Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 214
Amuda is now. This does not however explain how the Ganjara became rainmakers and the
Amuda cornblessers. In my opinion, a more acceptable explanation is the legendary celestial
origin of Amuda's skill for cornblessing, since it captures our cosmological concept of pairing
and the underlying idea of blessings from above and below. That Hafta insisted on only living
off his divine food when he first met his future wife Paradau, suggests that he was still
holding on to the celestial origin of his potential. Only after they made love and became a
couple did the division between cornblessing and rainmaking become manifest in the form of
their two 'sons': Amuda and Ganjara. In the context of this, Amuda was seen as the successor
of divine patrilineal descent, and establishes himself as earthly founding ancestor of a famous
ethnic cornblesser group, while the descendants of his 'brother' Ganjara eventually settled as
associated rainmaker lineage in the neighbouring Glavda village Agapalawa.
This interpretation can be underpinned by our next legendary account of how the main
Dghweɗe cornblesser lineage distinguishes itself from the Dghweɗe rainmaker lineage Gaske.
Similar to the Ganjara, Gaske is a specialist lineage associated with the Dghweɗe, while
Gazhiwe is a specialist lineage with its independent clan territory in Gudule. We want to add
here that the Ganjara, despite being associated with the Glavda village in the eastern plain,
claimed their mother's patrilineal roots to have originated in the hills. This shows that
rainmaking is a specialist skill which likes to portray itself as ritual entitlement, not only of a
celestial but also as a localised origin from above, in this case from Divili on top of the
Zelidva spur.
How the Gazhiwe became cornblessers of Dghweɗe
We already know that Katala-Wandala was remembered by my Gudule friends as the first
wife of Tasa, and that Gudule and Ske (Gaske) had been their 'sons'. The legendary coming
into the world of cornblessing and rainmaking via models of descent related to brotherhood
from the same 'kitchen' (kuɗige), are cosmological expressions of that to which we have
allocated the concept of ‘blessings from above and below’. We will ethnographically
underpin this view in the chapter about cosmology and worldview, by showing how the
cosmographic orientation of the Dghweɗe differentiated between a primordial underworld
and a celestial upper world from the perspective of this world. In the context of this, we also
learn that their concept of a Supreme Being (gwazgafte) as the creator of all things, was
indeed located in the upper cosmological echelons, and perhaps the narrative of Amuda and
Ganjara is a good topographical example of the type of shared interactive divinity that was
allowed for in their archaic worldview.
We perhaps ask ourselves what all this has to do with how the Gazhiwe became the most
important Dghweɗe cornblessers, and again we have to rely on the ethnographic context of
the oral narrative, and admit that a deeper understanding will not come until we describe the
Dghweɗe bull festival. Here we will tell the legendary account of how, among other duties,
the Gudule clan became responsible for starting the bull festival for the whole of Dghweɗe, of
which the cornblessing responsibility was seen as a complementary ritual asset. We already
know that the gist of the legendary story was that Gudule had cut the tail of his father's
favoured cow to impress a girl, and that he was subsequently banned from rainmaking, but
kept the responsibility of cornblessing. At the same time, Gudule was made the ritual
custodian (thaghaya) of starting the bull festival, the most important communal celebration of
ethnic unity in Dghweɗe.
The legend describes the separation between cornblessing and rainmaking, and as in the case
of Amuda and Ganjara, the Gudule had as cornblessers their clan territory while the Gaske
rainmakers did not. The example suggests that cornblessing was more linked to the blessing
from below, and in the Gudule case even more explicitly linked to dung production and their
ritual of starting the bull festival. In the context of another legend, the Gazhiwe lineage were
presumed to have inherited the role of cornblessing following the defeat of the once numerous
Gudule as first settlers by the expanding Mughuze-Ruwa. Eventually the local division of
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