Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 314
If a father dies, sometimes he will appear to you in your dream, and he will complain why you do not
do the sacrifice like the forefathers did, while he now lives there [in the next world] without anything.
Others are enjoying from their children, but this father is complaining by saying that they [the other
dead ancestors of the neighbourhood] are mocking him.
It is tempting to think we are gaining insight into the Dghweɗe superego in this statement,
because the image of the deceased father appearing in a dream has a strong moral aspect,
reminding a son to keep to the ritual rules as otherwise the father might be ridiculed by his age
mates in the next world. Bulama Ngatha’s words imply that there was an obligation to carry out
the sacrifice in good times because it was a communal activity, and here the reputation of the
extended family was in question. The other aspect is that it was not about literally feeding his
father in the next world, but that it was presumably food in the form of a ritual that bulama
Ngatha was thinking about, rather than the idea of physically nourishing a dead person. This
embraced the underlying cosmographic view that the next world was a place inside the earth,
which was seen as the primordial ground of this world, and we learn in Chapter 3.16 that bulama
Ngatha believed there were seven underground worlds.
This reinforces in my mind that the Dghweɗe of the past did not think of the stones when they
talked about their deceased forefather being in need of sacrificial food, but that the religious
responsibility of the living was central. In that sense, my view is that it was primarily an ethical
rather than a magical function. This is confirmed by the slant of bulama Ngatha's narrative, when
he explained that the deceased father was complaining about not yet having received his sacrifice
while most other deceased fathers of his neighbourhood had already been served by their
descendants.
Unfortunately we do not have a sitting order for the row of stones opposite the ancestor stones,
apart from in Plate 25a in the previous chapter, with Buba sitting next to the stone for his
deceased father. Buba's position was also the closest to the lower kitchen and the ritual sauce
kitchen. We infer that this was the position bulama Ngatha had in mind when he said he counted
the three ancestor stones from right to left and explained:
The first one is your father (dada), the second one is your grandfather (jije), and the third one is your
great grandfather (wuje). The dada is for you who live in the house, so you put whatever you sacrifice
on it. The remaining two stones are for the elder person you invite from outside to do the sacrifice.
This elder person is called dada as well.
When we look at the 3D visualisation of the ritual foyer area above, we realise that we are now
looking from the central passageway towards the front wall. This is the reverse view from before,
but we realise that the dada stone is still the nearest to the passageway in front of the lower
kitchen (wuts kuɗige tighe), while the ancestor stone representing wuje is further away and nearer
the 'bed' of thala. Our Dghweɗe friends must surely see the arrangement of the ancestor stones
and the sitting stones as the centre of the house shrine, while the back of the 'stomach' of thala
faces the front wall with its opening facing the infields.
I learned from John Zakariya that every traditional Dghweɗe man had three ancestor stones at the
foot of his 'stomach' of thala in the way Bulama Ngatha described, and that it was the oldest
living brother who led the ritual to the deceased father (dada). This included the seventh-born
son (thayagha), who still relied on his senior brother when making the regular dada sacrifice in
the house that we know he had inherited, together with the infields, from their father. That
bulama Ngatha refers to 'the elder person you invite from outside to do the sacrifice' as dada, also
seems to include the generation mates (skmama) responsible for the two more senior ancestor
stones kwir jije and kwir wuje. Bulama Ngatha had indirectly pointed out that skmama was in this
way comparable to dada, meaning a ritual father but only for the next generation up, in playing
the role of lead custodian for handling the zal jije pot of the deceased grandfather.
I am not as certain about the sequential order in which the senior brother carried out the dada
rituals for his younger brothers, but we know for a fact that it was always the house of the
seventh born (thaghaya) which was served first. This reiterates the importance of the role of
thaghaya as a symbol of population growth in traditional Dghweɗe society of the past, and
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