Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 466
The ritual responsibilities of the seventh born
The ritual responsibilities of the seventh born were very complex. We listed in Chapter 3.9,
where we described the distribution of the custodianship of local shrines, a significant number
of seventh-born sons (thaghaya) who were lineage priests across Dghweɗe (see Table 6). We
were able to show that most if not all settlement units dominated by a clan or lineage section
had one lineage branch that was considered to hold the thaghaya position, and as such held a
variety of ritual responsibilities. The responsibilities ranged from being in charge of the key
ritual for local group formation, har khalala (slaughtering for a lineage ancestor) to rituals
such as starting the harvest, or in the case of Ghwa'a, carrying out the ritual at Durghwe, the
most important mountain shrine of the Gwoza hills and beyond.
One element of the role of the seventh born (thaghaya) as custodian stands out, which was the
responsibility of starting an important task or ritual process. For example, the thaghaya of the
Gudule started the roofing of houses, and started the bull festival for the whole of Dghweɗe,
and the Gudule even claimed that their lineage thaghaya also started the process of
slaughtering for the deceased father of a house (har ghwe), but we failed to confirm that claim
with other Dghweɗe clan groups. The claim of the Gudule to have started har ghwe
nevertheless confirms how important the role of thaghaya was in terms of starting a ritual
process. Har ghwe was important for every household compound in Dghweɗe which could
afford to sacrifice a he-goat for the deceased father of a house, and we remember that it had to
be carried out before any larger ceremony or ritual, for example the bull festival, could be
performed.
The specialist lineages, among which the Gaske rainmaker and the Ɗagha peacemaker
lineages were the most important, also had their own seventh born (thaghaya), even though
they were spread out across Dghweɗe and did not have independent clan or lineage wards.
The starting of planting was a very important task for the rainmaker lineage, and we know
that the senior rainmaker, Taɗa Nzige, did his ritual planting before the first rain. We also
know that our bi-annual calendar identified the guinea corn year as being when most regular
rituals were historically performed, while the millet year had far fewer ritual processes. We
have presented the cosmological importance of guinea corn and the link to manure production
in many other chapters of this book.
When it came to harvesting, it appears there was no central ritual custodian or seventh born
(thaghaya) who started it for the whole of Dghweɗe, but ideally each thaghaya of every local
lineage group owned the responsibility. This could be a smaller or larger clan or lineage
group, and we demonstrated as such for the Vaghagaya major lineage, as they were by far the
largest group that had spread across southern Dghweɗe. There it was Var ga Ghuna of
Gharaza who was the ritual custodian responsible for all the Vaghagaya. However, in terms of
planting, Var ga Ghuna had to wait for the senior rainmaker to inform him that his rituallyplanted guinea corn had started germinating, which was the sign for Var ga Ghuna himself to
start planting. Following this, all his major lineage mates could start planting.
On the level of the house, it was the seventh born (thaghaya), ideally born to the first wife,
who was served first by his senior brother when it came to the ritual related to their deceased
father. For his deceased grandfather or deceased great grandfather, it was the generation mate
(skamama) of the grandfather or great grandfather who came as family priest to carry out the
rituals, but always after the seventh born had been served first. On the lineage level, it was not
always possible to trace the seventh born as earth priest back along the generations of
patrilineal descent, but even so the ritual custodian was always considered to be the
representative of such a connection, and was considered as the local group thaghaya. It was
very important here that the one who occupied the role was the correct one, in order to reduce
the personal vulnerability that ritual responsibility linked to territorial custodianship entailed.
In the context of specialist lineages, it was not the seventh born (thaghaya) who was
automatically considered to be the most gifted in terms of the lineage specialism they
represented. We discussed this in the chapter about ideas around existential personhood,
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