Traditional Zulu God Names

The Zulu Notion of God according to the Traditional Zulu God-Names
Author(s): Rev. W. Wanger
Source: Anthropos, Bd. 18/19, H. 4./6. (Jul. - Dec., 1923/1924), pp. 656-687
Published by: Anthropos Institute

The readers of "Anthropos" need scarcely be told that the Zulus form the extreme South East of the Ntu field. By Zulu, in this treatise, we mean not only the pure Zulu in, or out of, Zulu-land, but all the Zulu-speaking tribes of southern South Africa, such as the La1as, Bacas, Swazis, &c. We might include as well the Tebe1es, that is, the inhabitants of Matabeleland (recte 'Matebeleland' or rather 'Tebeland'), as far, as they are descendants of those pure Zulus or Zulu-speaking Ntus who, under the leadership of a pure Zulu of the Kumalo tribe, seceded from the Zulu king Tshaka, and became the nucleus of the former Tebele kingdom. However we shall not refer to them expressly, nor to the Ngonis (Wangoni, Angoni) W. and E. of the Nyasa, who also are descendants of pure Zulus and Zulu-speaking Ntus as shown by their very name (w)aNgoni, the Zulu abaNguni which is but another, and older name for amaZulu.

The question I wish to discuss is this: Have the Zulus any notion of the true God? And if they have, what kind of notion have they? The answer to this question I intend basing (as can be seen by the heading), in the main, upon their traditional God-names and the traditions clustering round them; but there is nothing to prevent us from drawing for additional proofs on any available source, within or without the Ntu circle.

It is truly remarkable what a vexed problem this question has been from the very beginning, that is, the time of the first missionaries (non-Catholic) down to our own days. And yet, it seems to me, the facts were obvious enough. Therefore, beïore settling down to our subject, it may be as well to point out at least some of the reasons that contributed to obscuring those facts.

One was, I believe, the great difference between Ntu paganism and the types of paganism with which the missionaries (all of them Europeans) were familiar, that is, chiefly Greek, Roman, Teutonic, and Celtic paganism.

All these were polytheistic forms of paganism, while Ntu paganism, whereever unmixed with foreign importations, is monotheistic, paradox as it may seem. The Ntus are pagans, but not because they have no knowledge whatever of the true God. They are pagans because they pay divine worship to the spirits of their dead blood-relations (this is usually, though wrongly, called 'ancestor-worship'), but they never identified them with God, with the Creator, the Maker. They are pagans by adhering to innumerable forms of superstitious beliefs, culminating in fetish-worship, as practised by part of the Ntu peoples, but they never identified any of the superstitious powers in which they believe, with the Creator.

Again, the forms of paganism with which those missionaries were familiar, were surrounded with all the externals and paraphernalia of religious worship. There was a priesthood set aside for it, there were temples, idols, altars, sacrifices, oblations, and so on. To the newcomer nothing of all this is apparent in the South East of Ntuland: seemingly no priesthood, no temples, not even idols or fetishes of any kind, no altars, no sacrifices. The natural conclusion is: here is a people without any religion whatsoever, and a fortiori without any knowledge of God. And yet, in reality, all these things do exist among the Zulu-speaking peoples as well as in the whole Ntu S. E., although in forms unfamiliar to the European. The place of the temple is taken by the sacred circle of the isi-baya or 'cattlekraal', the only place where the solemn sacrifice may be performed. The um-samo (back part) of the principal hut or else the u-hoho (pantry hut) belonging to it, is the altar. The um-numzana or 'kraalhead', and he alone, is the sacrificing priest, while the other part of priesthood is exercised by the aba-ngoma or 'diviners' or rather 'prophets'. And all these forms of 'divine' cult or worship, if they were but directed to the true God, would be substantially as Mosaic as those of the Old Law .

The missionaries being confronted by monotheistic heathens of whose monotheism they knew nothing, and by an apparent absence of any religion, could scarcely help being biassed: that such a people should have any notion of the true God, was preposterous. And this bias continued to make itself felt generations after the first missionaries.

Another of these obscuring causes was science. The science of those days, whether materialistic or rationalistic, had but one thing to prove, viz. that there is no such thing as the God of the Bible or of Christianity. Science was in quest of 'primitive' peoples who knew nothing of that God. And travellers of those early days, with scant or no equipment for truly scientific, much less for theological research, with practically no knowledge of the respective native languages, those travellers whom I styled elsewhere 1 "scientists of the journalistic reporter type", told the world that in the S. E. of Africa they had found peoples who had no religion whatsoever. And the missionaries who came after them, concurred. No wonder that "science" was triumphant. I remember the time, as recent as the eighties of the last century, when our professor oï religion told us youngsters of this "triumph of science". And this science did not fail to impress most, if not all, of those early missionaries. If one reads Moffat, Dohne, Callaway, &c, one cannot help being struck by the deeply rooted, ever and ever recurring "scientific" bias holding that it was out of question to find a knowledge of God among the primitive peoples of South Africa. 

As a third of these obscuring reasons I mention the 'colour-bar', taking it in its widest sense. It could not possibly be allowed that these blacks, these niggers, these barbarous savages, these heathens, knew of the true God. It was simply impossible that these heathens knew already of the One Whom they, the missionaries, the representatives of a superior race, had come to announce to them. Of course, this attitude of their mentality was not put down by them in black and white as bluntly as I have stated it, in fact, very likely they were not even personally conscious of it. But anyone who knows how to read between the lines, will find that the fact is not overstated. There have been exceptions, one of them being Colenso who wrote in 1855 2, "The amount of unnecessary hindrance to the reception of the Gospel, which must be caused by forcing upon them an entirely new name for the Supreme Being, without distinctly connecting it with their own two names (he alludes to uNkulunkulu and umVelingqangi), will be obvious to any thoughtful mind. It must make a kind of chasm between their old life and the new one to which they are invited; and it must be long before they can become able, as it were, to bridge over the gulf, and make out for themselves, that this strange name, which is preached to them, is only the white man's name for the same Great Being, of whom they have heard their fathers and mothers speak in their childhood."

A fourth of those obscuring causes may be found in human "weaknesses"

A goodly number of missionaries of the one or other Methodistic denominations impugn the Zulu God-name uNkulunkulu for the only reason lhat their "forefathers" had given to the Zulus the God-name (?) uTixo, which, figuring, as it does, in all their Bibles and religious writings, is "hallowed by a venerable age". Practically, I believe, there is no longer any missionary in S.Africa who doubts uNkulunkulu to be a traditional Zulu God-name, and, at that, the one most in use among the Zulus themselves. But to cease opposing it, would be tantamount to publicly avowing the mistake made by their fore- fathers.

Another human weakness is instanced by Callaway. We are far from wishing to belittle his person or to judge of his motives; but we have to reckon with the historical fact that Callaway showed a pronounced antagonism against Colenso, in other matters as well as in linguistic and ethnological, and especially in the uNkulunkulu-qnestion in which Colenso and Callaway were the exponents of pro and contra. His research work for, and the writing of, his "Religious System of the amaZulu" 3 was biased by a foregone conclusion, viz. that UNKULUNKULU could not, or perhaps even must not, be that which Colenso had proclaimed and defended it to be, namely a traditional genuine Zulu God-name. And this leads us on to the next point.

A fifth of these obscuring causes consists in the fact that it is a very difficult art to draw genuine information from the natives. 

The chief obstacle by which the European inquirer is confronted, is - who would have thought that of the African savage? - the politeness of his would-be native informant. From earliest childhood he has been trained to be polite towards his superiors, polite even at the expense of truth: if he knows that a 'yes' is expected, 'yes' it will be; and if he supposes a 'no' to please his superior, it will be 'no'. And why not, if it please so the master? But this is hypocrisy ! No, says the native, this is politeness, this is etiquette. Of course, casual information of quite an incidental or occasional nature, is not exposed to this danger of native politeness. But if engaged in systematic research work, one cannot depend of casual information alone. The only remedy is to train one's native informants. To achieve that, the first step will be to gain their confidence. This, then, will be the stepping stone from which to lead them on to the firm belief that the master will be gravely displeased if he finds that they have been impolite towards truth. The writer speaks from personal experience of long years. And he is convinced that, if once the barrier of politeness towards the superior has been broken down (in the above sense), the Ntu informant can be trusted as much as that of any other nation.

But this is not all. The European inquirer will have to train himself as well. To what? To not letting out his personal views or convictions beforehand. An untrained inquirer will do so unawares, and in this case, his native informant, especially the untrained, will but reproduce the views of his inquirer: hypnotizer and hypnotized. Unfortunately Callaway's tendency, his antagonism against Colenso, was not the best of dispositions for an impartial inquirer. This is why I wrote as early as in 1913 4 "The absolute value of statements may have been impaired by this very tendency, which necessarily revealed itself in his questions, in the strain of his inquiries, and in conversations he must have held with his several informants previous to writing down their statements".

Besides the foregoing, there are some other things which render the art of inquiring from a native by a European difficult, and this brings us to-

The sixth of those obscuring causes:- insufficient linguistic and philological training.

There are three words with which we shall be much concerned in the sequel. If written without any capital and signs to indicate dynamic accents and the pitch of voice (tone), they present themselves as only two, viz.-

     i                           If we write the same with distinguishing signs
(1) unkulunkulu         in order to indicate their actual native pronunciation,
(2) ukulukulu.           we have-
ii
(1) 'únkulunkúlü       And if, finally, we distinguish the word we are
(2 a) ukúlàkulà        going to prove to be a God-name, with a capital, we have-
(3 a) unkúlunkúlu.

iii                                        The two words under i, appear as three under ii

(1) *úÑkulünkúlu                and iii, because unkúlunkúlu figures twice in ii and iii.

(2 a) ukúlukúlu                    Once, if we consider the dynamic accents alone, it

(2b) unkúlunkúlu.               figures as únkulunkúlu or úNkulunkúlu, and the other time as únkulunkúlu- it should not have proved so very difficult to perceive at least this difference. And if we consider now the musical tones, once it figures as 'únkulànkúlà or 'úNkulunkúlu, and the other time as iinkúlünkúlii. For such marked differences there must be a reason.

The reason, in our opinion, is that iii(l) presents itself as uNjkulu- n-kulu, i. e., uN + doubled kulu 'great', meaning therefore 'the greatest uN', whilst the genesis of iii(2b) is as follows. Its simple and primary form is u/kulu-kulu, and here kulu means 'great', no longer in the sense of 'high, exalted', but in that of 'old', as it is the case in terms of relationship throughout. Thus, proceeding from u-baba 'father' and u-ma(me) 'mother', we find u/bába- m-kúlu, u/má(me)-kúlu lit. 'the old father, mother', actually 'grandfather, grandmother'. And both, especially the latter, are addressed in short as u- kulu lit. 'the old one'. And u/kúlu-kúlu is, of course, nothing but doubled u-kulu, signifying, as it does, an u-kulu of a superlative degree : 'the oldest father or mother', i. e., 'the protoparent, male or female', be it with regard to mankind in general, or to a given people. We find also the diminutive u/kúlu-kulw-áne of u/kálu-kúlu: one less old than ukúlukúlu.

In the ascending line, one uses the following terms-

1st degree u-baba father, u-ma(me) mother

2nd „  u/baba-m-kulu or u-kulu grandfather, u/ma(me)-kulu or u-kulu   grandmother 3rd „ u-koko great-grandfather, great-grándmother (in a wider sense 'ancestor' in general)

4th „ u-koko ka-koko great-great-grandfather, great-great-grandmother

5th „ u-koko wao-koko great-great-great-grandfather, great-great-great- grandmother (in a wider sense: any ancestor beyond the 4th degree), one with - u/kúlu-kulw-áne - un/kúlu-n-kulw-áne (in a wider sense : any more or less immediate descendant of the ukúlukúlu = únkulu- nkúlu). The only difference between ukoko waokoko and u(n)kúlu(n)kulwáne is one of thought, the former being the result of ascending, the latter that of descending reckoning,

ultimate u/kúlu-kúlu = un/kúlu-n-kúlu protoparent, first man, first woman, degree originator (of mankind, of a people, &c).

As to the actual use of language, there is not the least doubt that ukúlukúlu and unkúlunkúlu, and their dim. ukúlukulwáne and unkúlunkulwáne are identical. Nor is there any doubt that ukúlukúlu is the primary, and unkúlunkúlu the secondary form. But how can we explain the origin of this secondary form? One answer would be: it is the nunnated form of ujkulu-kulu. And whence the nunnation? Philologically it is a case of u-m(u)/kulu~m(u)-kulu> u-n/kulu-n- kulu. The change of class-prefix (cl. 1 and 4) and preposition mu to n is well instanced in Zulu (though it has so far escaped the notice of other Zuluists), as m(u) of ama-aba-class: -

u-m(u)/kulu-kundhl-eni > u-n/kulii-kundhlení

u-mu/ or rather u-ma/gaxa'butweni> u-n/gaxa-butweni

u-m(u)/tembazane> u-n/tembazane

u-m(u)/Hlabati (Earth-man, Adam) > u-n/Hlabati.

m(u) of umu-imi-class: -

 u-m(u)/gazi > u-n/gazi.

preposition mu:-

mu-tambama > ma-tambama in the early afternoon

mu-tambama > n-tambama in the later afternoon

mu-sundu> n-sundu (in the state of being black) black

mu-zima > n-zima (in the state of being heavy) heavy.

But why does original u-mu/kula-ma-kala change to u-n/kala-n-kulu, and not to u-mkulu-m-kulu, especially in view of such forms as m-kulu 'he, she, it, is tall, u-m'kula 'the superior', u/baba-m-kula? The answer is that we cannot account for the genius of a language- why, e. g., should original ma- tambama change, in the one case, to ma-tambama, and in the other, to n- tambama, and why should the former mean 'in the early afternoon', and the latter 'in the later afternoon', while etymologically both are one and the same? However, in the case of unkulunkulu, the change may be due to a certain influence from úNkulunkulu, to a false analogy.

If the "phonetic" writing of Zulu had not been, and were not, as imperfect as it is, in other words, if the dynamic accents and the musical tones had been represented in writing, if, further, the God-name had been distinguished by a capital, or else, if at least the ear of the Colensos and Callaways, &c, had been trained enought to perceive the accents and tones as they came forth from the mouth of the natives, and if the organs of speech of the European inquirers had been moulded just so much as to be able to distinguish somehow between 'únkulunkúlu and unkulunkúlu, in all likelihood there would have never arisen sucha perplexing question as the unkulunkulu- question has been, especially since the time of Callaway, down to our own days.

What an inextricable chaos must have been caused in the ears and minds of the natives by the deficient or wrong pronunciation of unkulunkula and ukulakulu from the part of the European inquirers?! As a further illustration, I give the three words ibélè fern, breast, ibêle sorghum or 'kafircorn', and ibëlè small skin.

As a seventh of those obscuring reasons, I mention the fact of religious tradition having not been preserved with the same exactitude in every tribe, nor in every family, much less by every individual native. On the contrary, there are reasons for believing that also among the Ntus in olden times only certain families (in whom a kind of priesthood was hereditary?) were the official keepers of those traditions. On the other hand, it is quite remarkable with what tenacity and uniformity the Zulus have preserved certain single words, standing out in strong relief like monoliths, and a few phrases, as short and precise as answers in a catechism.

An eighth of those obscuring causes lies in the difficulty to find the limit where the genuine rendering of the old traditions, as handed down from time immemorial, ends, and personal speculation of the individual native acting as informant, begins. Add to this what has been said above (fifth reason) on such an informant having been directly or indirectly influenced by the views and preconceived theories of the European inquirer. A glaring instance is Mpengula Mbanda, Callaway's chief informant. Mpengula, whom, as it happens, I have known for many years, is certainly an intelligent native. To call him a "Zulu philosopher" (Die Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker, W. Schneider, Münster 1891, p. 66), is to do him too much honour.

A ninth of those obscuring causes lies in expecting too much from the natives: were they able to explain all their traditions, represented sometimes in a single word, they would never have become what they actually are, namely pagans, nor would those traditions be referred to by themselves, as they oc- casionally will be, as izinganekwane, that is, stories no longer understood. What we can expect from them, is to state the ukutsho kwabadala, i. e., that which they were told by the old people. Pressed beyond that, they will turn into "philosophers". And if then that "philosophy" of theirs is further deve- loped and construed into what is apt to serve as confirmation of a tendency like Callaway's, it is easy to gauge the absolute value of such a "philosophy" and the European comments on it.

Some of my readers have, perhaps, grown impatient at the prolixity of these many "obscuring reasons"- my defence must be that it takes rather a time to get off all the dust accumulated on our subject in the course of nearly three quarters of a century. Others may have come to think that I am deter- mined on tearing to rags any and all 'evidence' collected in previous times on our subject- my answer will be that the only object I have had in view, is to prepare the ground for sifting true evidence from false.

COLENSO.

None of the scientists whose respective publications have come under my notice, has quoted, or referred to, what Colenso put down in writing as early as 1855 (two years before Dohne published his Zulu-Kafir Dictionary, in which he laid down his view of the meaning of unkulunkulu; and many years before Callaway wrote his "Religious System of the amaZulu") in his "Ten Weeks in Natal". When collecting the material published therein, the learned Cambridge man was fresh from home, just appointed to the (Anglican) See of Natal, quite new to Natal and Zululand, with no party feeling, with no bias, on the uNkulunkulu-problem, for the simple reason that, at that time, there was no such problem, except in quite another sense, wanting, as he did, to oust the non-Zulu uTixo, and give the Zulus, if possible, one of their own God-names. At the time of his first inquiries, Colenso did not yet know Zulu, but he could entirely rely on Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the uSomseu of the Zulus, who was a perfect "Zulu with a white skin" as far as language is concerned.

As to his scientific, and especially theological tenets, Colenso was a child of his time. I need but remind my readers that it is this same Colenso who is the author of the famous commentaries on the Pentateuch and the Book of Josuah which caused so much stir within and withouth the Anglican Church. As theologian, therefore, he was the exponent of the extreme left of the 'radicals'. Since Colenso has been sincere enough to admit the existence of the amount of original tradition that he actually found among the Zulus, instead of joining the chorus of contemporary scientists who were practically unanimous in making of the Zulus complete atheists, his testimony must be accepted as being beyond exception.

If the extracts I am giving below from the above book, are lengthier than I could wish myself, it must be put down to the importance of the subject, and also to the fact of "Ten Weeks in Natal" being long out of print, so that mere references would be useless to the average reader. The passages are presented in the same geographical and historical order as I found them in Colenso's book.

At Edendale Mission. Our next scene was a private interview with the twelve chief men of the station ... I found, as I had been led to expect by Mr. Allison, that his people were unanimous in their disapproval of the word for God, now commonly in use among the Missionaries- uTixo- which, they said, "had no meaning whatever for the Kafirs. They used it because they found it in their Bibles; but it was not a word of their language at all". "The proper word for God was iTongo, which meant with them a Power of Universal Influence- a Being under whom all around was placed." "For instance, said one, if we were going on an expedtiion, we should, in ordinary circum- stances, have trusted to our household gods, which we call amaHlose (in later publications Colenso spelled it rightly amaDhlozi); but if some unusual danger of the desert threatened us, or if a violent storm terrified us, we sjiould throw these away, and trust in iTongo. All the Kafir tribes, whether on the frontier or to the north, would understand iTongo; but the latter would have no idea whatever of what was meant by uTixo, though the former are now used to it through the Missionaries."

I may here mention, before I pass on, that, having received this important information, I resolved to direct my inquiries especially to this point, when- ever opportunity should be afforded me, in my intercourse with the Kafirs of the district. The conclusion to which I have come (and for which the Journal, as it proceeds, will sufficiently supply the reasons), is, that these Kafirs were undoubtedly right in condemning the word uTixo, as one utterly without meaning in the Kafir tongue, . . . The origin of this word is very uncertain; but it is said to be the name of a species of mantis, which is called the "Hotten- tots' god". At all events, it would seem that Dr. Vanderkemp, who first laboured among the Hottentots some sixty years ago, adopted this word in. his teaching as the name of God; and the Wesleyan and other Missionaries have carried it from west to east, first among the British Kafirs, and now among the tribes of Natal. Meanwhile, they have not noticed at all two names, which the Kafirs have of their own for the Deity, and which in their language have most expressive meanings. Here, however, as my further inquiries convinced me, Mr. Allison's Kafirs were in error. It is true that all the Kafirs of the Natal district believe in iTongo (plural, amaTongo) and amaDhlozi; and it is very likely that the former may be regarded as having the universal tribal in- fluence they spoke of, in distinction from the limited family influence of the latter. (It did not occur to me to press this inquiry.- There is no such distinction between amaTongo and amaDhlozi.- The Author.) But these words are certainly used by them only with reference to the spirits of the dea d- not to the Great Being, whom they regard as their Creator; . . . The true words for the Deity in the Kafir language- at least in all this part of Africa- are umKulunkulu (he corrected it later on into uNkulunkulu- The Author), literally, The Great-Great One = The Almighty (wrong, the literal meaning being 'the all-great uN' = the all-great God in heaven- The Author), and umVelinqange (recite, umVelingqangi)- The First Comer-Out = The First Essence, or, rather, Existence (the last is the nearest - The Au- thor). It will be seen, as my narrative proceeds, that in e v e r y instance, whether in the heathen kraal, amidst the wildest of savages, or in the Missionary station, in the presence of the teacher, w.ho was surprised him- self at the result, my inquiries led me invariably to the same point - namely, that these words have been familiartothem from their childhood, as names for Him 'who created them and all things,' and as traces of a religious knowledge, which, however originally derived, their ancestors possessed long be- fore the arrival of Missionaries, and have handed down to the present generation. The amount of unnecessary hindrance . . . (already quoted p. 658). This evil (sc. of forcing upon the Zulus a non-Zulu God-name), it will be seen, has been felt by both the American and Norwegian Missionaries. Mr. Allison objects to the name uTixo, and adopts iNehova, the Hebrew name for God. I cannot account for his people not even naming to me the two other names, uNkulunkula and umVelingqangi, which, in every other instance (all the foregoing whitenings, except this, are mine - The Author), were given to me at once by the natives. They might have done so, if I had asked for them ; but, at the time of my visit to them, I was not alive to the importance of the question.

At Pakade's. Ngoza was asked, "Did he know the Prayer, beginning, Baba wetu, &c, Our Father, &c?" "Yes!" "Did he know Who it was that was there spoken of?" "We did not know, until the white people told us." "Did he know anything about uNkulunkulu before?" "Yes; they all knew that everything came from Hi m." "Say (this to Sir TH. Shepstone) that I am sent to tell them more about Him."

They said that "amaTongo and amaDhlozi were certainly not the same as uNkulunkulu: for they could not be till man was created; in short, they were departed spirits, but uNkulunkulu made all things."

"We've missed the truth by very little, after all: for we pray to unseen spirits, and you to one unseen Being."

They told me of the old Kafir tradition, that "uNkulunkulu sent the word of life by the chameleon, and then he sent the word of death by a lizard; but the lizard outran the chameleon".

One thing, however, we ascertained from them- and a very important fact it was to be gathered from such a set of complete heathens- namely, that they did know of uNkulunkulu by their own tradition s- that He was the same as umVelingqangi, the First Out-Comer- and that they had heard lately of uTixo, and supposed that he must be somehow the same. "But, the chief said, there was a complete separation in these matters between the black and the white - we could not at all understand each other." Mr. Shepstone ex- plained, that "I thought there was not so great a separation as he supposed"- that "we believed in uNkulunkulu (the Great-Great-One), as well as they"- and that "I was sent to tell them more about Him, what He had done, and what He was doing, for them". It is incalculable what mischief must be done by the adoptions of this barbarous, unmeaning Hottentot name (uTixo), for one which is connected in the mind of the Kafir with such grand associations, as Almight- iness and Original Existence- however much they may have lost sight of the full meaning of their own expressive words for the Deity. They are the very ideas contained in the Hebrew words Elohim and Jehova...

After we had recovered (the following morning) our seats, Mr. Shepstone began by asking the chief, "What he thought of that?" He said "We quite beat him last night, with talking of the uNkulunkulu, and saying that we prayed toHim inEngland; for he saw there was not so great a separation after all." We were perfectly taken by surprise with this answer; for we had fancied that he had scarcely noticed this observation of ours overnight. But it seems he had, and, though he had said nothing at the time, had been pondering since upon it.

At Langalibalele's. Mr. Shepstone has just put into the chief's hand a spoonful of brown sugar, which he eats with great zest, and stuffs a portion into the mouth of his right-hand neighbour, and then licks his hand when he has finished it. He has just asked Mr. Shepstone, "How is sugar made?" "It's made by boiling." "Ah! then you are taught that by the umVelingqangi" It should be observed, that we had not said a word to him or his people on the subject of religion; so that here we had this heathen Kafir, oí his own accord, refering the wisdom, which he saw we possessed, so superior to his own, to the Great Source of all Wisdom. We caught, of course, at this word. "Whom do "you mean by umVelingqangi?" "He made men- he made the mountains- he gave them names. Do you know," he asked, "who gave the Tukela (a river) its name?" "No." "Then it must be umVelingqangi: for we do not know who did." We asked, "Who was the uNkulunkulu?" He said, "He was the same." "Did they know anything about the creation? Had they any tradition about it?" "No (such a negation has often, as also here, not the sense of a flat negation, but is used idiomatically as conjunction; s. my "Konversations-Grammatik der Zulusprache", Mariannhill 1917, p. 10 and 603- The Author); they only knew that He had made them; they did not know b y what word He had made them. Their old men had died by wars, and they had forgotten everything." He said, "They only knew of uTixo, since white men had come into the country; but they knew the other names from time i m m e m o r i a 1." I begged Mr. Shepstone to tell him, that uTixo was meant by the Missionaries for the same Being; but the teachers did not know they had such good names themselves for God, - that we prayed to uNkulunkulu.

A discussion now arose between themselves, as to whether the amaDhlozi and amaTongo were the same as uNkulunkulu. One said, "He thought they were." But he was overruled by the others, who said: "that could not be; for t h e y were the spirits oï dead people, who came into snakes sometimes; but uNkulunkulu made men and ail things."

At Pu tine's. They told us, as before, that, "long before the white men came, they had heard of uNkulunkulu" - that "he made the land, and men, and all things." "Tell them, I said, that He is our Father, and we are all His children, and, therefore, brethren; and we ought to be kin3 to one another." "That was very good- to know that they had heard of Him so long ago, and now, when they had become subjects of white people, to find that they were all brethren..." "Did they know of any other name?" "No." "Had they never heard of umVelingqangi?" "Yes: that was the same."

At Emmaus, Berlin Mission. "Before the Missionaries came, one said, we heard that there was a great inKos' (Lord - The Author), who took care of us; but what He was, we did not know." Another (a British Kafir, from the frontier of the Cape Colony) here observed that "He manifested Himself by means of dreams or spirits - amaPupo or amaTongo" Then a third informed me, that "his people called Him uNkulunkulu and umVelingqangi" This was uNceni or Karl, who had been a servant formerly of Capt. Gardiner for three years. He said, "The Zulus first heard of uTixo from Capt. Gardiner: but, before he came, they thought the origin of all things was uNkulunkulu." Dingaan (Zulu king 1828-1840- The Author) said of Capt. Gardiner's teaching, uuNkulunkulu must be the same as uTixo, only we have no one to tell us." Capt. Gardiner, it appears, could not himself speak the Zulu lan- guage, but always addressed the people by means of an interpreter; and the chief, though he never heard him, was curious to know what he said to his subjects, and made the above remark upon it.

At Zikhali's. We asked, "If a Great Being above did not make all things?" "They knew nothing of this, till the Missionaries came." "Had he (the chief) ever heard the names of uNkulunkulu and umVelingqangi?" "No! perhaps, some of his old men had." A grizzled grey-beard here got up upon his hams, from the circle of the old men - Zikali's amaPakati (counselors) - who sat at a very respectful distance behind him, and, I should have thought, quite out of hearing of our questions and their chief's answers. In a serious slow tone, he said, that "when a child, he had heard from old women, stooping with age, that there was a Great Being, phe-Zulu (up in heaven), who had those names: but, more than that, he knew nothing." At Lad y smith. (The following I insert chiefly for the purpose of showing how Colenso did not allow himself to be carried away by any pre- dilection or monomania for the word uNkulunkulu - The Author.) We have the greatest difficulty in fixing on a proper Name for God. I cannot bear the mean and meaningless name uTixo . . . uNkulunkulu and umVelingqangi are both too long for common use; and so would be uLungileyo, "The Good One." We have thought of adopting umPezulu, "He above, or in Heaven"; and by this name, in fact, Kafirs are often sworn in courts of justice. Standing up, and lifting the first and second fingers of the left hand in Dutch fashion, he will repeat the words Ngibona, 'nKos' iPezulu (recte, nKosi epezulu), "Behold me, Lord above"; or, Ngisize, 'nKos' iPezulu, "Help me, Lord above". But there are objections to this word also. I am not sure that it would not be best to employ the word uDio. It is a new word, it is true, like uTixo; but it is easy of utterance, is directly connected with the Greek and Latin names for God, and is not very far removed in sound from the word which it displaces. No one, who has not tried, can conceive how hard, and almost impossible, it is, to give correct representations in another, and that a barbarous tongue, of the refined and expres- sive language of some parts of the Bible and the Prayer Book (I feel sure that the later Zulu scholar Colenso would not have subscribed to what here the newcomer Colenso says- The Author).

At Durban. Mr. Oftebro Norwegian Missionary entireley and most effectively confirms all the results of my past experience about the words uTixo and uNkulunkulu, and the mode of treating with the natives the subject of religion. "They all know uNkulunkulu, but know nothing of uTixo; and he and his brethren never use the latter word - only the former - even in the Creed." "He has heard Zulus say that, in their own country, when they are going to sit down to a meal, they will send their children out, and tell them to go and pray to uNkulunkulu to give them all sorts of good things; and they go out and say, "O uNkulunkulu (recte Nkulunkulu), give us bread - give us cows- give us corn". (This 'praying' to uNkulunkulu has been ridiculed by Dohne and Calla way, as being, upon native evidence, a mere trick to keep the children out of the way when fheir elders sat down to a dainty meal. But neither has even as much as tried to prove that originally, and perhaps with other Zulu , speaking tribes, it was not a religious practice- The Author.) "He has heard others (sc. natives), when he has been preaching about uNkulunkulu, whisper to one another, 'What! does he know anything about uNkulunkulu?' and seem greatly interested with the fact thad he did." [As to the last remark, one of great psychological importance, the author is in a position to state from many per- sonal experiences, that whereever, in teaching catechism or preaching to the natives, allusion is made to the one or other of their own traditions, they will show, by their surprise or eager interest or beaming faces, that they are greatly pleased; and should it happen that the ukutsho kwabadala, i. e. what the old people said, be not rendered faithfully, they will take the liberty (the necessary degree of confidence into the individual missionary presupposed) to correct him, in catechetical instruction at once, and if such mention was made in a sermon, after the sermon.] "The other word, umVelingqangi, he said, was equally familiar to them; but, of course, they do not attach to either of them the deep significance we can." 

At Inanda. Mr. Lindley told me that he knew they had the name uNkulunkulu, which they use to express the Creator of all things: but he felt sure that, if I asked turther, I should find they meant by it a little worm in the reeds, a sort of caddis-worm whose cylindrically shaped houses, constructed of little strips of bark, may be found on the willow- tree in great numbers (in Zululand proper, called un-kulukundhleni and uma- hambanendhlwana 'the one who goes about with his own little house', in Natal, besides, also ànkúlunkúlu-lht Author). This was quite new to me; but I felt already so sure of the ground on which I stood, that it would not have staggered me with regard to my general conclusion, formed from so many replies, obtained from so many different tribes, if I had found that those now before me had, previous to their conversion, been sunk in yet lower degradation and lost yet more of the truth of their original traditions, than others of their brethren.

With this preparatory talk, we proceeded to our inquiries. The subjects selected for the examination were chiefly two men- aged fourty six and fourty nine. They told us that they had heard the name uTixo from Dr. Adams, and before that from Capt. Gardiner, more than twenty years ago. "Had they ever heard any other name besides uTixo?" "Yes- uNkulunkulu. He had made all things." In answer to Mr. Lindley, they "did not hear whe- ther he had made the great mountains." "He made the reeds first (cp. what further on will be said on u-hlanga and um-hlanga-Tht Author), and out of them came men." "Was uNkulunkulu the same as uTixoT "Yes: but they did not understand uTixo at first. They do now, because they have been taught its meaning." "They think uNkulunkulu would be the best word to use for the unconverted heathen." "They think uNkulunkulu the best word altogether"- two or three speaking. "Did they think at first that uTixo was the same as uN- kidunkulu?" "When they heard about His creating all things, they said, This is uNkulunkulu'." "They would have liked better- attended more- if the Missionary had spoken to them at first about uNkulunkulu, instead of uTixo. They would have said, The teacher is right. It is uNkulunkulu that he talks about'."

"But, asked Mr. Lindley, if you had been told about uNkulunkulu, would you not have thought directly about the little worm down in the reeds?" This question was received by*the whole party with a smile of respectful derision. "O no! we only call it so; we use the same name for it; but we do not pay any honour to it." (One remembers a flower, called by the name 'Everlasting'.)

"Did they know where uNkulunkulu was?" "No! they had only heard of Him, that there was such a Being; they did not know where He was." Mr. Lindley was quite convinced by their replies, that there was more of truth in their rude conceptions of the Divine Being, than he had imagined.

At Mr. Lewis Grout's. I wished to ascertain wheter they could corroborate at all the statement of the Norwegian Missionary, which was quite new to Mr. Grout, viz. that the Zulu parents sent their children at times, when they themselves took their meals, to pray to uNkulunkulu. They gave us imme- diately the two Kafir names, as those by which their fathers knew the Great Creator, before that of uTixo reached them.

So far Colenso. If one reads all these statements on uNkulunkulu, made by members of very different Zulu speaking tribes, all concurring in His being the Creator of man and everything, one cannot help being struck by this unanim- ity. But perhaps to those conversant with what Dohne, Calla way, &c, put down on the same subject, this very unanimity will be a great stumbling block. Why, they will ask, not a word on, not even an allusion to, uNkulunkulu, or rather unkulunkulu, as meaning 'man', 'the first man'? The answer, in my opinion, is very simple - Colenso always proceeded from uTixo; therefore his native interlocutors knew from the very beginning that no one else than the One who figured in their own traditions as the Creator of man and everything, viz. 'uNkulunkulu, was in question, and consequently they had no reason whatever to speak of what was not asked, viz. unkulunkulu 'the first man*. In my own mind, I feel quite convinced that in all those conversations only 'uNkulunkulu was used, not once unkulunkulu.

If this is so - and it does not appear how it could have been other- wise-these statements are really invaluable, outweighing, for instance, all those collected by Calla way, in which practically - that is, to all those who are not in possession of the key to the perplexing problem - confusion reigns supreme - "The evidence, collected by Dr. Calla way, is honest, but confused", writes A. Lang 5.

To the writer personally, Dingana's statement, as narrated above by Nceni, is the most convincing. Anyone who has been in personal contact with the Zulu speaking natives for any length of time, will know that the common people look up to the Zulu king or the royal Zulu family as th e keeper of Zulu traditions, profane as well as religious. And the writer, who has been for years in personal contact with several members of that family, has been able to put this prerogative of theirs to the test. Now king Dingana was told of what Gardiner had said to his subjects of uTixo, and he, at once, concluded this must be our Zulu  uNkulunkulu. "Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear!"

This patch of clear sky, of unclouded evidence, alas! has been darkened, "obscured", as already indicated. Unpleasant as it is, to walk in the dark, we shall have to contend with darkness for some time before we see light again.

DOHNE. 

The first (in historical sequence) to quote is the late Rev. J. L. Dohne, Missionary to the American Board C.F.M. In his "Zulu-Kaffir Dictionary" (Cape Town 1857) he has:-"un-Kulunkulu, n. sing. From inkuluinkulu, a great-great, viz.: the greatest of all (maximus), which is made a proper noun by the nom. form u or un - see u-Ni Sisuto mogologolo. The first great individual: the progenitor of one or all nations.- This word refers only to some great original man of a whole nation, like Adam, the first man." 

The form inkuluinkulu, the supposed parent form of unkulunkulu, is an arbitrary postulate of Döhne's; no more need be said about it. - If his un- Kuliinkulu is to be identified with unkúlunkúlu = ukúlukúlu, he is right in giving it the meaning 'progenitor of one or all nations', and wrong in ren- dering doubled kulu by 'great-great, viz. the greatest of all (maximus)' instead of 'old-old, i. e., the oldest of all (antiquissimus)'-see p. ?. If, on the other hand, his unKulunkulu is meant for 'úNkulunkúlu, he should have drawn the reader's attention to the fact that there is a dynamic accent as well as H on the first syllable, and might have, at least, doubted whether 'the great-great' or 'the greatest of all' did justice to a word having such an exceptional accentuation, although it might have proved too much for him to arrive at 'the greatest or all-great uN'

Dohne goes on to say, "This idea is established by the etymology and usage of the language. But tradition says (Dohne, therefore, admits tradition ! - The Author), that unkulunkulu wadabula abantu nezinto zonke eluhlangeni, i. e., the very great one made go or come forth, people and all things out of or from a descent."

By "this idea" Dohne refers to unkulunkulu being 'the first man' or 'some great original man of a whole nation'. If it be unkulunkulu, he is right in saying that "this idea is established by the etymology and usage of the langu- age." But in quoting the famous traditional phrase, as above, he would have had to prove first that this unkulunkulu, of whom tradition says wadabula abantu (nezinto zonke) eluhlangeni, is one with the preceding 'first man', i. e. unkúlunkúlu, or else with >úNkulunkúlu. Secondly, he should have inquired whether abantu, according to universal native tradition, means 'people' in gene- ral, or else 'the first men'. Thirdly, by choosing the word 'descent' for u-hlanga (wherefrom eluhlangeni), Dohne seems to give to understand that unkulunkulu made come forth people and all things by way of generation (in Zulu uku-zala), and not by that of creation (in Zulu uku-dala), although it is hard to see how unkulunkulu could be supposed to bring forth all t h i n g s by generation. Any native could have told Dohne, had he but asked, that the above traditional phrase contained their traditional idea of the uku-dalwa or (passive) creation' of the unkulunkulu. For the rest it is very easy to put down 'descent' for uhlanga, especially if this suit one's own preconceived idea; 'n reality, however, the true meaning of uhlanga in this particular phrase is extremely difficult to ascertain, as we shall see further on.

Dohne continues, "And this expression being incorrectly interpreted by foreigners (viz., the very great one created men and all things out of a reed, - or as some, paying no proper attention to the nom. form whether un or urn, understood it, that umkulunkulu, viz. the caddis-worm, had created men and all things out of a single reed), - therefore great confusion has prevailed, and some have been, and are still, fond of taking this name in the sense of God- Almighty."

Dohne unjustly attributes the 'creating of men and all things out of a reed' to foreigners. As a matter of fact, it was not foreigners, but the natives themselves who, by a popular mistake, have substituted for the un- doubtedly original eluhlangeni or ohlangeni the spurious variant emhlangeni, the nominative of which, viz. umhlanga, signifies 'reed'. He is, likewise, wrong in giving umkulunkulu as the word for 'caddis-worm', as well as in attributing to foreigners the belief that the caddis-worm was the creator of men and all things, who would have created them "out of a single reed"; at least, the writer has never come across any European author giving such an interpretation of the above traditional phrase. Nor have the natives ever done so. As to "con- fusion", in the above extracts from Colenso's "Ten Weeks in Natal" we have met with no confusion on the part of the natives nçr on th$t of Colenso him- self; confusion makes itself felt whereever natives 'give evidence' who themselves have lost the thread of tradition, so that they are no longer abìe to reconcile, or else to distinguish, in their own mind the two words 'ûNkulunkûlu and un- kúlunkulu, the consequence being that, for sheer perplexity, especially when pressed by European inquirers who have not acquired the art of how to elicit genuine information, they will attribute to iinkúlunkúlu what, .of right, in their own tradition belongs to 'úNkulunkúlu, and vice versa. The responsibility for the "confusion" with which Dohne would saddle Colenso and such as adopted his views, because "they have been, and are still, fond of taking this name (úNkulunkúlu) for the name of God", - the responsibility, I say, for the "confusion" rests on writers like Dohne himself and Callaway.

Then Dohne allows- "That there may be some idea of a being like God at the bottom of this word (for some idea oï that kind is found even with the most degraded savage), we readily admit; but an unprejudiced inquirer will find that none of these savages are aware of it, or use the word in that sense. And where a native is found who attaches some idea of God to the word, he does so, not of himself, but from some influence which Christian Missionaries have already gained over the nation in general."

So Dohne does admit "that there may be some idea of a being like God at the bottom of this word", after having stated apodictically, "This word refers only to some great original man of a whole nation, like Adam, the first m a n." And as to those "savages" not being "aware of it" or else being but influenced by Christian Missionaries, I refer the reader to the extracts from "Ten Weeks in Natal"; Colenso had to do with sets of "complete heathens", ana with converts. It would be for Dohne to prove that those complete heathens were really influenced, directly or indirectly, by Christian Missionaries. And if the converts, as also the heathen Dingana, concluded that uTixo must be the same as their own üNkulunkúlu, they certainly must have known that which they knew of "úNkulunkúlu, independently of the Missionaries.

Dohne concludes by saying, "On the contrary, the native or savage idea expressed in the above traditions, is in strict conformity with their spirit and life, materialistic. And it is only a necessary consequence of the grossest materialism that the unkulunkulu has been brought down to a mere fiction, or a fable. An instance of this is seen in the following common trick, which greedy mothers or women play upon their children, when they have prepared a dainty meal and wish to enjoy it alone. For which purpose they send the children away, saying: yiyani nimemele (recte nimemeze) kunkulunkulu anipe zonke izinto ezinhle, i. e.: go and call out to unkulunkulu, that he must give you all nice things. The hungry children do what their mothers say, and are laughed at for their obe- dience. But foreigners who did not sufficiently understand the people and their language, have mistaken this, and believed that these women were in the habit of teaching their children to pray - to the Unkulunkulu, and concluded that there must be a good deal of religious knowledge among them." 

We have already pointed to the possibility of the practice in question having had once a religious character which later on degenerated into the trick described above (which, according to my information, was by no means universal). But, in tfce first place, it would have to be ascertained whether the children were told to call out to *uNkulunkúlu or to unkulunkulu. But, however that be, Dohne could, and should, have known that it was not this practice alone, nor even chiefly, from which Colenso and others "concluded that there must be a good deal of religious knowledge among them (sc. the natives)."

I shall not declaim now on the logica1 and psychological aspect of the passage quoted from Dohne, leaving it to the reader to draw . his own conclusions. Regarding its linguistic or philological aspect, Dohne did not know that there were two different words: 'úNkulunkúlu and unkúlu- nkulu, otherwise he would have inserted the two, in which case he very likely would have written something rather different from the above. But even so, he might have been more careful as to scientific truth - also Colenso was not aware of the difference between these two words, and yet he accepted truth as he received it out of the mouth of complete heathens and converts.

Callaway.

After Dohne, in the order of time, follows Callaway, the author of "The Religious System of the amaZulu" already quoted. The "1st Part: UNKULUNKULU" is devoted entirely to the problem indicated by its name. As far as I can see, this is the chief source from which scientific authors in Europe drew, such as W. Schneider, Le Roy, A. Lang, W. Schmidt S.V.D., C. Meinhof, and (recently) V. Cathrein S.J. Of course, the scientist in Europe depends on books. As a rule, he has no opportunity to check what he finds in them, on the spot, if it refer to things of distant countries. And if it happens that these premises are false, false will be the conclusions drawn from them. So far, no biame can be attached to the scientists themselves. If, in the present instance, they are to blame at all, it might be for having followed but one single author, viz. Callaway, and not made use of the whole literature. But even this may have been no fault of theirs; in which case all that can be said, is that it was a regrettable misfortune that even genuine science has been misled for over half a century with regard to the uNkulunkulu, or unkulunkulwproblem of the Zulus. Nor do I mean to belittle Callaway personally. In the Preface to my re-edition of hjs "UNKULUNKULU" I said:-"To write down, as he did, so many statements from the mouth of natives, to translate them into English, to add lengthy annotations, to install a private Mission Press in the wilds of South Africa, to print the MSS - to do all that, certainly required more than ordinary energy and zeal for the cause of Native Mission work." Nor do I in- tend to deny or depreciate the high value oï his work. A few years ago, I wrote 6;- "In spite of the author's (se. Calla way's) conviction to the contrary, the book contains the most valuable proofs, taken from the very lips of intelligent natives in the middle of last century, to show that uNkulunkulu is t h e name of the true God in Zulu tradition." I might have added that the information he collected from those natives, goes back to at least some 100 years previous to the time of his inquiries (the same applies, of course, also to some statements contained in "Ten Weeks in Natal"); for some of his informants were "very old", they may easily have had the age oï eighty or ninety years (I met many nonagenarians, male and female, among the Zulu-speaking natives; the age of one I knew in 1897, was well beyond 100). And they merely repeated what they had been told by "their old people", parents and grandparents. Thus the uninterrupted chain of tradition, as put down by Calla way, leads us back to about 1750 or 1700 - a time when the Zulu speaking races as a bulk, had no intercourse yet with Europeans.

But all this does not do away with the "obscuring reasons" enumerated at the beginnig of this treatise, all of which apply to Calla way, some in a less, some in a greater degree. And this is the crucial point of which science in Europe seems not to have been aware.

No more need be said of Callaway at present, as much will have to be said later on.

Colenso.

In the order of time, the next to be quoted, is, I believe, again Colenso. In his Zulu-Englisch Dictionary (I quote from the edition of 1884 - the date of the first edition I have not at. hand) he has:- "Nkulunkulu (U), n. Great- Great-One, Supreme Being, traditional Creator of all things, called also umVelingqangi; grub of the dinning fly, which makes a little cylindrical cell, of stalks of grass, &c, like a caddis-worm, and hence is called also uMahambanendhlwana. N.B. The Zulu children used in play to run shouting, one and all together, We Nkulunkulu ! Old men of the present generation have done so; but the practice is discontinued."

It appears that the conviction gathered in his first ten weeks in Natal, remained unshaken. And so it did to the end, as can also be seen in all his reli- gious Zulu publications, including his Zulu version of the New Testament.

Bryant.

Finally also a Catholic author must be quoted, the Rev. A. T. Bryant. In his Zulu-English Dixtionary (Mariannhill Mission Press, 1905), he has: - "u-Nkulunkulu, the Great-great-ancestor or ancestral spirit (of man- kind), the first man who is supposed to have made most of the things round about; hence, adopted by Missionaries to express God, Creator." As can be seen from these words, Bryant, on the one hand, sticks to the "Great-Great"- idea of all his predecessors, although he makes of it "Great-great", seemingly in order to indicate that he excludes from uNkulunkulu any and every idea of the Supreme Being, and shows himselfs, at the same time, a partisan of Dohne and Callaway. On the other, he goes beyond them, making of uNkulunkulu the Great-great-ancestral-spirit- a tale which he certainly cannot have been told by any native, an interpretation unwarranted even if uNkulunkulu be taken for unkúlunkúlu - ukúlukúlu, since there is the fact of the natives having never made of him an idhlozi or 'ancestral spirit', a fact amply attested also by Calla way's informants. Besides, no native ever attributes to any 'ancestral spirit' the power of creation or "having made most of the things round about". And this false supposition has, according to Bryant, been the reason why Missionaries adopted this term for God, the Creator !- a false supposition that amounts to a contradictio in terminis of which the natives are innocent. Verily, a man of his wide knowledge of Zulu might have done better, especially in a matter of vital importance to the Cathoilc Missionaries who had followed Colenso in adopting uNkulunkulu : for 'God'. And he (Colenso) had adopted it - not because the natives had told him that uNkulunkulu was "the Great-great- ancestor or ancestral-spirit (of mankind), the first man who is supposed to have made most of the things round about", but - because his native informants were unanimous in telling him that uNkulunkulu was the Creator of men and all things. 

Strange to say, a Bryant, whose undisputed merit lies in having collected in Zululand itself, and, as a rule, carefully interpreted, such a vast amount of Zulu words, noted in his dictionary neither ukúlukúlu nor its nunnated form unkúlunkúlu, in the sense of 'protoparent', that is, as the last link of relation- ship in the ascending line. That even ukúlukúlu should have escaped him, is the more remarkable as he has set down its diminutive ukúlukulwáne. As to unkúlunkúlu, he mentions it as a common noun, giving it as the Natal word for unkúlukundhléni, and as a proper noun, in the sense of 'The Great-great- ancestor or ancestral-spirit' as above. Of the common noun unkúlunkúlu with the meaning of 'protoparent', 'progenitor of mankind in general, or a people, tribe, clan, in particular' he seems to have known nothing. Again this is the more remarkable as, long before Bryant, Callaway had established this meaning, not only in Natal-Zulu, but also in Zulu proper. Thus, e. g. in his UNKULUNKULU (re-edition p. 48), "Koto Mhlongo, a very old Zulu, one of the Isilangeni (recte: eLangeni) tribe, whose father's sister, uNandi, was the mother of uTshaka" states, "Ngiti mina, unkúlunkúlu, sazi yena ozala uTshaka: uSenzangakona, ozala uTshaka" Callaway's version is, "I say for my part that the unkúlunkúlu whom we know was the father of uTshaka; uSenzangakona was uThsaka's father." The proper rendering, I believe, is, "To my knowledge, as to unkúlunkúlu, we know the one who begat Tshaka, namely Senza- ngakona, him who begat Tshaka." As will appear immediately from Koto Mhlon- go's own words, he used here unkúlunkúlu in an improper sense. A little farther on, the same stated, "UJama kambe, ozala uSenzangakona, uyise waoTshakay uyena ounkulunkulu." Callaway's rendering is, "UJama was the father of uSenzangakona, the father of uTshaka's; it is he who is unkulunkulu" I would render it thus - "Jama who begat Senzangakona, Tshaka's father, is (sc. in this case) the unkulunkulu" Even here unkulunkulu is employed in a wide sense, as will be seen from the following footnote, added by Calla way:- "As the question has been raised whether the natives do not call the First Man, or Being, ukulukulu, and an ancestor unkulunkulu, in order to prevent all misunderstanding, I asked him (sc. Koto Mhlongo) if he was not speaking of ukulukulu. He replied ukulukulu and unkulunkulu is one and the same word; the amaZulu say unkulunkulu, other tribes ukulukulu, but the word is one. I enquired what he meant by unkulunkulu. He answered: - (to save space, I omit the Zulu text which I give in my rendering) "We start from the word ukulu as the one who begets the father, but this one we call (by the simple form) ukulu (grandfather). But there is also an unkulu- nkulu (doubled form), namely the one who is farther back. When using unkulu- nkulUy we do not refer to power (in the sense of greatness), but especially to age. For this (simple) form ukulu does not express that the one referred to, is old by twice, but only by once. But if his house begets again children, these will use the doubled form, and, by going back from their father to that one, will say unkulunkulu, that is, the oldest." The order, as Callaway elicited it from Koto Mhlongò, is:- 

ubaba my father                                 umarne my mother
ubaba-mkulu or ukulu                        umame-kulu or ukulu
ukoko                                               ukoko
unkulunkulu                                       unkulunkulu.

Callaway thus concludes his note: - "Ukoko is a general term for An- cestor who preceded the grandfathers. And unkulunkulu is a general term for Ancient Men, who 'were f irsf among tribes, families, or kings." Koto Mhlongo omitted the u(n)kúlu(n)kulwáne as given in our list on p. 660, and by Callaway' s informants at other places (as o. c. re-edition p. 90). Of course, if Callaway had attended to the accentuation, and noted it for us, it would appear that Koto Mhlongo, all the time, was speaking of u(n)kúlu(n)kúlu.

To come back to our immediate subject, in my own research work, I had ample proof that, as in Koto Mhlongo's time, so also in the present generation of the pure Zulus, both ukulukulu and unkulunkulu are still quite alive. Wherefore it remains a puzzle how they could escape Bryant's notice. Had they not, in all likelihood, he would have been struck by the difference between 'úNkulunkulu and unkulunkulu, since, in other cases, he has carefully noted the different accentuation in seemingly identical words, and, in some cases, even the difference of musical tone.

This, then, is the status quaestionis as far as the South African authors, or, to be precise, the Zuluists, of note are concerned - Colenso, Dohne, Callaway, Bryant.

Now we must turn to the scientists in Europe. As far as I have been able to ascertain they have two things in common- one being that none of them quotes Colenso, and the other that none of them went beyond Callaway. For the present purpose, it will suffice to adduce the views of some of them, based on conclusions drawn, in the main, from Callaway.

Schneider. 

No other, perhaps, among them has given expression to the feeling of being baffled by the unkulunkulu-problem in more simple and, therefore, striking language than W. Schneider (Die Religion der afrikanischen Natur- völker, Münster i. W. 1801), who writes (p. 65; this and the following pass- ages in my translation): "Evidently, in the course of time, Unkuïunkulu has been distorted into a grotesque being, full of contradictions. He is the Creator of all things, and, at the same time, a creature himself, the father (?, recte: Creator, Maker) of the First Man, and, at the same time, the First Man him- self." No doubt, had he had the key to the problem, that is, had he known of the difference between úNkulunkúlu and unkulunkulu, he would have had no difficulty in substantiating his final verdict on the religion of the Zulus, which clearly is in their favour.

On p. 62 he has: "The U'nkulunkulu (sic) of the Zulus is the greatest of the Ama-hlozi (recte ama-dhlozi), as the souls of the dead are called by them, or the Adam of the Zulus." Let us first, in passing, rectify a little inexactitude: the 'souls' of the dead, as such, the Zulu calls umoya 'spirit', umpefumulo 'soul', and when speaking quite idiomatically, isithunzi 'shadow'. Such they are so long as, after death, they are 'roaming about' in the open, especially on some mountain. And when do they become amadhlozi? When their blood-relations 'bring them back' to their kraal or family by the uku-buyisa-sacriiict, that is, the first sacrifice offered up in their honour, not before. Now as to Schneider's statement itself, in this generality it is un- tenable. For not the úNkulunkúluy but the unkúlunkúlu of the Zulus is the oldest (kulu here = old), that is, the first in the long line of the amadhlozi, taking the latter in a wide sense; for if it be taken in its strict sense, the un- kúlunkálu of the Zulus has never become an idhlozi, because his spirit was never 'brought back' by any such sacrifice às indicated above. The unku- lunkulu of the Zulus, with reference to mankind in general, is undoubtedly Adam, the First Man. But Adam belongs to the pre- pagan time, when, amadhlozi-worship being yet unknown, no one's spirit was 'brought back' by any kind of sacrifice, sacrifice, in those times, having been, as we may fairly suppose, addressed to 'úNkulunkúlu alone. This is why, in conversing with the natives on the subject, one finds that in their minds Adam does not figure as an idhlozi. The same was stated by Mpengula repeatedly (as p. 20, 70) in Callaway's days.

Again p. 62, Schneider has: "Itongo is the singular of Ama-tongo, who occupy a higher rank (sc. than the amadhlozi) in the spirit world." As a matter of fact, in actual native speech and thought, itongo and idhlozi are one and the same, without any distinction of rank.

On p. 69, he writes: "If we ask after the relation between Inkosi (sc. inKosi epezulu) and Itongo, by which name the Supreme Being is known to the Swazis and other tribes related to the Zulus, Itongo seems to us to signify  the Deity as such, that is, Divine power and providence, while Inkosi refers to the Deity in Its concrete form or the form in which It reveals itself." First of all, as a rule, itongo is not used of the true God, and if it is, as sometimes in the phrase iTongo elikulu 'the great iTongo9, it is done so, possibly but by analogy to the amatongo or amadhlozi. Secondly, there may be a possibility of its having originally meant the true God, not, however, under the special aspect of power and providence, but as the inspiring agency, as the One who revealed Himself in dreams; for ubu-tongo, which is the ubu-form of i-tongo, signifies 'sleep'. In this supposition, the name iTongo of the true God would have been transferred to the amadhlozi, when paganism began to invest the latter with the power of 'inspiration by means of dreams'.

After having referred to the mixing up of the Creator with the first man created by Him, Schneider continues- "This confusion had, according to the legendary tales, the following origin. Utixo (God), as Callaway was in- formed by Coast-Kafirs (recte: by a Xosa), was concealed by Unkulunkulu, and therefore cannot be seen by anyone, while Unkulunkulu could be seen, and was called God, Creator of all things. This was said because it was not known who had created Unkulunkulu. A scripturalist might be tempted to perceive in the exalting of the human father of all mankind at the expense of the Divine a vague reminiscence of the First Man, raised by grace to God- likeness, having refused to his Lord the adoration due to Him, because striving after equality with Him : "concealed" God, that is, he would not recognise Him, wanting to be His equal. And in order to punish man for this ingratitude, God retired from man, hiding His face behind the material world, as behind a curtain."

Unfortunately the foregoing is "built on sand", being based upon a wrong translation of the Zulu text Callaway. In re-editing his UNKULUNKULU, I alas ! overlooked this mistake. The respective passage (re- edition p. 64) begins with a reference to the custom of throwing, in passing- a stone on the izi-vivane (stone heaps) while saying "Generations of unkulunkulu" Questioned which unkulunkulu (sc. whether God or the protoparent) was referred to in this phrase, the informant, a Xosa of the name of Langeni, said : -

Etsho umuntu wokuqala kubo bonke abantu, owavezwa uTixo ku- qala. Kepa abantu bambona. UTixo w asita kunkulunkulu, kabonwanga umuntu; abantu babona yena unku- lunkulu, bati umenzi wako konke, umvelingqangi, betsho ngokuba lowo owenza unkulunkulu bengambona- nga. Bati-ke, (ng)uyena uTixo. Yiloko, esikwaziyo ngonkulunkulu.

Callaway's version.

He (sc. who says "Generations of unkulunkulu") means the first man before all other men, who was created by uTixo first. And men saw him. UTixo was concealed by unkulunkulu, and was seen by no one; men saw unkulunkulu, and said he was the creator of all things, umvelingqangi; they said thus because they did not see Him who made unkulunkulu. And so they said unkulunkulu was God. This is what I know about unkulunkulu.

My version: - "He means the first man of all, the one who was brought forth by God (uTixo) first. Him people could see. God (uTixo) (screened Himself up, that is) was  invisib1e to the protoparent (unkulunkulu),  He was not seen by the (first) man (if Langeni actually used umuntu, as in the text) 9 or (if it was muntu) He was seen by no one; the people saw him, the protoparent (unkulunkulu), and (therefore) said he was the maker (um-enzi; umEnzi is a God-name) of all things, the "one-who-was-before-I-was" (um- velingqangi; umVelingqangi is also a God-name), and they said so because they had not seen Him who had made the protoparent (unkulunkulu). Therefore they said he (sc. unkulunkulu) is God (uTixo). This is what we (not "I") know of unkulunkulu"

On the meaning of uku-sita there is not the least uncertainty; thus, for instance, the sun, when 'screened' by a cloud, is 'invisible'. Again wasita kunkulunkulu is not 'he was concealed by the protoparent', but 'he was invisible to the . . .' The passage in question, therefore, is not a "legendary tale", as Schneider supposed, of God having been concealed by Adam, but an argu- ment of Langeni's, based upon the invisibility of God and the visibility of Adam.

On p. 63 Schneider has: "The Xosas now use the terms Umdali (umDali) Creator, and Umenzi (umEnzi) Maker, introduced by the missio- naries." I much doubt wheter these terms were introduced by the missionaries. Among the Zulus, both umDali and umEnzi are traditional God-names. Considering that the Xosas are the next sister, if not daughter-nation to the Zulus, the probalitiy stands in favour of these names having been traditional also among the Xosas. And in fact, Callaway has in a footnote- "Shaw also remarks: - Before Missionaries and other Europeans had intercourse with the Kafirs (= Xosas), they seem to have had extremly vague and indistinct notions concerning the existence of God. The older Kafirs used to speak of umDali, theCreator or Maker of all things..."

On the same page, Schneider writes: "Like the Zulus, the Xosas also call' the first man unkulunkulu, and endow him with even a higher position than the Hottentots their Heitsi-Eibib. Erroneously he is taken by some in- vestigators for God." The error, in my opinion, is not on the side of those investigators; for the Xosas have, besides uQamata, also uNkulunkulu as one of their traditional God-names, their respective tradition being substantially identical with that of the Zulus.

On p. 65, Schneider holds that "without doubt, Unkulunkulu signified originally the first man." Distinguoo speak with the school): if - 'úNu- lunkúlu, nego; if = unkúlunkulu, concedo, but in this case "originally" is out of place.

On p. 64, he has: "In a tale, related by Bleek, God (Unkulunkulu) rose from below, in Zulu belief the seat of the spirit world (in the sense of departed souls of men only - The Author), and created in the beginning (ohlangeni) men, animals, and everything (ohlangeni, whatever else it may mean, is not 'in the beginning' - The Author). From Call aw ay's "Religious System of the Amazulu", however, the first part of which is entitled "Unku- lunkulu", one does not receive the impression that the bearer of this name possesses Divine dignity and substance. True, he is more than an ordinary man. He is, in accordance with his name "The Great-Great" (recte: The Old- Old- The Author), the great-grandfather or primogenitor, and, at that, the apotheosised primogenitor, transfigured into a demi-god, who, in the tales on creation and the original state of things, figures as demiurge, mediating between God and men. As a clear distinction is not always made between the human father of all, the medium through which life is passed on, on one hand, and the Divine father of all, the cause from which life sprang, on the other, Unkulunkulu figures now as Adam, now as the God of paradise: the father of all mankind, who, as the first child of God, has received life immediately, and therefore in abundance, from the first source, shines in unique likeness unto God." This was, under the circumstances, the best interpretation a European savant who had in him something, it seems, of a poet, could put upon the perplexing confusion reigning in Callaway's book. But its scientific value is nil, considering that, in native view, unkulunkulu does not figure as as demigod nor as demiurge, and so on - native tradition seen trough European spectacles, and clad in scientific Aryan language. 

We shall return, indirectly at any rate, to other points of Schneider's in the sequel. He concludes his chapter on the Zulus thus- "The religion of the Zulus as well as the Kafirs in general, seems to have seen better times. No doubt, to this people, which bears the name of heaven, heaven was once the seat and the visible appearance of God invisible. Also among the younger generations this notion is still alive, although withal they do not worship heaven nor the stars." No one I dare say will deny that the religion of the Zulus has seen better times. Schneider is also right in saying that, in Zulu tradition, heaven is the seat of God. But he goes too far in saying that heaven was, and is, to them the visible appearance of God invisible. There is no such idea to be found with the Zulu speaking native. Another mistake he shares with many writers, South African not excepted, connecting, as he does, the name 'Zulu' with heaven by saying that the Zulus bear its name. The facts are about as follows.

A popular saying, still current even in the royal Zulu family, has it that "UZulu ngokuzula", i. e., "The name uZulu came from uku-zula 'roaming about ". Of course, this is a popular error, contradicted by Zulu etymology. The Zulus are named right enough after i-zulu. Now, i-zulu means 1. sky, 2. heaven, 3. thunderstorm, and therefore also 4. lightning, the proper words for 'lightning', viz. u-bane and u-nyazi, being avoided (uku-zila 'taboo') for superstitious fear of uku-hlolela, i. e., "to bring down an evil' by pronouncing its proper name. How, then, was it that the old namç of the Zulus, viz. um- Nguni, pl abaNguni, elsewhere still quite alive as waNgoni or aNgoni, was superseded by their present name? Answer: in accordance with a general custom by which the personal name (i-gama, i-bizo) of an ancestor may turn into that of a clan, tribe, or people (isi-zalo, isi-bongo). The twelfth ancestor of the present 'should-be' Zulu king, of the name Nkayitshana, had for his personal name uZulu. History gives no positive answer as to why he was called thus, but its negative answer that it had nothing to do with either 'sky' or 'heaven', leads us, by way of exclusion, to the conclusion that it was due to either a 'thunderstorm' or 'lightning'. It is quite a common custom among the Zulus and other Ntu peoples, to name a child after something that happened at or about the time of its birth. It may have been, therefore, that at the time when the prince in question came into this world, a thunderstorm was going on, or that lightning struck in dangerous neighbourhood, or that a famous case of 'smelling-out' (uku-nuka) was gone through at or about that time, to find out the sourcerer or witch guilty of having brought down a thunderstorm (hail) or lightning. In fine, we do not know the particular reason, but one thing is certain, viz. that the prince in question was not a Mr. Sky nor a Mr. Heaven, but either Mr. Thunderstorm or Mr. Lightning. Therefore the abakwaZulu or amaZulu are not the Sky, or Heaven-people, but the Thunderstorm, or Lightning-people.

If so, someone might object, what of phrases like "Izulu elako, nkosi", i. e., "The heaven is thine, O king!"? Such as are conversant with Ntu mentality will know the answer before I put it down: it is the outcome of hyperbolism so much in vogue among the Zulus as well as the Ntus in general. Once this hyperbolism nearly cost the present writer his life. I had to cross a river; the question was whether I had to do so on a pont or could risk it on horseback. I asked a native, á man of about fifty years, who came from the direction of the river, whether it went very high. His answer was, Amanzi atshile nya nya nya, equivalent to "The river is as dry as sand." By this I understood him to mean that the river had subsided enough to be fordable. But my horse, upon entering, had scarcely made two steps, when it sank saddle- deep into the roaring water. All, then, that my hyperbolic informant had meant, was that in comparison with the height the river had reached on the previous day, it had subsided a little.- To come back to our immediate subject, the name uZulu once given, lends itself too nicely to the native imbongi or 'court- poet' than that he should not make use of it for a hyperbole so flattering to a royal ear. But- and this is of decisive importance- no Zulu and no Zulu-speaking native has ever identified the Zulu king with 'úNkulunkúlu or the inKosi epe- zulù, and this in spite of their innate idea of the king representing all that is might and power. Although, therefore, Schneider is right in saying that "the religion of the Zulus has seen better times", their name amaZulu, dating back but to a few centuries, has nothing to do with their immemorial religious traditions.

Le Roy.

Another author of name dealing with the Zulu notion of God, is Msgr. Le Roy. In his well-known book „La Religion des Peuples primitifs" (Paris 1908) he refers to the Zulu God-name "Nkulu-Nkulu", as he gives it, and to their religious conceptions more than once.

First a word on his way of writing the God-name in question. With two exceptions (once "Umkulumkulu" and once "Unkulunkulu") he writes Nkulu- Nkulu, evidently adopted from Ch. Sacleux. It is a typical instance of how far even a linguistically well trained man, like Sacleux, may be led astray, if the place of positive knowledge is taken by some alluring theory. The initial u of 'úNkulunkúlu being shorn off, the syllabic accent and the musical tone resting on the first syllable of the word as it actually figures in Zulu, are missing. Anyone presented with Nkulu-Nkulu, will read Nkúlu-Nkúlu,- Initial u once dropped, the mere duplication nkulu-nkulu suggests itself quite naturally to a construing mind, and has been put into special relief by ad- orning the second part with a capital: Nkulu-Nkulu. If this were the true form, its bare stem would be, of course, nkulu, or nunnated kaluy whereas the true stem of uNkulunkulu is uN plus doubled kulu. - Finally, if Nkúlu- Nkúlu were the right form, no linguistic difference between Nkulu-Nkulu 'God' and nkulu-nkulu 'man' could be divined.

The form Umkulumkulu either is due to bad hearing, or else represents another European construction. At any rate, no Zulu will ever pronounce uMkulumkulu.

On p. 188 7 Le Roy translates his Nkulu-Nkulu with (in my rendering) "the Gread God (the Very High)", and in the list of Ntu God-names at the end of the book, with "God, lit. the Very High", none of which translations fits Nkulu-Nkulu. For, if refering to God, it would be 'the double Great' or 'Greatest', and if referring to man, 'the double old' or 'oldest'.

In summing up the native idea of muLungu (o. c. p. 200), Le Roy lets us know what he himself thinks of the Zulu notion of God. He says (in my translation), *'What, then, is He? Ignoramus. He exists, He lives, He does what He is pleased to do, He is incomprehensible, He surpasses our intellect, He is Mulungu (recte muLungu) . . . However, logic being not the strong point with our blacks, they, unhesitatingly, attribute to this great muLungu our good and bad inclinations, our ideas, our cares, our jealousy, our disappointments. In complete inconsequence, they will speak of the supreme might of God and, in the same breath, of the embarrassments in which He finds Himself under given circumstances, of His forgetfulness, of His outbreaks of wrath, &c. In this way"- this is what specially interests us here- "according to Dr. Callway (recte Callaway), quoted by A. Lang, among the Zulus Unkulunkulu which in the past seems to have denoted 'God', has been confounded, in the course of time, with the concept of the first man. But strange to say, this first man- Unkulunkulu- is "he who has made the rain, the corn, the food". And what did the natives do when this word, at a certain time, no longer con- veyed the distinct idea of the Supreme Being? They took another word that would admit of no confusion; and now 'God' is to them Utilexo (apparently misspelt uTixo), a word borrowed from a neighbouring tribe."

To begin with the end - my readers know already that it was not the Zulu speaking natives who took over uTixo from the neighbouring Xosas, or rather from the Laus (Hottentots), but the missionaries who imported it thence. This being so, it appears also that they could not, and did not, adopt the name for the reason assigned by Le Roy. 

All the same, Le Roy did come nearer the truth than any of the other authors (Schneider, Lang, Schmidt, Cathrein) - I believe it is the 'Missionnaire ancien', the observant student of Ntu mentality on the. spot, that asserts himself, as against the mere scientist in Europe. True, he follows Callaway, for want of other sources. He relates, like the rest, that the name Unkulunkulu was identical with that of the first man. But, at the same time, differently from all the others, he, intuitively (I believe), grasps at once the underlying truth. For ( 1 ) he admits that Unkulunkulu seems to have originally signified 'God', adding in a footnote "This conviction was arrived at by compar- ing this word with the identical terms of the neighbouring tribes, among whom they are but intended to distinguish the Supreme Being", and (2) he points to the objective impossibility of "the first man - Unkulunkulu" having made the rain, the corn, &c.

Lang. 

Considering that Andrew Lang published the first edition of "The Making of Religion" in 1898, he should have taken precedence of Le Roy, but I am quoting from the third edition, published in '1909. He says (p. 207), "The Zulus are the great standing type of an animistic or ghost-worshipping race without a God." lì he had had the material laid down in these pages before him, he, no doubt, would not have made of the Zulus "an animistic race without a God". Nor would he have put the following in the form of a query (showing, for the rest, his acumen as well as his common sense), viz. "But, had they a God (on the Australian pattern) whom they have forgotten, or have they not yet evolved a God out of Animism?"; he would have said, in the form of a statement, They have a God, on a par with the Darumulun of the Australians, the Puluga of the Andamanese, &c, whom they have not entirely forgotten, although they have evolved Animism alongside of Theism'. In the same way, his further deduction (I. c.) would have been different from what it is; he would have put it in some way like this: 'Although both the an- thropological theory (spirits first, God last) and our theory (Supreme Being first, spirits next) can find warrant i n Dr. Callaway's valuable col- lections, they don't in actual Zulu tradition'. And in his final conclusion (p. 209) "... it certainly seems as logical to conjecture that the Zulus had once such an idea of a Supreme Being as lower races entertain, as to say that the Zulus have not yet devolved a King-God out of the throng of spirits (Amantongo)", he would have deleted "seems" and "conjecture" from the first part, and suppressed the second altogether.

Schmidt.

W. Schmidt, in his "Der Ursprung der Gottesidee" (Münster i. W. 1912) credits the South East Ntu with but little knowledge of God. After dealing with the North West, West, and the central part of Ntuland, he comes to the East and South East, and says (p. 139, in my translation) :- "In all the rest of Ntuland the state of things is different. The God-name is a collective name, used simultaneously either for spirits in general or especially for the ancestral spirits. The notion no less than the worship of the Supreme Being evanesces more and more ... In the extreme South East of this part, the whole evolution reaches its climax, since among the Kafirs Unkulunkulu, and among the Herero Mokuru, which both originally signify the proto-ancestor, merge with the Supreme Being into an indistinct compound." 

As far as the Zulus are concerned, "the God-name- Schmidt evidently had unkulunkulu in his mind - is." not "a collective name, used simultaneously either for spirits in general or especially for the ancestral spirits."

This may be the place to deal with an error common to most, if not all of the authors who have occupied themselves with the unkulunkulu-problem. To them, unkulunkulu, also when not referring to the Supreme Being, is a spirit, or, to be quite exact, they speak of him indiscriminately as 'ancestor' and «'ancestral spirit'. With the Zulu and Zulu-speaking Ntu it is not so.

Leaving aside for the moment the 'ancestral spirit', and speaking of the "spirits in general", the Zulus know of no other spirits besides those of their dead blood-relations, that is, the amadhlozi or amatongo. True, they believe in some beings whom they call by other names, such as the imi-kovu and imi-lozi. But the former are no spirits, being, in native belief, dead people raised to life again by magic. The latter are spirits, but they are only a species of amadhlozi, acting as 'familiars of a certain class of diviners. This being so, with the Zulus unkulunkulu is not a collective name for "spirits in general".

Now, as to the spirits of the dead, when once "brought back" by means of the ukubuyisa-sacrifice (see p. 676), they figure to the native not as unkulunkulu or rather onkulunkulu, but as amadhlozi or amatongo. Therefore even unkulunkulu, as such in the native mind, has nothing to do with ance- stral spirits. Why? Because, as such, it is nothing more nor less than the term, as ubaba father, ukulu grand-parent, ukoko great-grandparent, &c. In using the word unkulunkulu, the native thinks, in the first place, of a man or woman of flesh and bone, who lived at such and such a time, with whom he is related in a far-off degree. Accidentally, the unkulunkulu may be also an idhlozi, in the same way as also ubaba, ukulu, ukoko, &c, but not oif necessity. Thus we have already seen (p. 660) that unkulunkulu in the sense of Adam is not worshipped, and therefore not thought of, as an idhlozi; Callaway's informants were quite definite on this point, and the same information could be had from any of the present-day natives. Again, if it happens that the father of a native, having been killed by lightning, or for some other reason, is not "brought back", his son will not think of him as an idhlozi or ancestral spirit. He is his father, wherefore he calls him ubaba; but he is not an "ancestral spirit" to him, and he will not refer to him as idhlozi. So also the protoparent of all mankind, or, for that, the protoparent of his own tribe, if not actually worshipped, is his remotest ancestor whom he calls unkulunkulu, but he is not an "ancestral spirit" to him, he does not figure as an idhlozi to his mind To sum up- to the native, unkulunkulu, even when referring to the protoparent of all mankind, is nothing but a term of blood-relationship, which, as such, has nothing to do with "spirits in general" nor with "ancestral spirits".  And actually, as stated already twice, he is not worshipped nor thought of as an idhlozi

Schmidt, in treating of Mulungu (recte, as I think: muLungu) as one of the Ntu God-names (o. c. p. 140), comes to the conclusion "that originally it can have meant nothing but 'spirit' in general, and, in particular, 'ancestral spirit'. Then he continues:- "Herewith agrees the fact of umlungu meaning in Kafir 'European': as among so many other primitive peoples, so also here the first pale-faced Europeans were considered as 'revenants', as ancestors come back."

As to muLungu 'God' meaning originally 'spirit' in general, and particularly 'ancestral spirit', all I can say, is that I have nowhere found it proved. Further, concerning the philological identity of muLungu 'God' and its variants, with um-lungu 'European' and its variants, I have, so far, come across no author who would have noted the musical tones on the respective syllables. Finally, regarding the identity of these two names in the mind of the several Ntu peoples, I have my doubts. At least, the Kafirs proper (Xosas) and the Zulus are not conscious of any such identity. In their mind, the umlungu 'whiteman' does not figure as 'úNkulunkúlu = umLungu 'God* of other Nta peoples, nor even as unkúlunkúlu. To them the Whiteman is no 'revenant', no 'ancestor come back'. On the contrary, they are quite explicit in their traditional tales as to the, on the one hand, common origin of the white and black from one and the same uhlanga, while, on the other, they give the white people white protoparents, or at least a white mother, and black to the black (the same belief existed also in Callaway's days, re-editon, p. 38). Should it be proved one day that the two words in question are really one, it would appear that the Zulus (and Xosas) borrowed the name umlungu without being conscious of its identity with the muLungu of other Ntu peoples.

On the same page, Schmidt has: "Next to these territories (sc. those where Morimo (moRimo), with its variants, obtains) comes, to the North West, that of the Hereros, and, to the South East, that of the Kafirs, in both of which, as already stated, the process of pushing the Supreme Being to the background, in favour of the proto-ancestor come to the fore, has reached its climax." I cannot vouch for the Hereros. But, as to the Zulus, even at this stage of our study, we may say confidently that among them there was no less traditional knowledge of the Supreme Being than among mofct of the other Ntu peoples. In proof of this, I may refer the reader to the extracts from "Ten weeks in Natal". If, after (and contra) Colenso, others have had the misfortune to be misled by a baneful confusion of two totally different words, if, for this and other reasons, they were no longer able to unearth all that there was of genuine Zulu tradition on the Supreme Being, or to unravel what they actually were told by the natives, if, finally, they were unfortunate enough to have had for the greater part of their informants, natives who were no longer in conscious possession of genuine tradition (Colenso also mentions one such), all this cannot do away with the fact that, before 1839, the Zulu king Dingana identified at once (p. 666) the uTixo of Gardiner's with the Zulu 'úNkulunkúlu, nor with the further of Colenso, in the middle of last century, having met, at places geographically widely distant, with Zulus and other Zulu-speaking natives, who unhesitatingly declared their traditional 'úNkulunkúlu to be "the Creator of men, animals, and everything". Even if we shall have to allow - as we shall have to - that there was a goodly number of natives who themselves confounded 'úNkulunkúlu and unkulunkúlu, this does not impair the testimoy of those who did not. And who knows how many of the former were but confused by the constant mixing up of these two words, as pronounced by their inquirers, not to speak of all the other "obscuring causes"?

In the passage last but one of this chapter (o. c. p. 141), Schmidt writes: "By thus showing up in one comprising view the mutual connection of the entire Bantufield in general, and with Upper Guinea in particular, two things become patent, viz. the priority of the higher monotheistic notion of God, and its gradual evanescing in consequence of the ever growing ancester-worship. And this development stands to reason, if we take into account that it increases in centrifugal direction: the farther the tribes pushed on, having to conquer ever new territories in constant warfare, the more the person of prominent leaders must gain in authority and influence, in their lifetime as well as after it, and thus the ancestor-worship especially of the chiefs could not but increase. A fine proof of the correctness of this line of thought lies in the fact that, in the extreme South East, from among the Kafirs (recte: Zulus) arose such grand leaders, surpassing all the rest, who allowed themselves to be addressed, in their own lifetime, with the same word 'Heaven' which, in the extreme North West, the original starting point of the whole Bantu migrations (?), was reserved exclusively to the Supreme Being."

The present writer is not the only one who does not believe in the North West as the starting point oï theNtus in their migrations within Africa. But apart from this, Schmidt, as also many others, evidently is labouring under a false conception of 'ancestor-worship'.

In the first place, the term 'ancestor-worship' itself, although in universal use, is wrong and misleading when applied to the Ntus. It should be 'worship oï dead blood-relations'. This expression corrects automatically two wide- spread errors. The first is implied by the word 'ancestor'. As a matter of fact, a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, even a child, that died only say a year, or even only a few days or weeks ago (this in the case of the idhlozi-snake or other idhlozi-animal showing itself soon after death), may become an idhlozi. There is no need to say expressly that none of these is an a n e e s t o r or an ancestral spirit, and yet all of them, with the ukubuyisa-sacrifice are full-fledged amadhlozi. The second error presupposes that a former member of an a 1 i e n family, clan, or tribe, could figure as an idhlozi, or the idhlozi, of a given family, clan, or tribe, a thing utterly impossible in the native view. Why? Because he or she would not be a blood-relation. Each family (kraal, umu-zi) worships its own dead, recent and ancient (as far as they may be remembered), and no other. Therefore it would be preposterous for a native who does not belong to the royal Zulu family, to be expected to offer up sacrifice to the ancient Zulu king Zulu, or to any of those "grand" Zulu "leaders", as e. g. Tshaka. No such native will ever think of calling upon, or praying to, them, whereas, at any given occasion, he will call upon, and pray to, his own amadhlozi.

In other words, even such a mighty dusky Napoleon as Tshaka, never became any kind of a national 'god' or 'demi-god' to be worshipped by the whole Zulu nation. On the contrary, even within the Zulus proper, as soon as a number of them, in accordance with the dabuka-custom, have become a clan of their own, they will, as a rule, no longer mention their Zulu ancestors beyond about the fifth degree, among the amadhlozi at their sacrifices. Those then, who do worship those grand Zulu leaders, are only the members of the royal family in its narrow sense. If the nyatelisa-sacrifice, formerly performed annually by the Zulu king at the graves of his predecessors, had something of a national character, it was not because the former Zulu kings had become in some way deities to the whole nation, but because the king was not to go alone, all his nobles and officials and the kraalheads of importance having to accompany him, as they had to, according to etiquette, at any other occasion.

The whole argument, therefore, based by Schmidt on the authority and influence of prominent leaders, and the supposed worship accorded to them after death, falls to pieces. The position of the Zulu kings, in life and after death, had to do nothing at all with pushing the Supreme Being into the background; on the contrary, from personal intercourse with members of the royal Zulu family, I came to the conclusion that it was this family where the tradition relating to the Supreme Being was kept alive with greater purity and tenacity than elsewhere.

Finally we come to the last part of Schmidt's argument, based upon the fact that the Zulu kings were addressed, in their lifetime, with Zulu. That they should have allowed this, seems to be, in Schmidt's view, about, the same as what Nabuchodonosor did by erecting a statue of his own person, and ordering people to adore it in his own lifetime. In reality, the custom of addressing the Zulu kings as Zulu was something very innocent. First of all, as already explained (p. 679), Zulu, in this case, is not 'Heaven' but Thunderstorm1 or 'Lightning'. But even if it meant 'Heaven', it would involve no sort of apotheosis. For, secondly, the only true reason why the Zulu kings and all the members of the royal family, were, and are, addressed as Zulu, is a general native custom according to which, in politely addressing any adult native, one uses not his personal name, but that of his family, clan, or tribe, or else such names as are known as izi-takazelo. Thus, for instance, a member of the Kanyile tribe of the name uSikukuku, will not be addressed as Sikukuku, but either as Kanyile, or Ngwana, the isithakazelo of the Kanyile tribe. In the very same way, then, any member of the Zulu tribe proper, that is, the royal family, is addressed by its tribal or family name Zulu, or else by some of its izithakazelo, as e. g. Ndabezitha. Besides this way of addressing membres of the royal family, including the king himself, which does not constitute any special privilege, there is another which is reserved to them alone, a royal prerogative, and that is, curiously to say, to address them as mNtwana which literally means 'Child', and is the equivalent .of our European 'Royal Highness', 'Prince', 'Princess' (cf. Spanish "Infante").

 

Thus, then, it appears that "the pushing back of the Supreme Being into the background in the extreme South East of the Bantufield" - as far as it took place - was due neither to "the ever increasing ancestor-worship of prominent (Zulu) leaders" nor to their being addressed by the word Zulu.

 

On the contrary, if the natives of Upper Guinea speak oí the Supreme Being as Onyang-kompong, 'Heaven', 'Sky', 'Rain', 'Thunder' + pong 'great', meaning thereby 'The one, all-high God, the Creator cf all things' (o. c. p. 137), we shall see ere long, that the word ' úNkulunkúlu, used in the extreme South East of the Ntufield by the Zulus, in preference to other names, for the Supreme Being, is practically identical with that of the extreme North West, meaning, as it does, 'the all-great Un', that is, 'the all-great God in heaven'. (To be continued.)

Notes

* For the careful revision of the manuscript I have to thank the Rev. Dom Columba Stenson, O. S. B., Caldey Abbey. ** In order to be able to distinguish between dynamic or rhythmic accent and musical high tone, we use for the former the usual ', and for the latter * (for typographical reasons). 1 stands for musical low tone, and therefore has nothing to do with dynamic accent.

1 "The traditional Zulu names of God", The Catholic Magazine for S. Africa, Cape Town, 1919, p. 177.

2 "Ten Weeks in Natal." 

3 Cape Town- London 1870.

4 H. Callaway: The Religious System of the Amazulu. IPart.: uNkulunkulu, re- edited, Mariannhill, 1913,p.3.

5."The Making of Religion", 3Id ed., p. 207. 

6 "The traditional Zulu Names of God", 1. c. p. 179.

7 "Die Religion der Naturvölker", übersetzt von G. Klerlein, 2. Aufl. 1911.

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Some Ngoni Weapons Obtained in 1900

A Collection of Objects from the District to the South-West of Lake Nyassa.

Author: R. W. Felkin

Source: Man, Vol. 1 (1901), pp. 136-137.

Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland

With notes by R. W. Felkin, M.D., and others.

'The objects represented in the photograph were collected by the Rev. R. Stewart Wright, of the Manse, Haydon Bridge, Northumberland. They are now in the possession of Dr. Felkin, and were exhibited at a meeting of the Anthropological Institute in the latter part of 1900 (Journ. Anthr. Inst., XXX., Miscellanea, No. 120 pp.).

The information which has been collected about them is very scanty, and they are figured now in the hope that some of the readers of Man may be able to throw some further light upon their peculiarities.

Of No. 1 Mr. Stewart says :-" The scraper-and-dagger combined is used by the " Shire Highlanders. It is made by the Ngoni, living to the west of Lake Nyasa, who do not think of putting a handkerchief to its legitimate use, when it will answer the purpose of a suit of clothes. The carrier, when toiling along under a heavy burden, with the sweat streaming down his face, scrapes it away with his iron scraper, while the reverse end may be useful as a defence should he be attacked at close quarters."

[ 136 1901.] MAN. [Nos. 112 -113.

Ngoni weapons

Nos. 2 and 3 are a combined dagger and beer ladle; the former lurks in the handle of the latter, which is hollowed to form its sheath. Mr. Stewart Wright says "The combined knife anid beer ladle is unique, as I have never seen a duplicate of it. I should imagine that the maker had the idea that he would have a knife always at hand, in case of a drunken brawl. I got it in the Shire Highlands; it was made by a Manganga."

No. 4 appears to be a small fighting axe. The blade is of iron, and of a curious recurved form. The mode of hafting is peculiarly simple; the blade being simply thrust through a hole in the haft, and secured by a wrappiug of bark-cloth. The handle is carved into a conventional representation of the head of a gazelle, or other horned animal. There are no details as to the place or mode of manufacture.

No. 5 is a short iron spear with a flowing tuft of hair at the butt-end. Mr. Stewart Wright says of it:-" The spear is made, fused, by the Ngoni. It is a stabbing spear, "and used in finishing off the wounded after a battle."

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Zulu Beads and Some Ngoni Beadwork

Beads and beadwork have been an important part of the culture of southeast Africa for hundreds of years, perhaps for millennia. They have been used by archaeologists to date the ancient ruins of Mapungubwe and Zimbabwe, by historians to provide evidence of trading activities and contacts with other civilizations and cultures, and by anthropologists who have recognized Zulu beadwork as an important social regulator and index of status within the society. Curiously enough, however, Zulu beadwork, acknowledged to be among the finest in Africa, has received very little attention as an artistic expression.

The Robert Hull Fleming Museum of the University of Vermont in Burlington has an outstanding collection of this beadwork which was the special province of the Zulu women, consisting of over 150 pieces collected by various donors from 1847 to circa 1910. A number of them can be pin-pointed as to geographic origin. The main sources of the collection are in the Transvaal, Natal and southern Mozambique. This geographic and time span allows for speculation about regional variations and stylistic developments.

1. Zulu  Necklace Beadwork

Mozambique  Maseko Ngoni beadwork

The bulk of the Fleming Museum's collection is composed of pieces made from modern beads of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, although there are nearly two dozen older pieces. These older beads are not only the indigenous stone, ostrich shell, seed and wood beads, but also cowrie shells and glass beads imported by Arab traders from India, Persia, Arabia and the Far East, with most of the trade beads coming from Cambay. The Arabs monopolized the trade routes to East Africa until exploration by the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century opened up the area to European exploitation. The modem beads, brought by the Portuguese and English, were smaller, mass-produced and thus regular in size and shape (an advantage to the beadworker), and generally indistinguishable from one another. While the older beads were used to indicate one's wealth and status, the modem beads were available in plentiful quantities to anyone since they were used as specie by traders, settlers and missionaries.

The oldest part of the collection was bequeathed to the University of Vermont by the Reverend Lewis Grout, an American Presbyterian missionary in Umsunduzi, Natal from 1847 to 1862. Generally, this section is representative of the ornaments of the Zulu prior to prolonged contact with Europeans; the pieces are probably at least several decades older than the collection dates of 1847-1862 since during this period, the new beads had already flooded Africa. The Grout ornaments are composed of teeth, bones, cowries, pith and brass as well as the large irregular beads which fell into disfavor as the imported ones became available.

Most are strung on twisted vegetable fiber rather than on the imported cotton cord and linen string found in later pieces.

Among the beadwork collected by Grout are three large brass balls, indondo, each approximately three centimeters in diameter and of irregular shape, which were traditionally strung around the neck of a married woman as evidence of her marital status. There is also a string of leopard phalanges strung on a fiber cord, probably worn by a man, which had a greater magical than decorative function (Fig. 3). A large gray cocoon on a string fits a description by the Reverend Franz Mayr in a 1907 article, "The Zulu Kafirs of Natal," of

a caterpillar cocoon which may have been filled with tiny

BELOW PAGE: 2. IMIBIJO AND IMIGONQOLOZI, FIBER TUBES COVERED WITH COILS

OF BEADWORK AND WORN ON THE ARMS, NECK, SHOULDERS AND WAIST

2. Imibijo and Imigonqolozi

3.Older Zulu Beadwork, amaka strings of leopard phalanges,  Trade Beads from the east , Job's tears and a cacoon

4.Zulu Child's string of beads, the ingeje, a little girl beaded tab  shown with an adult tab necklace for comparison

Note From Blogger: compare the above with Ngoni child beads

Malawian Ngoni child with ingeje and beaded necklace

7. Probabley Zulu Widows necklace

8. Two Zulu Handsome shoulder bands and a matching  tab and collar 

9. Ubala abuyisse or "love letter" necklace

10.  A magnificent Zulu fringed loin covered with diamond  and chevron designs

pebbles and worn on the ankle as a noisemaker by young boys at dances (Fig. 3). A vegetable fiber string of little pith beads may be the amaka also described by him, where scented herbs are ground, kneaded and shaped into little balls and pierced with a thorn. The Grout collection also contains an example of the traditional cylindrical reed snuff container, often worn in a pierced ear. This particular container, however, consists of two reeds bound together by black and white bands of the fine modern beadwork.

A string of the old, tapering, large wound glass cylinders in opaque white, blue and plum color on a white core is an example of still another type of beadwork from this varied collection. These plum colored or red-on-white beads, also called "slave beads," are among the most common older beads in the world, and existed in a variety of sizes in southeast Africa after 1800. In the Fleming Museum, they are most often found as fasteners in conjunction with a thread loop affixed to pieces composed largely of small modern beads-only in two examples are they an integral part of the piece.

Two of the most dazzling ornaments in the Fleming Museum were acquired by Grout. Two long, beaded shoulder bands, 113 centimeters long, and a matching collar with a large pendant breast tab are worked in alternate red, blue and black triangles against a white beadwork ground while the neckband of the collar is worked in an intricate lace-like stringing technique (Fig. 8). The ensemble would have been an especially handsome dance or courtship attire for a young Zulu man.

In 1934, Laura Buckham presented the Museum with some Zulu articles of considerable age. Among them were several pieces of beadwork which were recently discovered to have been collected by Miss Buckham's grandfather, Josiah Tyler, a Congregational missionary who was Grout's friend and neighbor in Natal; in fact, Tyler took over Grout's mission from 1862, when the latter returned to Vermont, until 1889. The several pieces of beadwork which Tyler obtained should be regarded as an extension of the Grout collection by virtue of collection date and locality.

An interesting item in the Buckham/Tyler group is a rectangular bag made of thin pieces of hollow grass or reed tied together and lined with cotton cloth. It is decorated with occasional beadwork on the front, and has two long beaded strings attached, probably used to carry it around the neck. The use of grass contrasts with later examples of entirely beaded bags.

Tyler also possessed a string of red seed beads alternating with tiny, hexagonal, black iridescent beads which seems to be an example of the traditional single-strand love beads, ucu lokuqoma, strung by a young Zulu girl for her first lover to wear around his neck. She had similar strands for her waist, wrists and ankles. This string marked the first stage of her love life and after this point she was allowed to wear any kind of beaded ornament to beautify herself.

By far the largest part of the Museum's Zulu beadwork came from Mrs. Robert Catlin, whose husband was the General Manager for Consolidated Gold Mines at Johannesburg in the Transvaal from 1895 to 1906. The Catlins acquirednearly one hundred pieces of excellent beadwork, and their gift contains striking examples in almost every category. In a dazzling array of color and pattern, the superbly crafted pieces summarize the Zulu woman's gift for design and technique.

A Zulu donned various types of beadwork corresponding to stages of development from childhood to adulthood; it functioned to order the progression of love from courtship to marriage. When a child began to crawl, a medicinal amulet- a special berry acting as a charm for good health-was replaced by a single string of beads, the ingeje (Fig. 4). Sometimes the child's string had tiny beaded tabs, one for little girls and two tabs, front and back, for boys. As the girlchild grew, her loin band became more elaborate with beaded fringes and larger square tabs, the isiheshe. A stunning isiheshe in the Catlin gift (Inside Front Cover) has a black and white striped beaded tab with back fringes in red, white and blue; three long strands of larger beads hang from each side of the tab, ending in a cluster of small brass bells which gave out a musical jingle when the wearer walked. At puberty, the young girl adorned herself with a red or blue cloth extending from waist to mid-thigh and decorated with beads, the utshodo. Young unmarried men often wore the utshodo of their future brides around their heads, according to Mayr.

The most symbolic of Zulu beadwork communicated both publicly and privately the state of one's love life. In addition to the ucu lokuqoma noted in the Tyler gift were the "love letters," ubala abuyisse or "One writes in order that the other should reply." These were highly prized by the young Zulu men who wore them all over their necks, heads andchests. The greater the number of love letters, the more sweethearts or wives the owner was shown to have, reflecting his wealth and status. The Catlin collection contains numerous ubala abuyisse with tabs varying in size, shape and number, on strings both plain and beaded or occasionally fringed with lace-like beadwork (Fig. 9). Common to all of them are the richness and intricacy of their patterns, produced

with a limited range of colors which have symbolic meanings. Brilliant visual effects are created in geometric

designs of diamonds, chevrons and zigzags.

6. A necklace of two wooded pieces usually worn by married women

5. Examples of Bags made entirely of beads

A knowledge of the local color code used in the beadwork is necessary before one can read the message in the tabs and strings. Regina Twala did field work in 1948 on the cipher and colors used in beadwork by the Emangwaneni tribes of the Bergville district of Natal, but her interpretation of the color codes often contradicts that of Rev. Mayr who also wrote from personal observation in 1907. Mayr, however, did not record from which groups of Zulu he drew his information; he seems to have assumed that the color symbolismwas standard throughout the Zulu world and stated that "... the actual pattern does not appear to have any defined significance; it is rather the succession of the color and the relative amounts of the colors, that express the tenor of themessage." I Twala, however, felt that the interpretation of the colors varied with the pattern. Also, according to Mayr the border was merely decorative and the beaded string the most important message bearer, while Twala believed that the main message was in the tab. Regional variations and the difference in the dates of investigation are very likely responsible for these discrepancies.

However, certain colors seem to have retained general meanings which were shared by all Zulu. For instance,

opaque white beads, Ihambo or "bone," stood for purity of love; pink symbolized poverty; vaseline-yellow signified wealth; and blue symbolized the dove. Mayr interpreted a string of beads in the following manner: "My heart is pure and white in the long weary days (white beads); I have become quite lean and sickly (green beads); If I were a dove I would fly to your home and pick up food at your door (blue beads); Darkness prevents my coming to you (black beads).'2 The entire message is repeated a number of times. The following

is Twala's interpretation of a design according to the physical arrangement of the beads: "(a) WHITE ... I say

this with an open white heart. (b) BLUE ... I say, Oh for the dove that picks food (c) WHITE ... In the yard at your kraal. (d) RED ... I envy also the one who enjoys your fireplace. (e) WHITE ... Although my heart may be pure. (f) PINK... You are poor."3

Despite apparent general similarities in meanings of colors, accurate interpretations can be made only by one who knows the exact local origin of the love letter and the color code peculiar to that place. Unfortunately, lacking a more specific provenance than the vast Transvaal, the color code to the pieces in the Fleming Museum must be considered lost.

In many pieces throughout the collection as a whole, and especially in the love letters, some odd beads appeared to create a certain tension or imbalance in an otherwide regular pattern. Usually these stray beads were red, although occasionally blue or pink, and they occurred either singly or by twos. Since they are found most often in the love letters, it may be possible that they formed part of the message. However, the beads may also have been deliberately placed to break the repetitive rhythm of a design on either aesthetic

or magical grounds, or both.

Beads could also represent the rejection of a lover, as in the case of the inkakane, beads whose royal blue color symbolized a wandering, noisy bird. A young man whose lover had offended him would have his sister make the strand which would be given to his erring sweetheart on the eve of a public event. Beads presented at such a time obliged the receiver to wear them at the ceremony and thus display her lover's rebuke to all.

The greatest attention was paid to beaded body ornamentation by those between the ages of fourteen and forty. Young people bedecked themselves lavishly for courtship and dancing. When a girl accepted a marriage proposal, she gave her sweetheart a string of white beads symbolizing her purity, and before the marriage all the girls in her age group would gather to make quantities of beadwork for her "trousseau." On the day of the wedding dances, the bride dressed in her finest beadwork, including many thick fiber tubes covered with beaded coils called imibijo or imigonqo-lozi, worn over the arms and shoulders and around the neck. She would also wear a bead-fringed headdress. The Catlin collection contains many fine imibijo worked in stripes and patterns (Fig. 2), as well as a headband studded with brass buttons and fringed with two veil-like clusters of white looped beads, very possibly a bridal headdress (Fig. 1).

Except for special occasions, married men and women wore little beadwork. When men attained warrior rank, their personal adornment changed from beaded to feather ornamentation. A married woman often wore a simple necklet of white beads and little wooden pieces from the fragrant Umtomboti tree (Fig. 6).

Black beads in quantity were a sign of the wearer's widowhood. Widows also wore necklets to indicate whether or not they were interested in remarrying. An unusual example in the Catlin gift is a predominantly black, tubular neckpiece with some patches of white (Fig. 7). Hanging in the center are four brass rings beaded in black, but with contrasting center sections of red beads in two rings, and blue beads in the other two. This message of the piece may bethat the widow's eyes are red with weeping (red beads) but that she is amenable to a new love (white and blue beads).

11. An example of a lace like stringing  technique from Kellogg 's collection

Also found in profusion in the Catlin collection are splendid woven fiber beaded girdles studded with brass buttons, bead and fringed loin coverings on heavy beaded strings (Fig. 10), wide armbands and long strings of beadwork to be wound around the wrist and ankle. The seemingly endless variety of intricate patterns in startling color combinations along with flawless technique indicates the high quality of Zulu beadwork as a creative art form in the late nineteenth century. Perhaps the most elaborate and beautiful piece in the entire collection is a magnificent necklace in a delicate network of shades of blue (Fig. 1). This piece is unique to

the collection, and may have been worn by a member of the Zulu royal house. The Catlin gift dominates the Fleming Museum's collection of beadwork, not only due to its impressive quality but also to its sheer superiority in number.

While Director of Agriculture for Mozambique, Portuguese East Africa from 1908 to 1910, Otis Warren Barrett made a 1300 mile trip through Zulu country in southern Mozambique, where he collected the beadwork later donated to the Fleming Museum. There are several very fine pieces: an animal skin headband covered with cowry shells, sewn with sinew thread and with leather strips for a tie closure- an older type of ornamentation; a small bracelet of twisted copper and metal wire with interwoven bands of pink and green beadwork which distinguishes it from theplain twisted-wire bracelets usually worn; and an exquisitely delicate hair ornament made of a thin, curved skewer of bone. This ornament is wrapped for half its length in fine wire; hanging from the wrapped wire are long strands of fine wire strung with tiny red, white and blue beads. When worn, the beaded wires shimmer and tremble in response to the slightest movement of the body or head.

The most recent acquisition to the Museum's beadwork collection remains mysterious as to provenance. About a dozen pieces similar in color, design and manufacture technique were given by Julia Kellogg of Vermont, who had missionary friends in South Africa. The beadwork was sent to her by one of these friends somewhere in South Africa, probably after 1910.

The significance of the Kellogg collection lies in the incorporation of European objects into the beadwork. Although an exact provenance is not available for these pieces, all evidence points to a Mission origin. Many of the articles are executed in a fancy and strikingly lace-like pattern, reminiscent of heavily lace-edged Victorian garments at the turn of the century (Fig. 11). A lace-like stringing technique exists as early in the collection as the Grout pieces, but only in the Kellogg group does it seem to openly mimic European lace. There is also a brass safety pin and a stout Victorian hairpin, both with beaded appendages. A small leather purse with a flap is fastened with a European pearl shirt button and buttonhole, and beaded with four neat little

rosettes, in great contrast to the traditional Zulu beaded bags mentioned earlier. Finally, there is a necklace with a long blue and white lace-like tab from which hangs a tin cap box stamped with the legend "King Edward VII" and his royal profile. This container exemplifies a new development in Zulu beadwork at variance with the traditional container such as the reed snuff container collected by Grout, and a gourd snuff container collected by the Catlins. In these examples from the Kellogg donation, the beadwork has become

subsidiary to these foreign extraneous objects.

Although the designs are simple and the colors monotonously limited to blue and white, technically these pieces represent the apogee of Zulu beadwork. The virtuosity in stringing is surpassed only by the superb Catlin necklace. But this technical excellence marks the final stage in the development of Zulu beadwork. Increasing European influences in all aspects of Zulu life, the political and military upheavals of the nineteenth century, the introduction of more standardized beads and ready-made imported necklaces of the twentieth century, irrevocably changed the character of this traditional art. The forces of life that motivated the creation and wearing of beaded ornaments changed direction.

It is difficult to ascertain whether stylistic and other variations in the Fleming Museum's collection can be construed as representing a period of development and decline in Zulu beadwork throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or merely a difference in regional styles. Both arguments seem tenable; comparison with other collections could help resolve this problem. However, the significance of the collection as a whole lies in the contrast between the old and new decorative objects-in its progression from the beadwork of the more ancient, contained world of the Zulu where the complex rituals of life bound the people together, to the beadwork of a world increasingly controlled by the white man, and reflecting the increasing acceptance of a white, Western system of values. -]

Mzimba Ngoni Women in early 1900s

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ZULU AND XHOSA PRAISE POETRY AND SONG

 by DAVID RYCROFT 

Part of the following article has previously appeared in a paper presented to the Anthropology Section of the 124th Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Manchester, August/September, 1962.

The boundary between song and some forms of verse or declamation which are nowadays classified as "oral literature" is a blurred one and calls for co-operation between linguists and ethnomusicologists. Very little study has yet been made of musical characteristics found in the border-line art of praise-poetry or praise-singing which is practiced very widely throughout Africa. Among the Eastern and South-Eastern Bantu, what small evidence there is reveals considerable differences between the traditional style of delivery associated with Zulu izibongo praises,1 and that, for example, of the Heroic Recitations of the Banyankore, a Bantu people of East Africa. A. N. Tucker2 has recorded some of the latter and they were taken as the subject for a thesis by H. F. R. Morris.3 They are uttered with quite phenomenal rapidity and the overall intonation contour of each line is a gradually descending one, without the observance of fixed musical pitches.

Zulu practice, in the South-East, is totally different. In a number of recordings of iZibongo, by two different reciters,4 four recurrent levels of pitch resembling the "scale" of notes in a piece of music appear to predominate and might be said to serve as a basic tonal structure (in the musical sense) throughout the recitation. Rudimentary evidence of reciting conventions among other South-Eastern Bantu such as the Xhosa, Sotho and Venda seems to suggest that this four-note, quasi-musical style is practised only by the Zulu, in this area. Other peoples, from evidence available so far, seem to deviate less from normal speech when they recite praises. 

The four predominant notes used in the Zulu izibongo recordings mentioned, could be represented roughly by the Tonic Solfa symbols doh', te, sob, and Dob. Low Dob occurs only finally in a stanza and may tail off to lower, indeterminate pitch just as the final syllable fades into silence. Syllables taking one or other of the higher notes do not always main- tain absolutely level pitch. Glides to or from one or other of the notes, or from one to another, are frequent, but this is also the case in true Zulu song. 

My teacher, the late Dr. B. W. Vilakazi, left us with a long-standing riddle when he made the statement that "It lyric poetry was originally intended to be sung, then this quality of poetry still exists in Zulu. The poet has to tune his voice to some melody when he recites his imaginative descriptions".5 

He added the observation that tone in Zulu is "semantic" and that this "semanticism of tone, though wide in the spoken language is more apparent in the recitation of verse." From the last statement, one gathers firstly, that the "melody" in izibongo recitation does not violate the speech-tones. This certainly turns out to be true. There is no single, constant melodic sequence - pitch movement is conditioned by the words. 

But there are four possible notes, and Zulu, in common with most other Bantu languages, is a two-tone language (in the linguistic sense), using only two contrasting registers. Attempts to establish the upper two notes as variant realisations of High speech tones, while the lower two represent Low tones, prove fallacious. As I have described in some detail in an earlier papers, it finally became evident that only the highest note, doh', represented High speech tones. Low speech-tones take low Dob when final, but whether they take te or sob when non-final depends upon the initial consonant of the syllable. Unvoiced consonants require te for the syllable, while most voiced consonants demand sob. The process is operated quite mechanically by the Zulu reciter. There is, in fact, in the spoken language - as also in German and Chinese - an auto- matic voiced consonant/pitch-lowering correlation, as was first noted by D. M. Beach in 19247. This phonetic feature seems to be exploited and exaggerated in izibongo recita- tion. But this, no doubt, has a natural foundation in the fact that consonantal pitch- lowering has a more pronounced effect, in Zulu, when one talks at the top ot one's voice. From the recordings it seems that recitation takes place within a pitch range at least an octave higher than that of normal speech - judging by pitches used by the reciter when announcing the title of each izibongo. 

The validity of Vilakazi's claim that speech-tone contrasts become "more apparent" in recitation is borne out if we compare recited lines with normally spoken ones, as in Fig. 1. The upper transcription in each case shows recited pitch levels while the lower shows those of a normally spoken version of the same line. The multiplicity of pitches in the spoken versions results from the interaction of speech-tones, lowering consonants (underlined), and, thirdly, overall "sentence intonation" which, in most types of utter- ance in Zulu, confers progressive dropping of pitch, or "downdrift." 

In recitation, this normal intonation feature is entirely absent until the last two syllables of a stanza where, as the pitch drops all at once, a wide interval is traversed which provides an effective concluding formula. Avoidance of the normal downdritt intonation of speech, and the maintaining of fixed levels ot pitch like musical notes instead, is no doubt what Vilakazi had in mind when he referred to tuning the voice to "some melody" when reciting. He was himself a leading Zulu poet. 

Fig. 1 Extract from IZibongo zikaShaka 8

U-Shaka ngiyesab' ukuthi unguShaka

U-Shaka kwakuyinkosi ya.semashobe-ni.

Upper transcription:  Recited pitch levels (Mr. John Mgadi);
Lower transcription: Spoken pitch levels (Mr. S. Ngcobo).

Translation: "Shaka - I am afraid for thou art Shaka!
Shaka - There was a king amongst the cattle tails!"
(i.e., A master of the cattle raid he was!)

The question remains, however, whether or not Izibongo recitation should be regarded as a species of song. The sequence of pitches is certainly not a free, musically determined melody. Use of one or other of the four notes is conditioned directly by an interaction of speech-tones, consonants, and stanza finality. Linguistic determinism here appears to be absolute, and this state of affairs stands in distinct contrast to what happens in items which are clearly acceptable to true song. In traditional Zulu songs, speech-tones and consonants certainly have an influence on the melodic rise and fall, but musical requirements are also in evidence and there is give and take between the two. As Hornboste I stated of African Negro song, generally:

"The pitches of the speaking voice, indeed, appear to determine the melodic nucleus; but they have no influence upon its inborn creative forces; these forces, and not any qualities of speech, direct the further course of the melodic development"9.

In the old dance-song of the Buthelezi clan shown in Fig. 2, only four notes are used - or three and their octaves. But these bear no relationship to those used in izibongo and the way in which High and Low speech-tones are set to the notes is quite different. Hign speech-tones are not realised always on the highest note. In the first two words of the initial phrase, High and Low speech-tones do consistently take dob' and sob, respectively. But in the next word, High tones take sob, and Low tones take ray and, finally, Doh. In the final word of the men's part, speech-tones are melodically over- ruled: the sequence should properly be High-Low-High.


Fig. 2 Buthelezi (Zulu) dance-song.10
Translation: "They set him up for one month: then they deposed him.
                   He is getting old now! Father is getting old!"

It seems to be permissible in this and other true songs, for High syllables at various points in the line to be realised on almost any note within the particular "scale" in use, provided that one or more lower notes remain available for the setting of intervening Low syllables. Occasionally, especially at the end of a line, speech-tone requirements may be entirely over-ruled. The descending melodic line which is characteristic of all such Zulu songs gives a suggestion of affinity with the overall downdrift intonation of normal speech, while the iZibongo convention of consistently maintaining the pitch height of High syllables stands in distinct contrast both to song and to normal speech. The use of exaggerated concluding formulae is also peculiar to Izibongo.

Regarding metre, fundamental distinctions could be cited between practices in song - where length is often distorted mercilessly for metrical ends' - and in Izibongo, where such things as regular "feet" are not to be found, but rather the natural ryhthms of speech.

Izibongo and song differ further in rate of utterance. An appreciably greater number of words per minute are uttered in recitation than in any true Zulu song. Words, chosen for their imagery, sound and aptness, are the very core of iZibongo. Their pitch setting could be said to be somewhat mechanical, despite the fact that a series of notes is used which resembles a rudimentary musical scale. In song, on the other hand, words often convey little actual meaning. Lyrics generally consist of a few short phrases which are constantly repeated, with occasional interpolations. Musical expression is paramount.

From this it would seem that Izibong do not fit, conveniently into the category of Zulu song. From the linguistic point of view they constitute a form of speech utterance with its own special form of overall intonation - possibly comparable with forms of "monotonic chant" in other cultures, such as mentioned by George List in a recent article12. From a musical point of view, Izibongo are excessively word-bound, allowing no freedom to Hornbostel's "inborn creative forces" of the melodic nucleus.

In contrast to this borderline category of musically stylised speech we find the clear prose folk-tale within whicn short crystallised items of true song occur - though tne teller may at times slip almost imperceptibly from tne one medium into the other and back again. In Africa, as elsewhere in the world, the song within the folk-tale often has magical power. In a Xhosa tale from the Cape, the river monster, Sinyobolokondwana, steals the clothes of the twin sisters, Wele and Welekazi, from the river bank while they bathe. One of the sisters manages to get her clothes back from the monster by singing the required song:
. Fig. 3 Xhosa folk-tale song'3
Translation: " Sinyobolokondwana!
                  Give back my clothes!
                 Bhakubha is a long way off;
               Mother will give me a beating."

What became of the other sister, who refused to sing properly, is another story. Two transcriptions of this little song have been shown in Fig. 3 - first of an initial recording without any rhytnmical accompaniment, and secondly of anotner recording in which tne singer accompanied herself with regular hand-clapping.

Singing in Negro Africa very frequently takes place, as we know, against some rhythmical accompaniment - whether this be provided by instruments, dance-steps, hand-clapping, or merely the repetitive movements of some daily task. In such rhythmi- cally accompanied song it has been observed that it seems to be a widespread African habit for word-stresses to fall not on, but between the physical beats.

A perfectly natural physiological foundation for this suggests itself in the case of work-songs in which heavy muscular effort is called for, or in strenuous acrobatic dancing. It is, of course, an instinctive human reflex to tense the diaphragm and hold the breath, by closing the glottis, at the actual moment of maximum exertion - in tact, even babies do so during defecation. At the actual moment ot this instinctive breath-holding during pushing, lifting, leaping and the like, the emission ot vocal sound of any kind is, of course, impossible. But immediately before or after the moment of exertion - or both before and after it: "buk - - - aaab" - sound of some sort is not only possible, but very probable. A Zulu work-song with the unfortunately all too topical text, "They arrest us!", which is repeated ad infinitum, demonstrates this point clearly. A transcription of the first few lines of this song appears in Fig. 4. The beat, heard as a heavy physical thud whenever it is given expression, always just immediately precedes the beginning of the phrase, during vocal silence.

Ba-ya-a-si-bo -- pha-, Percussion (thud of shovels) Ba - ya-si-bo - pha - -- etc
 Fig. 4 Zulu work-song14

Among the Zulu and Xhosa peoples of the extreme south-east, instrumental ensembles are not used at all as a basis for dancing. Dancers sing their own dance music and, particularly with Xhosa dance-songs, there is what seems to be a subtly calculated off- beat relationship between word syllables and the regular dance-step and hand-clap rhythm. This may be seen in Fig. 5, as also in the second version or the song referred to earlier in Fig. 3.

Fig. 5 shows what my informant called a "sour grapes" dance song - which she had heard during wedding celebrations, and which she thought must have been composed by an old maid.

Fig. 5 Xhosa dance-song15
Translation: "How fortunate I am to be unmarried -
                  I can still follow my own inclinations!"


Here it will be seen that word syllables seldom exactly coincide with a hand-clap, and often fall somewhere between the beats. One gains the impression of a rather loose relationship between words and clapping. This "near miss" relationship is not hap- hazard, however, but seems to be repeated with exactitude with each repetition of the song. My own theory, put forward in an earlier paper,16 is that in Xhosa singing, instead of the best being made to coincide with the release of a consonant - into a vowel, so that the onset of the vowel is on the beat, as is our own practice - it coincides with the initial closing or thrusting movement of the consonant (when this type of consonant occurs) so that the commencement of the vowel invariably occurs later, a little after the beat. This effect appears to be further exploited and exaggerated for stylistic purposes, and closure of the glottis - necessary in strenuous exertion - could, of course, also take place on the beat, during the consonantal closure, if required.

In passing, it may be ot interest to observe that, in America today, one of the most highly paid singers of "pop" and cabaret songs - with their currently favoured gimmicks of off-beating and deliberately loose word-phrasing-is Miss Miriam Makeba17, a South African of Xhosa extraction, who played the leading role in the original production of the musical, King Kong. This feature of non-coincidence between words and rhythm is, of course, not confined to the Xhosa. Richard Waterman coined the expression "off-beat phrasing of melodic accents in relation to percussion metre"s8 to describe what he found to be a common characteristic in West African music, thousands of miles north of the Xhosa. Apart from this point of similarity, however, there seems to be very little in common between the musical practices of tne West Coast and those of tne extreme soutn-east, where there are no drums or spectacular percussion ensembles.

Since 1947, an invaluable rallying point for African musical studies has been tne African Music Society and, later, the International Library of African Music, which together have their headquarters near Johannesburg, under the directorship of Mr. Hugh Tracey. The Society issues a journal entitled African Music, and Mr. Tracey has conducted recording expeditions throughout a large part of Africa south of the Sahara. Long-playing discs of the field recordings are available from the International Library.

Founders of the African Music Society were a handful of white people in Africa who had grown to love indigenous African music and were concerned by the rate at which, in many parts of the country, this was being lost or diluted in the context of rapid social change and under the influence of imported Western styles. Rescue action in the form of a large-scale recording drive was envisaged so that these treasures might be pre- served. Such recordings, it was felt, should be given the chance to compete with foreign music in regional radio programmes and in the record shops. Should the present genera- tion of new African townsmen fail to be impressed, a body of authentic recorded material might still serve to inspire later generations who turn in search of their cultural heritage.

A "preservationist" attitude towards tradition is by no means widely held by those Africans who have deserted tribalism for a way of life they feel is more suited to the 20th century and who feel that music from their past is out of place. The raison d'etre of many of their traditional musical practices, interwoven as they are with social custom, is no longer provided in town life, or now institutions may pay the piper and hence call a new tune. Under the circumstances, however, they deserve hardly more personal blame than the Western man-in-the-street who relishes only "rock-'n-roll" and the "twist."

African musicians and scholars there certainly are, however, who do value their indigenous music. The eminent Ghanaian sociologist and ethnomusicologist, Professor J. B. Nketia writes:

"In contemporary Ghana, old and new forms of folk music exist side by side... For some time there has been a danger of... the older type of folk music being abandoned by literate and urbanised Ghanaians as Ghana gets more and more industrialised. Nationalism, however, is fostering a new pride in our tolk music, and efforts are now being made to preserve or encourage the practice of the best in the older type of folk music throughout the country"x9. 

NOTES: 

(1) For examples of texts with English translation, see E. W. Grant: "The Izibongo of he Zulu Chiefs", Bantu Studies, III, 1928, pp. 203-244. 

(2) Professor of East African Languages, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
(3) H. F. R. Morris: The Heroic Recitations of the Banyankore, University of London Ph. D. thesis, 1957 (unpublished).
(4) James Stuart reciting: IZibongo !ikaSenZangakhona, Zonophone 4195; IZibongo ZikaSolomoni ka- Dini.ulu, Zonophone 4178, and IZibongo ZikaShaka, Zonophone 4175. (These, among other praises and folk-tales spoken by Stuart, were recorded in 1927) and John Mgadi reciting the I:ibongo of six of the Zulu kings, recorded on Gallotone GE 1001; GE 967, and GE 998.
(5) B. W. Vilakazi: "The Conception and Development of Poetry in Zulu", Bantu Studies, XII, 1938, p. 116. (6) D. Rycroft: "Melodic features in Zulu Eulogistic recitation", African Language Studies, 1, 1960, pp. 60-78. (London: Luzac & Co.).
(7) D. M. Beach: "The Science of Tonetics and its application to Bantu languages", Bantu Studies, II, 1923-6, p. 75.
(8) Diagram reproduced from D. Rycroft: op. cit., p. 67. Recording: Gallotone GE 967.
(9) E. M. von Hornbostel: "African Negro Music", Africa, I, Jan. 1928, p. 31.
(10) Recorded by Hugh Tracey, 1955. Issued on LP disc., "The Sound of Africa" Seies, AMA TR-12 (A, 1). Transcription reproduced from D. Rycroft: op. cit. 2, p. 26.
(11) See: D. Rycroft, "African Music in Johannesburg: African and non-African features", Journal of the International Folk Music Council, XI, 1959, p. 26.
(12) George List: "The Boundaries of Speech and Song", Ethnomusicology, VII, 1, January 1963, pp. 3-6. (13) Singer: Mrs. L. Nongobo Whyman, 1955. Recording: D. Rycroft.
(14) Singer: Mr. R. Kunene, 1959. Recording: D. Rycroft.
(15) Singer: Mrs. L. N. Whyman, 1956. Recording: D. Rycroft.
(16) D. Rycroft: "Stylistic Evidence in Nguni Song", paper at Symposium: Music and History in Africa and Asia, Royal Anthropological Institute, London, 1962.
(17) See, inter a/ia, LP recording "Miriam Makeba Sings", London Records, HA 2332.
(18) Richard Waterman: "African Influence on the Music of the Americas", in Acculturation in the Americas, ed. Sol. Tax, University of Chicago Press, 1952, p. 213.
(19) J. H. Nketia: "Changing Traditions in the Folk Music of Ghana", Journal of the Internat. Folk Music Council, XI, 1959, p. 34. * Khulwane means "big" and may be omitted. N.B.--The notation shows the nearest notes in the diatonic scale.

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Xhosa Poetry and The Usage of The Word Tribe

In the following correspondences are some insights into the nature of Xhosa tribal poetry. Xhosa as a nguni language is in many respects similar to the Ngoni language. As noted in a previous post use of words such as licansi, lizulu show resemblance of the ngoni language in usage of so many words as isiXhosa. While isiZulu has dropped li or ili the ngoni language spoken in Ntcheu and Mzimba in Malawi and Chipata in Zambia seem to have maintained them just as isiXhosa. The post below focuses on Xhosa tribal poetry which is also similar in many respects with ngoni praise poetry or tribal poetry. 

The discussions also focuses on the perceived patronising attitude of the author of an article called Imbongi Nezibongo:The Xhosa Tribal Poetry. To refer to the Xhosa as a tribe is an insult as they are more numerous than most European peoples. I have recently also had problems with the issue of calling the Ngoni as a tribe when the reality is the Ngoni were a nation and controlled a significant portion of present day Malawi. Our paramount chief ought to be called a King and not chief a title the colonialists gave him.

To the Editor:
Jeff Opland's comments on Xhosa poetry ("Imbongi Nezibongo: The Xhosa Tribal Poet and the Contemporary Poetic Tradition," PMLA, 90, 1975, 185-208) are particularly interesting to the Africanist, but are additionallyan effective reminder to all critics that poetry has its roots in oral tradition and performance. Given the scholarly quality of much of his analysis, I was distressed by his tone and by what he left unsaid. At best, his attitude toward the Xhosa is patronizing, but considering the political realities of South Africa, there are more troubling implications in the manner he treats his material.
 

Throughout the article, Opland refers to the "Xhosa tribal poet." When anthropologists define "tribe," "tribal," and "tribesman" clearly, these terms may have value. However, anthropologists are not even in agreement about their meaning, and when amateurs use them loosely, they often reinforce Western stereotypes of non-Western societies. As the title of Moravia's recent book reminds us, one of the most common questions  non-Africans ask Africans is "What tribe do you belong to?" The average Westerner sees Africans only as tribesmen (primitive) or de-tribalized (Western) individuals. The point is: both before European contact and today an African might well be a member of a nation or a state rather than a "tribe" in any sense of that word.
 

Anthropologically, we might speak of the 3.5 million Xhosa as a nation comprised of several "tribes," but the
complexities of racial stratification in South Africa today make such a distinction useful and important only to the white South African government which continues to impose "tribal" identity on the South African people to consolidate apartheid rule. The black man who would think of himself as South African, or simply African, is reminded of his assigned "tribal" identity by the "pass card" the law requires him to carry. Even if we could accept Opland's use of "tribe," to speak of a "Xhosa tribal" anything would be redundant. Further, nothing in his performer-oriented typology is specific to Xhosa. The Xhosa and the Zulu, both Nguni people sharing a mutually intelligible language, share izibongo (praise poetry). More important, Africans do not speak of "tribes," a term derived from European ways of examining societies. Because Westerners have used the term loosely to categorize Africans, and in a calculating manner to control them, it has become pejorative.
 

Were it simply a question of usage, Opland's article would not warrant a sharp critical response. However, the tenor is what we might have expected from a nineteenth-century ethnographer discussing "his" people. Chadwick, whom he quotes, could still talk in the 1930's from an ethnocentric bias about "higher cultures" and "great cultures." Leach, Levi-Strauss, and other contemporary anthropologists have shown how such an attitude is untenable; yet throughout this article we hear reminders that Opland has gone down into the Bantustans (reservations-in a sense, the South African equivalent of our cotton fields) and captured with his
tape recorder the "spontaneous poetry" of a simple folk. His academic colleagues are always referred to by their last names, but Opland patronizingly refers to a young informant as "little Ziyanda" (p. 191), more tellingly to an older man, Wilson Mkhaliphi, as "an illiterate pagan," and then most amazingly refers to him, not simply by his first name, but as "Old Wilson" (p. 191). If Opland were interviewing a contemporary Western poet such as Pablo Neruda, would he describe him as "a proud man who answered my questions in English patiently, carefully, intelligently, and confidently" (p. 199)? We are given an even less liberal view of the African in the stereotypic description of Nelson Mabunu as "a mild, soft-spoken man who wears glasses and seems to be developing a paunch" (p. 196). We would never accept this Time magazine approach to an article on "Donne and Ecclesiastes"; why must we expect anything less in an article on oral literature?
 

Finally, Opland acknowledges the very important protest element in the poetry which is now being written, but he does little more. His silence is possibly the result of limitations imposed on him as a scholar working in a pigmentocracy controlled by strict censorship laws. By law, white and black cannot meet on equal terms, so it is startling and speaks well for his ability in the field that his informants even gave him protest lyrics. After all, the consequences for "stirring up trouble" are severe. Over three hundred blacks are under a ban forbidding the printing or performance of their work. Perhaps Opland is trying to protect his informants and not his own position, but whatever his reasons, specific commentary on the social factors that have helped to influence contemporary izibongo are as conspicuously absent as would be lines blacked out by a South African censor.
 

Regardless of what the artist or critic feels should be the relationship between art and politics, the pass laws, the Bantustans, and the censor's ink impose a relationship in the South African context. As the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe has repeatedly pointed out, it is not a question of commitment, but of commitment to what. It is unfortunate that Opland's commitment to the peoples of South Africa appears limited only to a naively romantic view of the "tribal poet" as an endangered species, that it does not extend to a holistic view of the essential problems of a racially stratified society-problems that have helped to shape the poetry no less than they have impinged upon the lives of the people. Mabunu's eloquent izibongo puts questions before Opland that we never see answered:
What do you want me to say, fair-skinned one ...
Why do you want this information,
Information about the people?
When did you begin, men,
To concern yourselves
About the things of the people?
Because the day that the missionaries arrived
They carried a Bible in front,
But they had a breechloaders lung behind.( p. 199)
 

There is more abuse than praise in this poem, and until Opland takes full cognizance of this fact he will have
done little to show the West the significance of izibongo in "man's intellectual history."
 

RICHARD PRIEBE
Virginia Commonwealth University
 

Mr. Opland replies.
Objections to my article are raised under two headings: "the tone and what was left unsaid." Under "tone" Richard Priebe finds offensive my use of the term "tribe" as well as my "patronizing" style. "Tribe" is a term sanctioned by scholarly usage, employed by the ethnographers I have consulted, and, in my experience, free of any derogatory connotations. It is certainly meaningful to the people themselves: for example, considerable
animosity still exists today among certain circles in the Ciskei between the Mfengus and the Rharhabes. Following established practice, I have in my article called such units "tribes" (other Xhosa speaking tribes are mentioned in n. 6); even if no self respecting anthropologist would use the word today, scholars in other disciplines might still find it useful and generally meaningful. Or are we all now to talk of the twelve clans or family bands of Israel?

In presenting my informants to my readers I consciously chose to adopt an anecdotal style designed to suggest something of the human relationship that exists between folklorist and performer. If my attitude to my
informants were patronizing, they would hardly tolerate my frequent visits or entertain my questions with patience. No description of any informant could be a stereotype, since each is an individual: my description of Nelson Mabunu, for example, as "a mild, softspoken man who wears glasses and seems to be developing a paunch" is accurate, and was intended to convey the contrast with the "agile and athletic" performer he suddenly and dramatically became during that interview (p. 199).
 

Priebe asserts that "the essential problems of a racially stratified society" have "influenced" and "helped to shape" the poetry I describe. This is an interesting hypothesis, one that I would wish Priebe or any other qualified person to develop in a scholarly article: unfortunately, I am not equipped to do it. My interest is in the comparative study of oral literatures, as I thought I made clear in my article. There is much more that can and must be said about the material I present, but I did not feel that this general article was the place for exploring in detail all these interesting and important bypaths. As I said, "In this article many questions have been left unanswered, and many topics have perhaps been treated too summarily. The intention, however, was merely to show the interaction of the different kinds of poets in the Xhosa community, their influence on and relation to one another" (p. 205).

I confess to being somewhat taken aback by the readiness of American Africanists to criticize adversely anything South African that is not black or banned; their zeal often outpaces their discretion. To cling to the belief that all white South Africans support their government (or that all black South Africans oppose it) is indeed naively romantic, however fashionable or necessary it may be for one's existence as a teacher of African Studies in an American university. I wish to extend a public invitation to Priebe to travel to South Africa and join me in my field work. Perhaps then his view of my article would be more balanced, and perhaps then his scholarly criticism of the material I present would be better informed.
 

JEFF OPLAND
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

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