Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 502
We already referred to the concept of man skwe (man = handling; skwe = ritual treatment),
and the mixture of water and guinea corn flour as the special ritual treatment owned and
handled by the rainmaker when acting in his divine entitlement to influence the quantity of
rain needed during the growing season. Others again owned a different skwe, and in Chapter
3.23 we will present the significance of Cissus quadrangularis as the plant with the highest
ritual significance, among which particularly powerful varieties were owned by the Ɗagha
peacemaker lineage. There we also list vavanz mandatha (see image 63k in Table 12a) used
for divination and the treatment of a lost spirit, the literal meaning of which was 'to calm
down', but we doubt that it was a true skwe as it was also available for public medicinal use.
There were two kinds of vavanz mandatha, a floating type used by Ɗagha diviners, while the
non-floating type was generally available and commonly used to treat heartburn.
We remember from Chapter 3.13 that vavanz mandatha played a role during the bull festival,
not only to divine whether the sacred bull was vicious, but also to calm the bull down before
it was ritually released from the shed next to the upper room of the owner of the house. This
was done after its seclusion and fattening period, and the calming ritual was not carried out by
the Ɗagha diviner but by a local group elder. Still, we do not know enough about the
frequency and the most common occasions on which divination was carried out, but
nevertheless find it important to try to understand the mindset behind divination. What we
know for sure is that divination played a key role in decision making, and that there were
many different circumstances in which it was applied in order to determine the course of a
ritual intervention. This could be related to the traditional justice system, sorcery, or any other
otherwise hidden cause of potential harm to which a community or individual was exposed.
The exploration of divinity via the technical tool of divination as a form of complementary
cure was not straightforward but was full of risk and tension, and despite our lack of detailed
research we strongly assume that it was carried out more often in crisis situations than when
things were going well. Such crisis situations could be family-related or were issues
concerning the wider community. Divination had regular and irregular aspects, but we
presume that it was an application convergent with the social and political ways in which the
Dghweɗe once practised their egalitarian belief system.
The power of majority (gadghale)
In Part Two (Chapter 2.2) we discussed ethnographic research about the Gwoza hills carried
out by colonial officers. The earliest British report was by captain Lewis (1925), followed by
MacFarlane (1932), Mathews (1934) and then Eustace (1939). We acknowledged that it was
assistant district officer Eustace who developed the concept of gidegal as a synonym for 'Clan
Council' as an administrative tool of indirect rule. Mathews had already mentioned the
concept of gadagal as a pre-colonial institution among all the hill populations. He translated it
as 'The Strong' and described it as a traditional chief surrounded by a council of elders who
would always be consulted by the ward head (bulama), and it was said the bulama would
decide nothing without the chief. Mathews further referred to such a 'conciliar organisation
with an indigenous chieftainship throughout the whole hills' and stated that 'the real chief
comes to see the administrative officer with the other elders and the Bulama, but does not take
active part in the discussion'. He then continues by saying that:
It is desirable that these chiefs (Gadagal) should be kept in mind and further investigated, for they
are a genuine indigenous series of "heads" of each clan, and can probably be found to have
extensive powers, especially in such a large clan as Galabda [Glavda] where it seems likely that
there is one chief Gadagal for the whole clan. 1
1
We wonder whether Mathews' view was also influenced by the concept of chieftaincy among the
neighbouring Mafa. I described in The Way of the Beer (2003:281ff) how the kr-biy (kra = son of the
great or strong = bay) provided, as the most numerous local clan groups, the traditional Mafa chief (biy
wudam) in every Mafa village of our wider subregion. The system of bay or biy transcended the ritual
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