Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 397
their son became the founder of Gathaghure. The oral-historical narrative concerning Gudule
is quite different, but we do not have comparative data such as we have for Ghwa'a about the
performance of dzum zugune in southern Dghweɗe. Therefore, one of the circumstantial open
questions is whether the Vaghagaya-Mughuze lineages also had a ritual dunghole and a public
place with lineage seats, and if the answer is yes, would the Gudule have had a place there?
We know that the two specialist lineages, the Gaske rainmakers and Ɗagha peacemakers, also
played a ritual role for Dghweɗe as a whole, but without owning independent lineage shrines.
The household compound was their only place of worship. This was why we think that in the
case of dzum zugune in Ghwa'a, the ritual dunghole was found near the senior rainmaker's
house, where the Ghwa'a elders came to sit nearby. To establish the ritual seniority of the
Thakara descendants for Ghwa'a, a bull had to be sacrificed by the seventh born and custodian
of Ghwa'a at the Durghwe mountain shrine before the senior rainmaker could plant the spear
ruma into the ritual dunghole near his house to promote the ngwa yiye. We also know that the
spear he used was kept inside the senior rainmaker's house, and that the spear had to be
brought out and taken back in again following certain rituals in which the colour black (lusa)
played a key role.
We demonstrated in earlier chapters on architecture that a traditional house could have had
quite a long history of occupation, and that the idea of a lineage shrine developed from a rock
nearby a house against which the new settler had first rested his weapons. Such an ideal
traditional house had historically been passed on through the seventh born (thaghaya), so this
must have been the house of Taɗa Nzige, the senior Dghweɗe rainmaker living in Ghwa'a.
The other oral history about the ritual importance of a rainmaker's homestead was the house
of Viringwa Ruta, who once possessed the most ancient rainstones of Dghweɗe. This at least
was the declaration of his close relative, the rainmaker Ndruwe Dzguma of Gharaza. He told
us that his father and grandfather still went to Viringwa Ruta's house in Ghwa'a to make a
medicine for cornblessing, called dag mbarɗe, by using the largest rainstone as a grinding
stone. Maybe for hypothetical reasons we can consider the rainstones in Viringwa Ruta's
house to be somewhat like the ritual equivalent of a Gaske specialist lineage shrine.
Keeping this idea in the back of our mind, we would like to pretend for a moment that the
ritual equivalent of Taɗa Nzige's house in Ghwa'a was Ndruwe Dzguma's house in Gharaza.
We can further imagine that he too had a ritual dunghole, and lineage seats nearby, but this
time for the elders of the descendants of Vaghagaya. If we assume such a scenario, do we
think that the Gudule would have had once a seat there also? By taking the oral history of
Gharaza into account, we can further assume with good reason that they most likely would
have had a seat there, because the Gudule were seen as former settlers of Gharaza. We can go
so far as to imagine that the custodian of the Gudule might have performed a sacrifice at their
local lineage shrine before the custodian of the Vaghagaya would have done his sacrifice at
their lineage shrine in Korana Kwandame. We also assume that all of this would have taken
place before the planting of the spear ruma into the ritual dunghole by Ndruwe Dzguma's
father or grandfather. By accepting the Gudule as representatives of the previous custodians
of 'Gharguze', the Thakara of Ghwa'a also accepted the oral truth of the legend that the
Vaghagaya considered them as first settlers. How would the descendants of the Vaghagaya
lineage sections have maintained the ritual continuity of the custodianship over the fecundity
of their land, other than by also giving some kind of ritual privilege to the Gudule in the
context of dzum zugune?
An alternative to the scenario constructed above would be that the Gudule did not have a seat
near the rainmaker's house in Gharaza, and the Vaghagaya lineages did not have to wait for
them to carry out their own sacrifice in Korana Kwandame. Instead, the Gudule initiated the
bull festival for the whole of Dghweɗe before any ngwa yiye initiation could take place. We
remember that Zakariya Kwire believed that ngwa yiye happened after the bull festival, while
ngwa hamtiwe was done following the sacrifice to a deceased father (har ghwe). Looking at
Zakariya Kwire’s statement in this way, it would not have been a question of how many
adults wanted to perform dzum zugune in a guinea corn year, but it would have been more
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