Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 521
It is perhaps too far fetched to infer that the Dghweɗe view of the reproductive doubling of
twins as a symbol of community reincarnation was similar to the number four the Mafa
achieved by adding an invisible number one to number three for a boy in the context of
ordinary births. In the Mafa case, the concept that the ritual number four for a boy added to
the ritual number three for a girl would have made the lucky number seven for a desirable
seventh-born son would have followed. We know however that the Mafa did not have a
system of seventh-born sons as the Dghweɗe did, but applied a different method of allocating
ritual responsibilities. It would be straying too far from the path to discuss the Mafa method
of ritual reproduction and how it related to their system of local group formation, but
regarding the importance of gender-related thinking we can see it as a variation on the theme
of the symbolic classification of their Dghweɗe neighbours.
If we therefore hypothetically remain with the image of three plus four as a lucky symbolic
combination of ritual counting for successful male control over reproduction, and view the
number eight in the context of that, four plus four could be seen as a very unlucky result. In
both montagnard cultures, the rule was odd and even numbers for a boy and a girl, or the
reverse of that, and any doubling of numbers would not have led to a lucky number seven, but
only to a four, a six or an eight, which might in that sense have symbolised misfortune.
Whether this can be interpreted in terms of symbolic classification as a reason why eighthborn children once were cast out or fell victim to infanticide unless they were twins or a child
born after twins, must remain unanswered.
Finally we want to refer back to what dada Ɗga said about the left hand, not only concerning
how it represented the way ancestors consumed their food in the next world, but also how it
would lead to the death of the husband if his wife slapped him with her left hand. We infer
that if he was slapped by his first wife his death would even be more guaranteed. We can only
speculate that it was an indirect admission that a husband could not achieve anything without
a wife. His fear of being slapped by his wife with her left hand can be seen to symbolise the
fear of neglecting his ritual responsibilities as a husband and owner of a house. He knew that
he used his left or female hand to eat his first meal after the divination following the death of
his father, and being slapped that in way by his wife sounds very negative indeed.
After all, Dghweɗe ritual culture was all about the struggle for survival, and male ritual
control over successful socio-economic reproduction was a fundamental aspect of their
heritage. The ritual responsibilities of men included the spiritual protection of their wives who
had no spirit pots of their own. This system was not only rooted in social organisation, but
also in religion, and in that way was seen as a social fact passed on to them by their family
ancestors and by divinity represented by their personal gods and house gods. Not treating a
wife with respect when faced with a crisis would not only have meant a disregard for the role
of the wife, but also a disrespect for the belief system as an integrated part of the local sense
of belonging which was crucial to male identity. This was even more important in the face of
a food crisis, which might be the underlying reason why a woman would slap her husband
with her left hand.
The classification of living and non-living things and shades of colours
In this section we will present our knowledge about how the Dghweɗe classified living and
non-living things, but we have to admit that our oral data about this are not at all systematic.
We referred to the classification of stones at the beginning of Chapter 3.12, by pointing out
that our local protagonists generally distinguished between hard stones and rocks, and stones
that were not hard, and that they singled out hard white stones which we think might have
been quartz. The Dghweɗe used a similar principle of classifying soft and hard things when
distinguishing between liquid and solid food. We also explained how liquid and solid was
also a distinction in their theory of conception, and the same distinction reappeared in the use
of liquid sauce and solid food in marriage rituals.
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