that the opposition between the sexes would secure ritual and symbolic representation. I found that this was indeed the case, but I was not long in discovering that not only the dualism of the sexes but indeed every form of dualism was contained in a wider, tripartite mode of classification.

Colour Classification in African Ritual

This tripartite classification relates to the colours white, red, and black. These are the only colours for which Ndembu possess primary terms. Terms for other colours are either derivatives from these – as in the case of chitookoloka, ‘grey’, which is derived from tooka, ‘white’ – or consist of descriptive and metaphorical phrases, as in the case of ‘green’, meji amatamba, which means ‘water of sweet potato leaves’. Very frequently, colours which we would distinguish from white, red, and black are by Ndembu linguistically identified with them. Blue cloth, for example, is described as ‘black’ cloth, and yellow or orange objects are lumped together as ‘red’. Sometimes a yellow object may be described as ‘neyi nsela’ ‘like beeswax’, but yellow is often regarded as ritually equivalent to red.

When I first observed Ndembu rites I was impressed by the frequent use of white and red clay as ritual decoration. I assumed that only these two colours were ritually significant and that I had to deal with a dual classification. There was, indeed, a certain amount of support for such a view in the anthropological literature on the West Central Bantu. For example, Baumann, writing of the Chokwe of eastern Angola, had asserted that for these people: ‘White is the colour of life, of health, of moonlight and of women. Red, on the other hand, has connections with sickness, the sun and men’ (1935, pp. 40-41). He then attempted to equate the opposition between the colours with that between right and left, associating red with the right and white with the left. But Baumann also admitted that white clay ‘figures as a life-principle’ and is consequently forced by the logic of his dual scheme to regard red as the colour of ‘death’. Yet when he discusses the red decoration of novices in the circumcision ceremony he writes: ‘It seems as though the red colour were in itself not only the colour of illness, but also the colour of averting illness.’ Other authorities on the West Central Bantu are by no means in agreement with Baumann’s interpretation. C. M. N. White, for example, holds that ‘red is symbolic of life and blood in various Luvale contexts’ (1961, p. 15), and the Chokwe and Luvale are culturally very similar. White also writes that various red fruits and trees are ‘constantly associated with fertility and life’.

My own field observations among the Ndembu tended to confirm White’s interpretation rather than Baumann’s, although it is true that there are a number of ritual contexts in which red is associated with masculinity, as in the red ritual decorations of war chiefs (tumbanji), circumcisers, and hunters, and white with femininity, as in the case of the mudyi tree which secretes a white latex and is the supreme symbol of femininity and motherhood. But on the other hand, I came upon at least an equal number of ritual occasions where white represented masculinity and red femininity. For example, in the N kula rite, performed to rid a woman of menstrual disorder, red clay and other red symbols represent menstrual blood, ‘the blood of parturition’, and matriliny – all feminine things. In the Wubwang’u rite, performed for a mother of twins or for a woman expected to bear twins, powdered white clay, kept in a phallus-shaped container and blown over the patient as she stands on a log near a stream-source, is explicitly likened to ‘semen’. On the other hand, powdered red clay, kept in the shell of a river mollusc and blown over the patient after the white powder, is said to represent ‘the blood of the mother’. The white clay is applied by a male, and the red clay by a female doctor. I discuss this rite more fully in an essay to be published, but the point is made. There is no fixed correlation between the colours and the sexes. Colour symbolism is not consistently sex-linked, although red and white may be situationally specified to represent the opposition of the sexes.

It is clear that Baumann’s attempt to polarize the symbolic values of white and red is artificial and constrained. This would suggest that we are dealing here with something wider than a dual classification. White and red are certainly opposed in some situations, but the fact that each can stand for the same object – in other words, they participate in one another’s meaning – suggests that more than a pair of opposites has to be taken into account. As a matter of fact, as I have already indicated, there is a third factor, or term. This is the colour black, in some ways the most interesting of the three.

Colour Classification in Ndembu Life-Crisis Ritual

Let us now examine some contexts in which the three colours appear together before we look at them singly or in contrasted pairs. Ndembu assure me that the relationship between the colours ‘begins with the mystery (or riddle – mpangu) of the three rivers – the rivers of whiteness, redness, and blackness (or darkness)’. This cryptic utterance refers to part of the secret teaching of the lodge during the circumcision rites (Mukanda)and during the phase of seclusion at the rites of the funerary associations of Chiwila and Mung’ong’i. It is said that girls were also, until recently, taught this mystery (mpang’u) during their puberty rites (N kang’a), but I found no evidence of this.

I have not personally observed the instruction of novices in this mystery of the three rivers, but I have recorded several accounts from reliable informants. The first of these is from a member of the Chiwila society, which performs elaborate initiation rites for young people at the death of its female cult members. Chiwila is no longer held in Northern Rhodesia, but my informant had been initiated as a young girl among the Ndembu of Angola. She described to me how the novices were taught the mystery of one of the ‘rivers’ (tulong’a), in this case ‘the river of blood’ (kalong’a kamashi) or ‘the river of redness’ (kachinana). The prefix ka-sometimes signifies that the term it qualifies is a liquid, usually water. Thus ku-chinana means ‘to be red (or yellow)’, chinana is the radical, and ka-chinana means ‘red fluid’ or ‘red river’, and keyila, the ‘black river’.

My informant told me that the novices, boys as well as girls, were taken to a long, roofed but unwalled shelter called izembi. The senior celebrant, entitled Samazembi (‘father of mazembi), then took a hoe and dug a trench inside the hut. It was shaped ‘like a cross’ (‘neyi mwambu’), but could also be made in the form of an Ndembu axe (chizemba) or a hoe (itemwa). Next he took sharp reeds, such as are used for making mats, and planted them along both sides of the trench. This was followed by the planting of many small antelope horns, containing pounded leaf-medicine (nsompu), in lines on either side of the trench. He then filled the trench with water; Samazembi’s next task was to behead (the term ku-ketula, ‘to cut’ is always used for this) a fowl and pour its blood into the ‘river’ to tinge it with red. Not content with this, he added other red colouring matter such as powdered red clay (mukundu or ng’ula) and powdered gum from the mukula tree. Samazembi then washed his body with medicine made from root scrapings soaked in water and contained in his personal calabash. What was left after washing he threw into the ‘river of redness’. Next he took some powdered white clay (mpemba or mpeza), addressed the spirits of ‘those who had passed through Chiwila long ago’, anointed himself by the orbits and on the temple with mpemba, anointed the novices, and then harangued them as follows:

‘Pay attention! This river is blood. It is very important (literally, “heavy”). It is very dangerous. You must not speak of it in the village when you return. Beware! This is no ordinary river. God (Nzambi) made it long, long ago. It is the river of God (kalong’a kaNzambi). You must not eat salt for many days, nor anything salty or sweet (-towala means both). Do not speak of these matters in public, in the village; that is bad.’

When he had finished, each novice bent down and took one of the small horns by the teeth, without using hands. They all went outside and tried to perform the difficult feat of bending over backwards and tossing the horn up in such a way as to be caught by adepts standing just behind them without spilling the medicine.

Samazembi collected up all these horns and secreted them in his medicine-hut (katunda). The medicine was called nfunda, a name also applied to the lodge-medicine of the Mukanda or Boys’ Circumcision rites. In addition to other ingredients it contained ashes from the burnt hut of the deceased. Nfunda is never thrown away but the portion left over at the end of each performance of Chiwila or Mung’ong’i is used at the next performance, where it is mixed with fresh medicine. The nfunda used at the circumcision rites, though not in the chiwila rites, contains ashes and powdered charcoal from the seclusion lodge, which is burnt at the end of the seclusion period, and ashes and charcoal from various sacred fires extinguished at the conclusion of the rites. These are held to be ‘black’ symbols. It is interesting to learn from Baumann (p. 137) that among the Chokwe ufunda stands for ‘interment’ and is derived from the verb ku-funda, ‘to bury’. The term funda, which seems to be the cognate of nfunda, according to Baumann, stands for ‘a bundle’ and ‘appears to be connected with the idea of the bundled corpse laced on to the carrying-post’. Nfunda, as used at Mukanda, Mung’ong’i, and Chiwila, rites of the Ndemba is certainly a medicine-bundle; but the possible etymological connection with death is suggestive in view of its connection with funerary rites, the destruction of sacred edifices, and black symbols.

My informant on Chiwila customs was unable or unwilling to venture much in the way of their interpretation. But other informants on Mukanda and Mung’ong’i ritual supplied further exegesis. At these rites, they told me, there are ‘three rivers’. ‘The river of blood’, usually made in the shape of an axe, represents ‘a man with a woman’ (iyala namumbabda), or ‘copulation’ (kudisunda). ‘The man’ is represented by the axe-head with its tang, and the woman by the wooden shaft.¹

But the main ‘river’ or ‘trough’, the ‘elder’ one as Ndembu put it, is the ‘river of whiteness’ (katooka). This ‘runs in a straight line to the izembi shelter’. ‘The river of red water is junior, and this is followed by the river of black water. The red river is a woman and her husband.’ The crossing of the mother’s and father’s blood means a child, a new life (kabubu kawumi – kabubu stands for a small organism, such as an insect; it also stands for the navel-cord; wumi signifies generic life rather than the personal life-principle – thus an infant before it is weaned is thought to have wumi but not a mwevulu, a ‘shadow-soul’ which after death becomes an ancestor spirit of mukishi).One informant told me that the katooka is whitened with powdered white clay (mpemba), ‘stands for wumi’, and is ‘the trunk to which the red and black rivers are attached like branches’. The black river (keyila), darkened with charcoal (makala) represents ‘death’ (kufwa).

During Mung’ong’i the novices are asked a number of riddles (jipang’u). One of them is, ‘What is the white water restless by night?’ (katooka kusaloka). The correct answer is ‘Semen’ (matekela). Thus one of the senses of the ‘white river’ is masculine generative power. This river, too, is described as ‘a river of God’.

In Mung’ong’i, and also formerly in Mukanda, the novices are taught to chant a song, or rather incantation, full of archaic and bizarre terms. I record the text but cannot translate several of the words:

Katooki meji kansalu kelung’i chimbungu chelung’a, belang’ ante-e

White river, water of the country, cannibal monster (or hyena) of the country …

Mukayande-e he-e kateti kasemena mwikindu mwini kumwalula hinyi?

In suffering (?) the little reed of begetting in the medicine basket (?), the owner who may find him?

‘The little reed of begetting’ is probably the penis; ‘Mwini’, the Owner, m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Religion as a Cultural System
• Colour Classification in Ndembu Ritual
• Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation
• Fathers, Elders, and Ghosts in Ẹdo Religion
• Territorial Groupings and Religion among the Iraqw
• Notes on Contributors