Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 499
key aspect of it was the production of manure to keep the infields permanently under
cultivation. A cow as a main part of the bridewealth shows the importance of animal dung for
sustainable food production.
Also, the fact that a marriage by promise was organised by the parents of a boy and a girl
shortly after such a promised girl was born, and that the father of the boy gave presents to the
mother of the girl, suggests how important such friendships were across the exogamous
divide for the future of each household compound. We have very little data about affinal
relationships and the importance of catering for them, but realise that the distinction between
different exogamous patrilineages as wife-givers and wife-receivers might not always have
made marriage alliances easy. 2 A marriage by promise was seen as the best way to find a first
wife, and indicates that good relationships between families of potential wife-giver and wifereceiver lineages were essential for communal peace and prosperity. This view is supported
by the fact that such alliances were determined by the exogamy rules practised by the
Dghweɗe, and we illustrated this perspective in Figure 20a in the chapter about the house as a
place of worship, by pointing to 'mothers of thaghaya' coming from the patriline outside a
local hamlet. The same sample compounds illustrated in Figure 20a need to be imagined not
only as wife-receivers but also as wife-givers, because their daughters were potential marriage
partners for other hamlets as the ideal settlement units we referred to as khuɗi luwa, meaning
'the stomach of a settlement'.
We realise that such a method of befriending for a marriage by promise could not be repeated
with the same family for at least four generations due to the matrilateral exogamy rule known
as zbe. We remember from Chapter 3.6 that we were told that being zbe was also a general
reference to having social relationships with matrilateral kin, and in the context of this it was
the mother's sister's daughter (MZD) connection that was important. Besides this, it was not
possible to marry the daughter of a lineage brother (sknukwe) with whom the patrilineal
exogamy rule (gwagha) applied, which must have made it even more difficult to befriend
suitable families for future matrilateral zbe relationships. This in turn presumably
underpinned the wish to promote marriage alliances between families in which many
household heads had already completed or at least started adult initiation (dzum zugune). We
remember that a candidate had to give his mother's brother a billy goat if he wanted to start
dzum zugune before him. We think that extended families most likely planned a marital
exchange from the point of view of mutual socio-economic interest, but that the network of
lineage exogamy was rather restricted. For example, in Ghwa'a all major lineages descending
from Thakara could intermarry, and in administrative Korana Basa the descendants of
Mughuze-Ruwa were only exogamous along their major lineage sections. In contrast to this,
smaller clan groups such as the Hembe practised clan exogamy, while the Gudule, according
to Mathews (1934) had given up clan exogamy because they perceived themselves as weak
and were frightened of their neighbours. This is presumably also a reference to the expanding
Vaghagaya who had replaced them as former main local competitors in terms of marital
exchange.
Also, the social relationship terms for siblingship, which did not differentiate between fullsiblings, half-siblings and the mother's sisters' children, underpins the strong egalitarian
network of paternal and maternal siblingship across exogamous clan and lineage groups. The
terms for male and female siblings had a very inclusive tone because they referred to one
another as daghaunukwe (female sibling) and vjarnukwe (male sibling) and did not
distinguish between siblings and cousins but only between genders. The same inclusive
principle applied across generations in relation to grandchildren, who could refer to one
another as jije (grandfather) or bajije (grandmother) because they belonged to the same
Needham (1962) deals critically with the question of whether marriage alliances are determined by
preferential psychological affinities or are rather a result of prescriptive patrilineal authority. We are
not sure about this, and perhaps it is a combination of both, and although the exogamy rules practised
by the Dghweɗe are prescriptive in general terms, we know from the example of the Gudule that they
could be changed. This suggests that perhaps we should not consider them to be written in stone.
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