Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 472
ancestor of the Chikiɗe, left 'Johode' (Ghwa'a) as the early arrival zone before the formation
of the Dghweɗe of today. It is therefore puzzling why the Chikiɗe did not consider the
seventh born as significant, while the Zelidva and the Lamang did.
The Glavda did the same as the Chikiɗe, meaning it was the youngest son who inherited the
house while the seventh-born son had no ritual significance at all, and they never practised
infanticide of the eighth-born child. It is the same with the Mafa of our subregion, who also
saw the youngest son as the one to inherit the father's house. The Gvoko to the south of
Dghweɗe considered the seventh-born son a blessing, because they saw it as an unexpected
birth, but we do not know how they received an eighth-born child. It is interesting that the
Guduf, the Glavda, the Chikiɗe and the Mafa are the only three groups in our little
subregional comparison who saw the youngest son as the key individual to inherit, and did
not put any significance on the seventh-born or eighth-born child as did the Dghweɗe and the
Lamang, and also the Zelidva and the Gvoko to an extent. One suggestion we can come up
with concerning the Chikiɗe is that they adopted the Guduf language, and also the Guduf
system of patrilineal inheritance through the youngest son.
The above comparison raises more questions than answers, but what certainly stands out is
that there are significant similarities between the Lamang of Hiɗkala and the Dghweɗe. We
remember that there was another surprising similarity in the context of the travelling bull
festival (see Chapter 3.13). According to our subregional inquiries, the travelling bull festival
was a late pre-colonial development, and one thing we can say with certainty is that the
Dghweɗe and the Lamang of Hiɗkala shared the travelling bull festival. However, we equally
know that the Lamang did not perform adult initiation, and neither did the Zelidva, while the
Chikiɗe and the Glavda did. Perhaps we need to look for overlapping networks of variations
in a different way, but the oral memory accounts of the significance of the seventh and eighthborn children in Dghweɗe show that infanticide was still practised in late pre-colonial times.
Conclusion
We think that the oral historical significance of the seventh-born son needs to be understood
together with that of the eighth-born child, and we came to the conclusion that while the birth
of a seventh-born son of a first wife was very desirable, the birth of an eighth-born child was
not. However, in the past this did not stop the Dghweɗe from having more than seven
children with one wife. We established this by looking at the naming tradition that started
with the sixth born and ended with the eleventh-born child. The reason why more children
would be wanted after the eighth fell victim to infanticide was possibly because the first wife
had not previously given birth to any sons, or because all her other sons had died. Without a
son, even if he was not literally the seventh born, the patrilineal expansion of a household
compound into a successful local lineage group would have been at risk, which was most
likely seen as very bad luck indeed.
About the meaning of the word thaghaya, we suggested the literal translation 'cattle in the
house', and pointed to the importance of manure production in the form of animal dung for
which cattle was the most important asset that could be passed on for sustainable long-term
food production. We came to the conclusion that the collective experience of environmental
catastrophe, in particular drought-related famine, might have brought about the idea of seeing
the seventh born as a sign of good luck, while the eighth born was seen as bad luck. We tried
to view the infanticide of the eighth-born child as a form of population control resulting from
centuries of experience in labour-intensive terrace farming. While a son as the seventh born of
a first wife was seen as auspicious for successful family and lineage expansion, an eighth
born was seen as inauspicious, perhaps because it increased the risk of child death, and death
in general, as a result of famine and disease.
We showed the inheritance system of the Dghweɗe, in which the seventh born as family
thaghaya was entitled to the lion’s share of the assets, where the permanently manured
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