Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 208
would show how community shrines and the custodianship of those shrines was linked to the
formation of local groups.
The fact that here we have referred to so many other chapters of our Dghweɗe oral history retold
demonstrates the great importance of social relationship terms in the understanding of Dghweɗe
ritual culture, and later we will address the concept of ritual density. On the one hand social
relationship terms had a very inclusive meaning, while on the other hand they could be applied
with particular exclusiveness when it came to ritual roles attached to specific relationships. To
understand this better we will contextualise certain concepts, such as specialist lineages, the
distribution of custodianship for locality shrines, the ritual calendar of the Dghweɗe, and the
architecture of the traditional house as the most significant dedicated ritual place for showing
honour and reverence for up to three generations of ego-centred patrilineal family ancestors.
Certain relationship terms will appear often, for example the seventh born (thaghaya) as an
almost multifunctional ritual actor, and zal jije as family priest. We will not always give an
English translation when it comes to describing a specific situation if there is no suitable standard
translation and it depends on the circumstance. For example, the senior rainmaker can be referred
to as thaghaya (seventh born) for starting the planting period for the whole of Dghweɗe, while
the thaghaya of the Gudule, who represents the most important Dghweɗe cornblesser lineage,
started the Dghweɗe bull festival. We will introduce the role of specialist lineages in the next
chapter.
Even so, everything we touch on is very fragmentary in ethnographic terms, not only because it
is translated from oral into written form, but also because we are approaching it from the
perspective of Western culture where the written word is the key to passing on history. This
chapter has demonstrated that writing down Dghweɗe oral history from the grassroots, by
presenting the limited social relationship data available, has not been an easy task. We will
eventually realise that one of the main shortcomings of our kinship-related oral data is our lack of
knowledge concerning the importance of marriage alliances and the wider kindred connections
across paternal and maternal social relationships. This aspect will become particularly obvious in
Chapter 3.20 about past ways of marrying in Dghweɗe, but we will try to underpin it with the
evidence we have of the dense network of social relationships created and maintained as a result
of intermarriage between exogamous clan and lineage groups.
206
