Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 195
Chapter 3.6
Relations and relationships
Introduction
Exploring our oral data on Dghweɗe social relationship terms is the main objective of this
chapter and kinship terms are very important in this context. So far we have used the technical
English terms ‘clan’ and ‘lineage’ to refer to patrilocal agnatic descent groups, by which we
see that a local clan group can embrace several local lineage groups. Regarding kinship terms,
we have particularly established the classificatory dimension of the relationship term 'brother'
for a co-descendant of a common ancestor of either a clan or a lineage. Therefore, when
referring to 'sons' as ancestral descendants of 'fathers' we generally mean it in a classificatory
way and not in a biological way. This way of classifying patrilineal descent is expressed by
the name of the clan or lineage ancestor as the 'father' appearing after the name of the 'son'.
Mughuze-Ruwa and Kumba-Zadva are such examples, and in the case of Ruwa as the 'father'
of Mughuze we learned that there is a mythological or legendary aspect to his ancestral
fatherhood. The legendary aspect is possibly best expressed by the names Mbra and Ngra
found at the very top of descent trees linked to the Tur tradition, for which we showed Ghwa'a
to have been an early arrival zone. We pointed out that Ngra was a reference to a beginning in
the sense of the 'first man', and we accepted that it is not only a link to the locality of Tur but
also to a shared subregional tradition of origin from the south.
In this chapter we are interested in the ancestor-centred perspective and also in the egocentred perspective, the latter being the starting point of genealogical calculation with the
family home as its base. 1 We already indicated that the first wife of a husband and father of a
family was crucial as a genealogical starting point for lineage splitting. This means that
'brothers' as 'sons' of first wives formed a 'kitchen' (kuɗige) in lineage terms, and they were
seen as either classificatory or biological full-brothers depending on whether they were
ancestral or living members of the kuɗige. We will become familiar with the overlapping
roles of other relationship terms which apply to how the Dghweɗe once started new local
groups known as kambarte, but the translation of kambarte is not as straightforward as that of
kuɗige. Kambarte has not only a geographical dimension but also a cosmological dimension,
as it contains the belief that the sun rose from the next world into this world through its
'rectum' (mbarte). A new kambarte started with a kuɗige that had split off and built a new
base in a new locality, which had eventually reproduced in number and led to a new lineage
section. At the same time, long-term marriage plans for continuous reproduction were
organised along the lines of exogamous clan and lineage groups, which in turn created
generations of wider kindred across patrilineal and matrilateral connections, and we saw how
this was demonstrated in mythological accounts of local group formation.
The case of Vaghagaya and his two wives (Figure 12b) who brought about new lineage
sections in Korana, Hudimche and Gharaza is oral historical evidence of this. By learning the
different genealogical connections within the Vaghagaya major lineage, we now introduce the
reader to the concept of ksage as a complementary relationship term to kambarte. While
kambarte is concerned with the locality aspect of group formation, ksage refers to the
classificatory aspect of lineal descent. The Vaghagaya are both a geographical and a lineage
section, and we learned that it was the Ghuna lineage of Gharaza that held the ritual
responsibility for the Vaghagaya lineage shrine in Korana as they were the lineage of the
ancestral descendants of the seventh-born custodian to whom we refer as lineage 'thaghaya'.
Robin Fox (1967:169ff) points to the importance of considering personal kindred across the bilateral
divide in societies with unilineal kinship systems, by stating that the degree of ego-centred personal
groupings are particularly important when it comes to managing local group formation. What matters is
to what degree ego's kindred relationships are defined in relation to ancestor-related descent groups.
1
193
