Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 309
Chapter 3.12
Ritual aspects of the house as a place of worship
Introduction
My first contact with the Dghweɗe people of the hills was in Korana Basa in 1995. This was
when bulama Ngatha said that sacrificing to his ancestor stones (kwir thala) was the most
important ritual for connecting to his Dghweɗe identity. We can see in Figure 19c of our 3D
model below, how these were arranged at the foot of the 'stomach' of the house shrine (khuɗi
thala) forming the ritual centrepiece of every Dghweɗe house of the past. We can see the row
of sitting stones opposite the shrine, and remember the adobe application of eyes or breasts
above the ancestor stones, and the semi-circular opening at the back, facing the front wall.
Inside the 'stomach' of thala, specific ritual pots and bowls were stored, which played a key
role in sacrificing to the deceased paternal father and grandfather of the extended family.
In the previous chapter we demonstrated that stone is the most important building material,
not only for houses but for whole landscaped hillsides with their topographically integrated
platforms and terraces. When I asked I was given four basic types of stone or rock that my
Dghweɗe friends seemed to distinguish:
•
•
•
•
kwire (general word for stone or rock)
tawɗa (hard and solid stones or rocks)
tsangwithe (hard white and solid stone)
huzəze (stones which are not hard)
We do not know for sure, but one key distinction might have been the hardness or softness of
the stones, in that how workable they were and hence how useful. Soft rock like basalt was
perhaps a good underground foundation for a terrace field as it might have eroded quicker and
assisted the natural development of soils. Since I have not explored this we can only speculate
that this might have been the case. As a building material for houses, mainly hard and solid
stone was preferred, such as granites and gneisses.
The ancestor stones were referred to as kwir thala, which we can translate as 'shrine stones'. It
was presumably not a coincidence that the Dghweɗe had chosen stone to be the material to
represent their paternal family ancestors. We remember the erected stone at the lineage shrine
(khalale) of the Vaghagaya in Korana Basa, which did not have any ritual pottery attached
because the ancestor the rock represented was far too remote. Our Dghweɗe friends’
statement that a rock nearby a newly founded homestead, against which a man would lean his
weapons, would become his khalale, indicated the readiness to defend local land by previous
generations. The three ancestor stones represented three generations of extended family
members who not only built the terrace walls but also maintained the fertility of the soils
contained behind them by the regular application of animal dung.
Stones had other ritual functions in Dghweɗe culture. For example they were used for
rainmaking, and we will show an image of Kalakwa's retired rainstones stored in his house,
and also discuss the importance of the original house of the senior Gaske rainmaker. We will
give oral evidence of the significance of the rainmakers 'bundle', and how certain clan
medicines to increase the yield of crops were made in the senior rainmaker's house. It was the
ancient rainstones the senior rainmaker kept which made his house an important ritual place
for all the other Dghweɗe rainmakers.
Stones also appear in Dghweɗe mythology, according to the rainmakers we interviewed. We
will return to the function of stones as primordial 'food' in a separate chapter about Dghweɗe
mythology, but here want to briefly mention the concept that stones had once been soft and
edible, but later became hard and uneatable, which led to the development of guinea corn. I
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