Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
remain a taboo to the rest of the community until he or she performs the appropriate cleansing
ritual. Among the Igbos, for example, it is taboo for a “free born” to marry an
Osu
(descendants
from a certain guild of priests and from families offered as sacrifice to the gods) or an
Ume
(persons
believed to have been reincarnated from certain dangerous deities). One can become prohibited by
living in the same house with an Osu or having sexual intercourse with an Osu person, even if the
affair did not yield any offspring.
Among the Zulu, it is taboo to kill, even one's enemy. A warrior who kills an opponent is
believed to stand in danger of developing a serious ailment, which will culminate in madness unless
he takes immediate preventive action soon after the killing. According to Donald Morris (in his
topic
The Washing of the Spears
),
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the first step in the cleansing process is to rip open the fallen
foe's abdomen with a single slash of the assegai “in order to allow the spirit to escape.” Back in his
quarters, the victorious warrior then has to eat and sleep apart from other men until his cleansing
ceremony is complete. He is forbidden to have any relationship with his wife before and during the
cleansing ritual since it is believed that the curse for the killing will be transferred to her if they have
any affair before the rituals. Some accounts claim that if a warrior has intercourse with a woman not
of his own kraal, she will acquire the prohibition and transfer it to the next man who has intercourse
with her. The essential point is that the dangerous charge that led to the prohibition in the first place
is transferable to an otherwise innocent person.
In certain parts of southern Nigeria, killing, even accidental loss of life by car crashes, requires
elaborate rituals and abstinence. The transgressor has to be protected from the spirit of the deceased
by a ritualistic washing of the hands and eyes. An important part of the cleansing ceremony is
the transference of the prohibition to a sacrificial animal, which is slaughtered and buried intact.
Most of the rituals associated with African religion and healing can be traced to the need to find
a compromise between the performance of certain acts and the contravention of taboo. According
to Freud,
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“the instinctual desire is constantly shifting in order to escape from the impasse and
endeavors to find substitutes—substitute objects and substitute acts—in place of the prohibited
ones.” Animals are usually slaughtered as a substitute for human sacrifice; body movements are
used to depict certain acts, and related acts can be used to substitute for certain events.
Adoption of totems in the classical sense of the word is not a significant aspect of African cul-
ture. Certain animals are regarded as sacred, and others are accorded special status as objects of
taboo prohibitions, but it is rare to find African communities that trace their ancestry to an animal.
Totem poles are also not a common feature of African life; they do not adorn village groves and
courtyards as generally believed. A form of totemism could, however, be said to exist in the form
of the adoption of an emblem (object, plant, or animal) by a community or clan as a reminder of its
common ancestry.
Much confusion has been generated by attempts to classify people with a shared taboo as belong-
ing to a totemic group. Certain animals (for example, pythons, cows, and snails) are prohibited in
some parts of Africa for reasons other than respect for a totem. The common reason for such taboos
is religion, and in some instances the animals are considered unclean, as is the case with pigs,
snails, and vultures. People may observe the same taboo restrictions regarding a particular animal
without shared ancestry. The prohibitions are enacted in each case for completely different reasons.
The observance of a taboo is largely dictated by the nature and significance of the prohibition; only
serious taboos are inherited by marriage, and this again depends entirely on the hereditary system
prevalent in a given area. For example, in the Umunakanu clan (Ehime-Mbano, Imo State, Nigeria),
legend has it that there was a strict prohibition on the killing of pythons and the eating of African
cows. In that locality, the serpent was allowed to move freely without hindrance in and out of peo-
ple's homes. Stories abound in which pythons had to babysit children while their mothers attended
to some urgent work outside the compounds; the python would dutifully coil up and form a cyclic
playing ground for the baby, hide its head within its body, and wait until the mother returned from
her errand. This relationship between humans and snake went on in that locality for several years;
