Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 522
Besides this, in Chapter 3.10 we presented the way soils were classified, but only found one
version of soil which was explicitly described as soft, while all the other soils were classified
as mixtures, such as whether they had a high content of sand, clay or eroded rock. We
remember that the Dghweɗe considered no soils to be fertile on their own, but that it
depended on the regular application of animal manure. This made dung and water key
elements in the promotion of fecundity, symbolised by 'blessings from above' (rain) and
'below' (dung), but the Dghweɗe also distinguished between cultivated and uncultivated land
and referred to the most intensely-manured part of their settlements as khuɗi luwa, meaning
'the stomach of settlement', the most agriculturally active part of a hillside.
All farm animals were classified as dgahtha or lmana, and according to John there was no
difference in the meaning of the two words. We do not know the literal meaning of lmana but
recognise the prefix dg and the postfix tha in the word dgahtha, therefore we are tempted to
translate dgahtha as 'a living thing like cattle'. We also find the same prefix in the word dgsiye
for the general classification of 'living things of the bush', and know from Chapter 3.10
(Figure 17) that siye was a reference to bushland. This confirms that the mixed farming
system had most likely inspired the differentiation between farm animals and wild animals of
the bush. In both cases the prefix dg meant 'a thing' or 'something' and was used to refer to
living and non-living things. The latter is expressed in the word dgngara which was the
general word for a pot, while dgɗala is the general word for a sauce with 'something' (dg) in
it.
We find the prefix dg (or dəg) and the similar version which meant the same, which we have
decided to transcribe as dug or dag. For example dug was used to classify crops in a general
way as dugwaya. The word waya literally meant hunger, suggesting that dugwaya meant
'something to satisfy hunger', but it was not a general reference to all food that would satisfy
hunger, but only to crops, and we think it was a reference to crops used to prepare solid food.
This was different to the general world for 'something' in a sauce (dgɗala), which could refer
not only to leaves but also to fats or bones as special ingredients, and we know that dgɗala
and dugwaya were considered liquid and solid forms of food.
While ɗala was not only the word for a sauce but also the general word for leaves collected
by women to make a sauce, the word ɓle was the general word for leaf. In that sense the word
ɓle referred to all leaves, regardless of whether they grew on trees, shrubs or even grasses,
and regardless of whether or not they could be eaten. The fact that fats and bones as well as
leaves were included in the term dgɗala, but that ɗala was at the same time a reference to the
leaves used to make sauce, is possibly because leaves were the most common ingredient of
sauce. Fats and bones were mostly added when cooking sauce for rituals. The sauce dag ɗala
served in a jahurimbe, together with the solid food John referred to as 'wedding cake' (jadva),
was such an example, and we remember that the bride and groom had their hands ritually
dipped in both of these (see Chapter 3.20).
In terms of classifying useful plants, there were not only dgɗala and dugwaya as references to
things with which to make a liquid sauce, and solid food using leaves and crops, but also the
fruits of trees and shrubs which our Dghweɗe friends referred to as yagtsu wufa. While the
word yagtsu was the general word for fruits from trees and shrubs, the word wufa was the
general word for tree, but wufa also included shrubs if they produced fruits for consumption.
If shrubs did not bear fruits they were referred to as mdaga. This shows that the main
classifying aspect was not whether a plant was a tree or a shrub, but whether it produced fruit.
We conclude from this that the Dghweɗe considered leaves, fruits and crops as basic items of
food production, and this was at the root of how they classified useful plants.
The above presentation is far from being complete, but hopefully it serves to show the main
underlying principles of the Dghweɗe way of classifying living and non-living things into
relevant categories. Next we will show some examples of sub-categories of wild animals,
referred to above by the general word dgsiye, meaning 'living things of the bush'. We first
need to acknowledge that the term dgsiye did not include insects, mice and rats, which were
520
