Oral Literature in Africa (33 page)

Two examples of the more specialized divination literature will be illustrated here. The examples come from opposite ends of the continent: the praises associated with divining bones among the Sotho of southern Africa, and the highly elaborate Ifa corpus of literature from West Africa.

(i)
Praises of divining bones among the Sotho
³⁵

In Sotho divination an integral part is played by the ritual chants or praises (
lithoko; direto
) associated both with the bones used in divination and with each of the special combinations formed by these bones when thrown by a diviner. Mastery of these oracular poems depends on long training and initiation, and the diviner must know a large number of them before he can practise his art.

The general pattern of divination and its associated literature seems to be constant throughout the Sotho area, though the actual poems differ according to the locality. The divining apparatus itself consists of a set of bones from various animals including cattle. As the diviner begins his session, he handles the bones and praises them, saying, for instance:

You my white ones, children of my parents, Whom I drank from mothers’ breasts! And you many coloured cattle Whom I knew when still on mother’s back, From whose hoofs these chips were cut; Hoofs of cattle black and red and yellow.

(Eiselen, 1932: 11)

Each of the four principal bones in the set (four to twenty in all) has special significance as well as its own name and praises. After praising his bones the diviner makes a throw and notices how the four principal bones have fallen; the first two have four sides each and can thus fall in any of four ways; the second pair are counted as having only two each. Each of these many combinations has a special ‘praise’ associated with it which the diviner then recites. This consists of a title, a poem which is interpreted as alluding to the questioner’s problem, and a direct or indirect suggestion as to the remedy that should be employed. After the recitation, the questioner is led to agree that the verse recited fits his case (Laydevant, 1933: 344).

The enigmatic and allusive nature of these oracular poems can be illustrated from the praise entitled ‘The swimming (fall) of the sunbird’, a poem which illustrates a particular ‘fall’ of the four principal bones. It can be seen how the symbolic expression is susceptible of several interpretations and is not concerned with direct literal prediction:

Sunbird, secret and daring.

When you take a bit of straw,

And say you imitate the hammerkop.

The hammerkop nobody can imitate.

It is the bird of those who take a new garment in the deep waters.

It is taking bits of straw one by one.’

It is building above the pools.

The little sunbird should not fall.

It falls and makes
phususu
in the pools.

It is the patient one sitting at the drift.

The sins are passing and you see them.

The reed of the river is mocking at the reed of the plain.

It says: When the grass is burning.

The reed of the plain is laughing at the reed of the river,

It says: When the rivers get full.

(Laydevant 1933: 349–50)

One interpretation of the verse is that people are trying to kill the questioner by lightning because of his wealth and good luck; they accuse him of imitating a chief and say he must fall. To protect himself he is told to get a feather of a hammerkop, sunbird, or one of the yellow sparrows living in the reeds, ‘a feather of the lightning’, which will guard him. Further allusions are suggested to a Sotho listener, not all of them directly connected with the diviner’s interpretation: the hammerkop is not only commonly associated with lightning, but is also an accepted symbol of power, while the reeds symbolize the common people quarrelling together because of jealousy; the image of the sunbirds falling into the water is an allusion to the circumcision rites of Sotho girls (Laydevant 1933: 351).

Jealousy and discord are very common themes. In the fall named ‘The Fame of the Lamp’ the diviner alludes, through the image of an elephant, to a chief who is spreading enmity between his sons while even the nation takes part in the quarrel. It is suggested that the people must be treated with medicine from the horn:

O female elephant,

O elephant, I have become blind,

O elephant, I have entered secretly.

The path of the enemy was red;

There was blood, there was disorder.

Shake the ear, you running elephant.

That the others should grow and remember your name.

(Laydevant 1933: 369–70).

The next verse briefly and effectively pictures the hatred between a man’s co-wives. One of them feels she is persecuted on account of the others, and she is given medicine to help her by the diviner:

Child of the tortoise, I am burning, I suffered in my heart,

On account of my smallness of being a tortoise.

(Laydevant 1933: 371)

Again, ‘The Famous
Masibo
(a plant) of the Swimming’:

Swim on the deep waters, lie upon them.

They have no hippo and no little things.

They have no beast of prey biting whilst it moves,

And coiling itself in a corner.

Only the little hippos are swimming.

The big ones do not swim any more.

They rip open and throw out their backs.

Why are the crocodiles quarrelling in the water?

They are quarrelling on account of an old crocodile,

Of many talks in the water.

Which says: I do not bite, I only play;

I shall bite the year after next.

When the mimosa and the willow tree are growing.

(Laydevant 1933: 361)

The crocodile and hippopotamus symbolize the important people who are spreading misunderstanding between their children. The remedy prescribed is to use certain plants, among them the willow tree and the mint.

Other topics introduced are: problems about going on a journey; hunting; illness; signs of good or bad luck. But the obscure and symbolic character of the poems is noticeable in every context, and there is a tendency for both poems and interpretations to be concerned less with definite
predictions than with commenting allusively on some facet of personal relationships. Thus illness is usually dealt with not by predicting a cure or its opposite, but by suggesting the possible enmities and witchcraft that may have given rise to it, alluding to this in poetic and figurative terms. The poems themselves play a central part in the whole divination process, for it is through the imagery of the poetry that the sufferer can recognize his own case. In spite of the conventional nature of the poems there is wide scope for personal interpretations of them in a particular case, a possibility closely connected with their obscure and allusive nature. The flexible application of this oracular literature is added to by the fact that though the poems as a whole seem to be orally transmitted and memorized (with but slight variations) by the diviners, each diviner is also free, if he is able, to compose new praises for the various falls, and ‘is only too glad to show his artistic ability in that kind of poetry’ (Laydevant, 1933: 341). Mantic poetry among the Sotho is developed for its own sake as an artistic form of poetic expression governed by its own conventions as well as for the light it throws on people’s ills and hatreds.

(ii)
Odu Ifa
³⁶

The final example of religious poetry is the oracular literature associated with divination among the Yoruba of Southern Nigeria. Although this includes prose as well as poetry, it is worth considering here both for its intrinsic interest and for the way it illustrates the complexity there can be in African religious literature.

Before discussing Ifa literature, it is necessary to describe something of the mechanism and beliefs of the Yoruba divination system.
³⁷
Ifa, the Yoruba oracle, is one among the pantheon of Yoruba gods, and as such appears in many (and sometimes contradictory) stories and myths, often
under his alternative title of Orunmila. In one myth, for instance, the gods are depicted as hungry because they received few sacrifices. The trickster god, Eshu, then showed Ifa the system of divination so that as a result men could be helped through the diviners’ skill, while, at the same time, the gods would benefit through the sacrifices and thank-offerings that human beings would be commanded to make by their diviners. Ifa has a special position among the gods. He is both the deity who acts as the intermediary between men and gods, and also in a sense is the impersonal principle of divination by which mankind has access to what is otherwise hidden from them. Ifa thus, as god and as oracle, plays a central part in Yoruba religious and everyday life:

Ifa is the master of today;

Ifa is the master of tomorrow;

Ifa is the master of the day after tomorrow;

To Ifa belongs all the four days

Created by Orisa into this world.

(Abimbola 1965: 4)

The Ifa divination system is a highly elaborate one. It rests on a series of mathematical permutations, the principle of which must be grasped in order to understand the way in which certain pieces of literature are associated with each of these. The permutations of figures (
odu
) are based on two columns of four units each, and the different combinations which these eight units may form between them. The total number of figures is 256, each with its own name and associated literature. It is only after obtaining one of the figures to form the basis of his utterance that the diviner can proceed to the divination itself.

There are two main ways of obtaining the figures. The first, less elaborate mechanism consists of a chain or cord of eight half-seeds (often split mango stones), divided into two portions of four half-seeds each. When this is thrown down by the diviner, the resultant figure makes two columns of four units each, the exact combination depending on whether the seeds have fallen convex- or concave-side-up. The other way of obtaining a figure, a longer method used in important consultations, is with a set of sixteen palm-nuts and a small board. The diviner throws or passes the nuts rapidly from one hand to the other. If either one or two nuts are left in the right hand, the throw is valid and he makes a corresponding mark on his board: a double mark for one nut, a single for two. The process is repeated eight times and eight marks are thus made in the dust on the tray; these start from the bottom right-hand side and are laid out in the form of two parallel columns of four sets of marks each. This gives the same result as the
eight-seed chain, the double mark corresponding to a seed convex-side-up, a single mark to the concave.

Table showing the names and structure of the columns which form the basis of Ifa figures (
odu
)
³⁸
(from Parrinder 1961: 141; Abraham 1958: 276)

The order of the odu figures also has some significance in the full divination process. The one here is the most commonly found, but there are regional variations. (see Bascom 1961)