'At first there were not people, but "God" and beasts.' 'God' here,
is Mlungu. The other statement is apparently derived from existing
ancestor-worship, people who died became 'God' (Mlungu). But God is prior
to death, for the Yao have a form of the usual myth of the origin of
death, also of sleep: 'death and sleep are one word, they are of one
family.' God dwells on high, while a malevolent 'great one,' who disturbed
the mysteries and slew the initiated, was turned into a mountain.[12]
In spite of information confessedly defective, I have extracted from Mr.
Spencer's chosen authority a mass of facts, pointing to a Yao belief in a
primal being, maker of mountains and rivers; existent before men were; not
liable to death--which came late among them--beneficent; not propitiated
by sacrifice (as far as the evidence goes); moral (if we may judge by the
analogy of the mysteries), and yet occupying the religious background,
while the foreground is held by the most recent ghosts. To prove Mr.
Spencer's theory, he ought to have given a full account of this being, and
to have shown how he was developed out of ghosts which are forgotten in
inverse ratio to their distance from the actual generation. I conceive
that Mr. Spencer would find a mid-point between a common ghost and Mtanga,
in a ghost of a chief attached to a mountain, the place and place-name
preserving the ghost's name and memory. But it is, I think, a far cry from
such a chief's ghost to the pre-human, angel-served Mtanga.
Of ancestor worship and ghost worship, we have abundant evidence. But the
position of Mtanga raises one of these delicate and crucial questions
which cannot be solved by ignoring their existence. Is Mtanga evolved
out of an ancestral ghost? If so, why, as greatest of divine beings, 'Very
Chief,' and having powerful ministers under him, is he left unpropitiated,
unless it be by moral discourses at the mysteries? As a much more advanced
idea than that of a real father's ghost, he ought to be much later in
evolution, fresher in conception, and more adored. How do we explain his
lack of adoration? Was he originally envisaged as a ghost at all, and, if
so, by what curious but uniform freak of savage logic is he regarded as
prior to men, and though a ghost, prior to death? Is it not certain that
such a being could be conceived of by men who had never dreamed of ghosts?
Is there any logical reason why Mtanga should not be regarded as
originally on the same footing as Munganngaur, but now half forgotten and
neglected, for practical or philosophical reasons?
On these problems light is thrown by a successor of Mr. Spencer's
authority, Mr. Duff Macdonald, in the Blantyre Mission. This gentleman,
the Rev. David Clement Scott, has published 'A Cyclopaedic Dictionary
of the Mang'anja Language in British Central Africa.'[13] Looking at
ancestral spirits first, we find _Mzimu_, 'spirits of the departed,
supposed to come in dreams.' Though abiding in the spirit world, they also
haunt thickets, they inspire Mlauli, prophets, and make them rave and
utter predictions. Offerings are made to them. Here is a prayer: 'Watch
over me, my ancestor, who died long ago; tell the great spirit at the head
of my race from whom my mother came.' There are little hut-temples, and
the chief directs the sacrifices of food, or of animals. There are
religious pilgrimages, with sacrifice, to mountains. God, like men in this
region, has various names, as Chiuta, 'God in space and the rainbow sign
across;' Mpambe, 'God Almighty' (or rather 'pre-excellent'); Mlezi, 'God
the Sustainer,' and Mulungu, 'God who is spirit.' Mulungu = God, 'not
spirits or fetish.' 'You can't put the plural, as God is One,' say the
natives. 'There are no idols called gods, and spirits are spirits of
people who have died, not gods.' Idols are _Zitunzi-zitunzi_. 'Spirits
are supposed to be with Mulungu.' God made the world and man. Our author
says 'when the chief or people sacrifice it is to God,' but he also says
that they sacrifice to ancestral spirits. There is some confusion of
ideas here: Mr. Macdonald says nothing of sacrifice to Mtanga.
Mr. Scott does not seem to know more about the Mysteries than Mr.
Macdonald, and his article on Mulungu does not much enlighten us. Does
Mulungu, as Creative God, receive sacrifice, or not?[14] Mr. Scott gives
no instance of this, under _Nsembe_ (sacrifice), where ancestors, or
hill-dwelling ghosts of chiefs, are offered food; yet, as we have seen,
under _Mulungu_, he avers that the chiefs and people do sacrifice to God.
He appears to be confusing the Creator with spirits, and no reliance can
be placed on this part of his evidence. 'At the back of all this'
(sacrifice to spirits) 'there is God.' If I understand Mr. Scott,
sacrifices are really made only to spirits, but he is trying to argue
that, after all, the theistic conception is at the back of the animistic
practice, thus importing his theory into his facts. His theory would,
really, be in a better way, if sacrifice is _not_ offered to the Creator,
but this had not occurred to Mr. Scott.
It is plain, in any case, that the religion of the Africans in the
Blantyre region has an element not easily to be derived from ancestral
spirit-worship, an element not observed by Mr. Spencer.
Nobody who has followed the examples already adduced will be amazed by
what Waitz calls the 'surprising result' of recent inquiries among the
great negro race. Among the branches where foreign influence is least to
be suspected, we discover, behind their more conspicuous fetishisms and
superstitions, something which we cannot exactly call Monotheism, yet
which tends in that direction.[15] Waitz quotes Wilson for the fact that,
their fetishism apart, they adore a Supreme Being as the Creator: and do
not honour him with sacrifice.
The remarks of Waitz may be cited in full:
'The religion of the negro may be considered by some as a particularly
rude form of polytheism and may be branded with the special name of
fetishism. It would follow, from a minute examination of it, that--apart
from the extravagant and fantastic traits, which are rooted in the
character of the negro, and which radiate therefrom over all his
creations--in comparison with the religions of other savages it is neither
very specially differentiated nor very specially crude in form.
'But this opinion can be held to be quite true only while we look at the
_outside_ of the negro's religion, or estimate its significance from
arbitrary pre-suppositions, as is specially the case with Ad. Wuttke.
'By a deeper insight, which of late several scientific investigators have
succeeded in attaining, we reach, rather, the surprising conclusion that
several of the negro races--on whom we cannot as yet prove, and can hardly
conjecture, the influence of a more civilised people--in the embodying of
their religious conceptions are further advanced than almost all other
savages, so far that, even if we do not call them monotheists, we may
still think of them as standing on the boundary of monotheism, seeing that
their religion is also mixed with a great mass of rude superstition which,
in turn, among other peoples, seems to overrun completely the purer
religious conceptions.'
This conclusion as to an element of pure faith in negro religion would not
have surprised Waitz, had recent evidence as to the same creed among lower
savages lain before him as he worked.
This volume of his book was composed in 1860. In 1872 he had become well
aware of the belief in a good Maker among the Australian natives, and of
the absence among them of ancestor worship.[16]
Waitz's remarks on the Supreme Being of the Negro are well worth noting,
from his unconcealed astonishment at the discovery.
Wilson's observations on North and South Guinea religion were published in
1856. After commenting on the delicate task of finding out what a savage
religion really is, he writes: 'The belief in one great Supreme Being,
who made and upholds all things, is universal.'[17] The names of the being
are translated 'Maker,' 'Preserver,' 'Benefactor,' 'Great Friend.' Though
compact of all good qualities, the being has allowed the world to 'come
under the control of evil spirits,' who, alone, receive religious worship.
Though he leaves things uncontrolled, yet the chief being (as in Homer)
ratifies the Oath, at a treaty, and is invoked to punish criminals when
ordeal water is to be drunk. So far, then, he has an ethical influence.
'Grossly wicked people' are buried outside of the regular place. Fetishism
prevails, with spiritualism, and Wilson thinks that mediums might pick up
some good tricks in Guinea. He gives no examples. Their inspired men do
things 'that cannot be accounted for,' by the use of narcotics.
The South Guinea Creator, Anyambia (= good spirit?), is good, but
capricious. He has a good deputy, Ombwiri (spelled 'Mbuiri' by Miss
Kingsley); _he alone has no priests_, but communicates directly with men.
The neighbouring Shekuni have mysteries of the Great Spirit. No details
are given. This great being, Mwetyi, witnesses covenants and punishes
perjury. This people are ancestor-worshippers, but their Supreme Being is
not said to receive sacrifice, as ghosts do, while he is so far from
being powerless, like Unkulunkulu, that, but for fear of his wrath,
'their national treaties would have little or no force.'[18] Having no
information about the mysteries, of course, we know nothing of other moral
influences which are, or may be exercised by these great, powerful, and
not wholly otiose beings.
The celebrated traveller, Mungo Park, who visited Africa in 1805, had good
opportunities of understanding the natives. He did not hurry through the
land with a large armed force, but alone, or almost alone, paid his way
with his brass buttons. 'I have conversed with all ranks and conditions
upon the subject of their faith,' he says, 'and can pronounce, without the
smallest shadow of doubt, that the belief in one God and in a future state
of reward and punishment is entire and universal among them.' This cannot
strictly be called monotheism, as there are many subordinate spirits who
may be influenced by 'magical ceremonies.' But if monotheism means belief
in One Spirit alone, or religious regard paid to One Spirit alone, it
exists nowhere--no, not in Islam.
Park thinks it remarkable that 'the Almighty' only receives prayers at the
new moon (of sacrifice to the Almighty he says nothing), and that, being
the creator and preserver of all things, he is 'of so exalted a nature
that it is idle to imagine the feeble supplications of wretched mortals
can reverse the decrees and change the purpose of unerring Wisdom.' The
new moon prayers are mere matters of tradition; 'our fathers did it before
us.' 'Such is the blindness of unassisted nature,' says Park, who is not
satirising, in Swift's manner, the prayers of Presbyterians at home on
Yarrow.
Thus, the African Supreme Being is unpropitiated, while inferior spirits
are constrained by magic or propitiated with food.
We meet our old problem: How has this God, in the conception of whom there
is so much philosophy, developed out of these hungry ghosts? The influence
of Islam can scarcely be suspected, Allah being addressed, of course, in
endless prayers, while the African god receives none. Indeed, it would be
more plausible to say that Mahomet borrowed Allah from the widespread
belief which we are studying, than that the negro's Supreme Being was
borrowed from Allah.
Park had, as we saw, many opportunities of familiar discussion with the
people on whose mercies he threw himself.
'But it is not often that the negroes make their religious opinions the
subject of conversation; when interrogated, in particular, concerning
their ideas of a future state, they express themselves with great
reverence, but endeavour to shorten the discussion by saying, _"Mo o mo
inta allo_" ("No man knows anything about it").'[19]
Park himself, in extreme distress, and almost in despair, chanced to
observe the delicate beauty of a small moss-plant, and, reflecting that
the Creator of so frail a thing could not be indifferent to any of His
creatures, plucked up courage and reached safety.[20] He was not of the
negro philosophy, and is the less likely to have invented it. The new moon
prayer, said in a whisper, was reported to Park, 'by many different
people,' to contain 'thanks to God for his kindness during the existence
of the past moon, and to solicit a continuation of his favour during the
new one.' This, of course, may prove Islamite influence, and is at
variance with the general tendency of the religious philosophy as
described.
We now arrive at a theory of the Supreme Being among a certain African
race which would be entirely fatal to my whole hypothesis on this topic,
if it could be demonstrated correct in fact, and if it could be stretched
so as to apply to the Australians, Fuegians, Andamanese, and other very
backward peoples. It is the hypothesis that the Supreme Being is a
'loan-god,' borrowed from Europeans.
The theory is very lucidly set forth in Major Ellis's 'Tshi-speaking
Peoples of the Gold Coast.'[21] Major Ellis's opinion coincides with that
of Waitz in his 'Introduction to Anthropology' (an opinion to which Waitz
does not seem bigoted)--namely, that 'the original form of all religion is
a raw, unsystematic polytheism,' nature being peopled by inimical powers
or spirits, and everyone worshipping what he thinks most dangerous or
most serviceable. There are few general, many local or personal, objects
of veneration.[22] Major Ellis only met this passage when he had formed
his own ideas by observation of the Tshi race. We do not pretend to
guess what 'the original form of all religion' may have been; but we have
given, and shall give, abundant evidence for the existence of a loftier
faith than this, among peoples much lower in material culture than the
Tshi races, who have metals and an organised priesthood. They occupy, in
small villages (except Coomassie and Djuabin), the forests of the Gold
Coast. The mere mention of Coomassie shows how vastly superior in
civilisation the Tshis (Ashantis and Fantis) are to the naked, houseless
Australians. Their inland communities, however, are 'mere specks in a vast
tract of impenetrable forest.' The coast people have for centuries been in
touch with Europeans, but the 'Tshi-speaking races are now much in the
same condition, both socially and morally, as they were at the time of the
Portuguese discovery.'[23]
Nevertheless, Major Ellis explains their Supreme Being as the result of
European influence! _A priori_ this appears highly improbable. That a
belief should sweep over all these specks in impenetrable forest, from
the coast-tribes in contact with Europeans, and that this belief should,
though the most recent, be infinitely the least powerful, cannot be
regarded as a plausible hypothesis. Moreover, on Major Ellis's theory the
Supreme Beings of races which but recently came for the first time in
contact with Europeans, Supreme Beings kept jealously apart from European
ken, and revered in the secrecy of ancient mysteries, must also, by
parity of reason, be the result of European influence. Unfortunately,
Major Ellis gives no evidence for his statements about the past history of
Tshi religion. Authorities he must have, and references would be welcome.
'With people in the condition in which the natives of the Gold Coast now
are, religion is not in any way allied with moral ideas.'[24] We have given
abundant evidence that among much more backward tribes morals rest on a
religious sanction. If this be not so on the Gold Coast we cannot accept
these relatively advanced Fantis and Ashantis as representing the
'original' state of ethics and religion, any more than those people with
cities, a king, a priesthood, iron, and gold, represent the 'original'
material condition of society. Major Ellis also shows that the Gods exact
chastity from aspirants to the priesthood.[25] The present beliefs
of the Gold Coast are kept up by organised priesthoods as 'lucrative
business.'[26] Where there is no lucre and no priesthood, as among more
backward races, this kind of business cannot be done. On the Gold Coast
men can only approach gods through priests.[27] This is degeneration.
Obviously, if religion began in a form relatively pure and moral, it
_must_ degenerate, as civilisation advances, under priests who 'exploit'
the lucrative, and can see no money in the pure elements of belief and
practice. That the lucrative elements in Christianity were exploited by
the clergy, to the neglect of ethics, was precisely the complaint of the
Reformers. From these lucrative elements the creed of the Apostles was
free, and a similar freedom marks the religion of Australia or of the
Pawnees. We cannot possibly, then, expect to find the 'original' state
of religion among a people subdued to a money-grubbing priesthood, like
the Tshi races. Let religion begin as pure as snow, it would be corrupted
by priestly trafficking in its lucrative animistic aspect. And priests are
developed relatively late.
Major Ellis discriminates Tshi gods as--
1. General, worshipped by an entire tribe or more tribes.
2. Local deities of river, hill, forest, or sea.
3. Deities of families or corporations.
4. Tutelary deities of individuals.
The second class, according to the natives, were appointed by the first
class, who are 'too distant or indifferent to interfere ordinarily in
human affairs.' Thus, the Huron god, Ahone, punishes nobody. He is all
sweetness and light, but has a deputy god, called Okeus. On our hypothesis
this indifference of high gods suggests the crowding out of the great
disinterested God by venal animistic competition. All of class II. 'appear
to have been originally malignant.' Though, in native belief, class I.
was prior to, and 'appointed' class II., Major Ellis thinks that malignant
spirits of class II. were raised to class I. as if to the peerage, while
classes III. and IV. 'are clearly the product of priesthood'--therefore
late.
Major Ellis then avers that when Europeans reached the Gold Coast, in the
fifteenth century, they 'appear to have found' a Northern God, Tando, and
a Southern God, Bobowissi, still adored. Bobowissi makes thunder and rain,
lives on a hill, and receives, or received, human sacrifices. But, 'after
an intercourse of some years with Europeans,' the villagers near European
forts 'added to their system a new deity, whom they termed Nana Nyankupon.
This was the God of the Christians, borrowed from them, and adapted under
a new designation, meaning 'Lord of the sky.' (This is conjectural.
_Nyankum_ = rain. _Nyansa_ has 'a later meaning, "craft."')[28]
Now Major Ellis, later, has to contrast Bosman's account of fetishism
(1700) with his own observations. According to Bosman's native source of
information, men then selected their own fetishes. These are _now_
selected by priests. Bosman's authority was wrong--or priesthood has
extended its field of business. Major Ellis argues that the revolution
from amateur to priestly selection of fetishes could not occur in
190 years, 'over a vast tract of country, amongst peoples living in
semi-isolated communities, in the midst of pathless forests, where there
is but little opportunity for the exchange of ideas, _and where we know
they have been uninfluenced by any higher race_.'
Yet Major Ellis's theory is that this isolated people _were_ influenced
by a higher race, to the extent of adopting a totally new Supreme Being,
from Europeans, a being whom they in no way sought to propitiate, and who
was of no practical use. And this they did, he says, not under priestly
influence, but in the face of priestly opposition.[29]
Major Ellis's logic does not appear to be consistent. In any case we ask
for evidence how, in the 'impenetrable forests' did a new Supreme Deity
become universally known? Are we certain that travellers (unquoted) did
not discover a deity with no priests, or ritual, or 'money in the
concern,' later than they discovered the blood-stained, conspicuous,
lucrative Bobowissi? Why was Nyankupon, the supposed new god of a new
powerful set of strangers, left wholly unpropitiated? The reverse was to
be expected.
Major Ellis writes: 'Almost certainly the addition of one more to an
already numerous family' of gods, 'was strenuously resisted by the
priesthood,' who, confessedly, are adding now lower gods every day! Yet
Nyankupon is universally known, in spite of priestly resistance.
Nyankupon, I presume = Anzambi, Anyambi, Nyambi, Nzambi, Anzam, Nyam, the
Nzam of the Fans, 'and of all Bantu coast races, the creator of man,
plants, animals, and the earth; he takes no further interest in the
affair.'[30] The crowd of _spirits_ take only too much interest; and,
therefore, are the lucrative element in religion.
It is not very easy to believe that Nyam, under all his names, was picked
up from the Portuguese, and passed apparently from negroes to Bantu all
over West Africa, despite the isolation of the groups, and the resistance
of the priesthood among tribes 'uninfluenced by any higher race.'
Nyam, like Major Ellis's class I., appoints a subordinate god to do his
work: he is truly good, and governs the malevolent spirits.[31]
The spread of Nyankupon, as described by Major Ellis, is the more
remarkable, since 'five or six miles from the sea, or even less, the
country was a _terra incognita_ to Europeans,'[32] Nyankupon was, it is
alleged, adopted, because our superiority proved Europeans to be
'protected by a deity of greater power than any of those to which they
themselves' (the Tshi races) 'offered sacrifices.'
Then, of course, Nyankupon would receive the best sacrifices of all, as
the most powerful deity? Far from that, Nyankupon received no sacrifice,
and had no priests. No priest would have a traditional way of serving him.
As the unlucky man in Voltaire says to his guardian angel, 'It is well
worth while to have a presiding genius,' so the Tshis and Bantu might
ironically remark, 'A useful thing, a new Supreme Being!' A quarter of a
continent or so adopts a new foreign god, and leaves him _planté là_;
unserved, unhonoured, and unsung. He therefore came to be thought too
remote, or too indifferent, 'to interfere directly in the affairs of the
world.' 'This idea was probably caused by the fact that the natives had
not experienced any material improvement in their condition ... although
they also had become followers of the god of the whites.'[33]
But that was just what they had not done! Even at Magellan's Straits, the
Fuegians picked up from a casual Spanish sea-captain and adored an image
of Cristo. Name and effigy they accepted. The Tshi people took neither
effigy nor name of a deity from the Portuguese settled among them. They
neither imitated Catholic rites nor adapted their own; they prayed not,
nor sacrificed to the 'new' Nyankupon. Only his name and the idea of his
nature are universally diffused in West African belief. He lives in no
definite home, or hill, but 'in Nyankupon's country.' Nyankupon, at the
present day, is 'ignored rather than worshipped,' while Bobowissi has
priests and offerings.
It is clear that Major Ellis is endeavouring to explain, by a singular
solution (namely, the borrowing of a God from Europeans), and that
a solution improbable and inadequate, a phenomenon of very wide
distribution. Nyankupon cannot be explained apart from Taaroa, Puluga,
Ahone, Ndengei, Dendid, and Ta-li-y-Tochoo, Gods to be later described,
who cannot, by any stretch of probabilities, be regarded as of European
origin. All of these represent the primeval Supreme Being, more or less
or altogether stripped, under advancing conditions of culture, of his
ethical influence, and crowded out by the horde of useful greedy ghosts or
ghost gods, whose business is lucrative. Nyankupon has no pretensions to
be, or to have been a 'spirit.'[34]
Major Ellis's theory is a natural result of his belief in a tangle of
polytheism as 'the original state of religion.' If so, there was not much
room for the natural development of Nyankupon, in whom 'the missionaries
find a parallel to the Jahveh of the Jews.'[35] On our theory Nyankupon
takes his place in the regular process of the corruption of theism by
animism.