Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 424
We finally raised the question of how much ritual density as a result of population density
needs to be seen as being intrinsically linked to the egalitarian structure of Dghweɗe society.
The intensified belief system conditioned by structural egalitarianism brought about a rigid
regime of rituals not only for dealing with territorial aspects of land and its chronic shortage,
but also for dealing with mental space when it came to regulating interpersonal conflict. We
established that there was an underlying cosmological order embedded in the concept of
existential personhood. We introduced the idea that the mirror worlds above and below were
egalitarian in nature, in which the world above was seen as a place where a spirit could get
lost, and where healers and sorcerers would fight a 'war'. Similarly egalitarian, we described
the world below as a social mirror-image of this world, in which ancestors were imagined to
have the same personality traits and conflict areas as their living counterparts.
We hinted that the image of a shadow was possibly a good image for the spirit on the level of
earth as the place of home, not only for the living but also for the dead, while the world above
could be interpreted as a place without shadow where the spirit could become isolated from
the body (vagha). We introduced in that context the Dghweɗe idea of spirithood, and
connected it with the transformational aspect of personhood which expanded beyond humans,
interestingly to socio-economically important organic and non-organic objects of the familiar
environment, objects that mattered for the reproduction and subsistence of local groups. We
mentioned in that context that things could magically appear or disappear or transform.
In the final section we discussed how the belief in witchcraft and sorcery as an integrated part
of spirithood was embedded in the local justice system, by referring to an early colonial
source and also to some of our own data of the Gwoza hills. We combined these with a
Dghweɗe example, and showed that the proclamation of innocence was at the very root of an
established pre-colonial system of judging by ordeal. We used a legendary account to show
how cursing appeared in the oral history of the later pre-colonial past, by citing the example
of Bughwithe, the mother of Vaghagaya, and suggested that the story might have been linked
to competition between females in their role as first wives and mothers of a seventh born son
(thaghaya). In the next chapter we will discuss the oral history of the worldview and
cosmology of the Dghweɗe, and attempt to describe what we refer to as their historical
localised flat-earth cosmography, which we think cognitively underlies the orientational ideas
around existential personhood presented in this chapter.
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