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The Left Hand of the Mugwe: An Analytical Note on the Structure of Meru Symbolism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

Rodney Needham
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Extract

In his admirable study of the Mugwe, a religious dignitary among the Meru of Kenya, Bernardi reports a singular fact which raises a problem of comparative and theoretical interest: viz. that the left hand of the Mugwe possesses and symbolizes his ritual power. The issue is best seen, to begin with, in the following passage:

Among the Imenti [a sub-tribe] an unusual aspect of the people's conception of the Mugwe concerns his left hand. It is this hand…that should always hold the kiragu [insignia] and be used only to bless. It is a most sacred member of the Mugwe's body and no one is allowed to see it. During the day, the Mugwe spends his time playing kiothi, the Meru draughts, but even while he plays, he must always keep his left hand covered and no one must see it. Sudden death would overtake anyone who dared to look at the left hand of the Mugwe.

Résumé

LA MAIN GAUCHE DU MUGWE

Le Mugwe est un dignitaire religieux chez les Meru de Kenya. Il exerce son autorité par le pouvoir de sa bénédiction. Le problème réside dans le fait que le Mugwe de la sous-tribu Imenti bénit de la main gauche et que c'est cette main qui est sacrée. Cela est surprenant pour des raisons comparatives les plus générates: en effet c'est la main droite qui est normalement prééminente et sacrée. Le but de cette analyse est de proposer une explication à l'exception que présente le Mugwe.

Dans la société meru traditionnelle il y avait une dichotomie politique en ce qui concernait leur mythe d'origine: d'une part la division du nord (désignée par un mot qui signifie aussi ‘droite’) et de l'autre la division méridionale (connue sous un nom qui signifie probablement aussi ‘gauche’). Ces divisions étaient territoriales et le Mugwe appartenait à l'une d'elles, généralement à celle du sud. On trouve aussi une double division dans l'opposition des épouses supérieures et des épouses inférieures, du groupement des classes d'âge, des hommes et des femmes, et dans certains autres contextes idéologiques. Il existait également une double division de souveraineté entre l'autorité religieuse du Mugwe et le pouvoir politique des anciens.

Se basant sur de tels faits, il est possible de construire un système de classification symbolique dans lequel des paires de termes opposés sont liés analogiquement par un principe de dualisme complémentaire. Le Mugwe se classe dans la série caractérisée par ‘gauche’ et ‘féminin’. Les Ngaju de Bornéo et les Chukchi de Sibérie montrent qu'une fonction religieuse peut bien être associée symboliquement avec le féminin d'une façon fort explicite, et qu'une telle association chez les Meru n'est ni unique ni nécessairement une fausse interprétation de l'ethnographie.

Dans le système de classification symbolique, le Mugwe, par une dichotomie conceptuelle applicable à de nombreux contextes, est assigné à la catégorie de gauche, et il est parfaitement consistent avec ce fait que sa propre main gauche symbolise sa position. Ceci n'est pas déterminé par la classification, mais représente une possibilité symbolique exploitée dans d'autres civilisations. C'est-à-dire, le Mugwe étant assigné à la gauche, sa position symbolique est intensifiée par la valeur attachée à sa main gauche: son caractère de gauche en quelque sorte devient plus gauche par ce moyen évident.

La méthode employée ici dérive des travaux de l'ecole de l'Année Sociologique et de Lévi-Strauss, et est à associer avec les recherches de Hocart et de Dumézil en particulier sur le sujet de la nature de la souveraineté. La fonction du Mugwe pourrait être le mieux comprise, il semble, en se concentrant sur sa place dans la structure, symbolique aussi bien que sociale, qui confère à son état sa signification. Le principe gouverneur de cette structure est le dualisme complémentaire, exprimé dans le domaine de la souveraineté par l'opposition de l'autorité religieuse et profane. Cette opposition fait partie d'un ordre conceptuel discerné au cours de la recherche d'une solution au problème de la main gauche du Mugwe, ordre qui en fait paraît résoudre le problème.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , January 1960 , pp. 20 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1960

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References

page 20 note 1 Bernardi, B., The Mugwe, a Failing Prophet, London, 1959, p. 74.Google Scholar

page 20 note 2 Hertz, Robert, ‘La Prééminence de la main droite: étude sur la polarité religieuse’, Revue Philosophique, vol. lxviii, 1909, pp. 553–80Google Scholar. Also in English translation by R., and Needham, C., in Death and The Right Hand, London (1960).Google Scholar

page 20 note 3 Wile, Ira S., Handedness: Right and Left, Boston, Mass., 1934Google Scholar. (I am indebted to Professor E.Adamson Hoebel for my acquaintance with this useful compilation.)

page 21 note 1 Bernardi, pp. 61, 103, 110, 120. At the ritual of accession among the Imenti the new Mugwe runs with an old woman, keeping hold of her hand: if she dies, he is a fit successor (p. 93). It is not stated by which hand the Mugwe holds hers; and it is unclear if it is because of the touch of his left hand that she dies, though one might infer so, since she is supposed to be overwhelmed by his supernatural power.

page 21 note 2 Wile, pp. 339–40.

page 22 note 1 Needham, R., ‘A Structural Analysis of Purum Society’, American Anthropologist, vol. 60, 1958, pp. 75–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘An Analytical Note on the Kom of Manipur’, Ethnos, vol. 24, 1959Google Scholar (in press).

page 22 note 2 Bernardi, pp. 2–3. It is not clear why Bernardi isolates a literal meaning, implying that only by a kind of extension does the word mean ‘north’. (Cf. Sanskrit dafahina, Hebtew jamīn, Irish dess, ‘right, south’.)

page 22 note 3 Bernardi, pp. 9, 58. Though the clear statement about the equation of red and white clans is highly satisfactory for my present purpose, the triadic division presumably ‘means’ something, and is possibly connected with the number of other contexts in which three seems to have a special significance: see Bernardi, pp. 21, 25–26, 58, 68, 90. Also, Laughton, W. H., The Meru, Nairobi, 1944, pp. 11Google Scholar, 14, 15; Lambert, H. E., Kikuyu Social and Political Institutions, London, 1956, p. 27Google Scholar. Laughton, p. 2, says that it is the red and the black clans which have ‘merged into one group’.

page 23 note 1 Bernardi, p. 9. I understand from Dr. J. H. M. Beattie that umotho or one or other cognate word means ‘left’ in at least some neighbouring Bantu languages. See, e.g., Davis, M. B., Lunyoro-Lunyankole-English … Dictionary, Kampala-London, 1938, p. 95Google Scholar, s.v. moso.

page 23 note 2 Bernardi, pp. 10, 42.

page 23 note 3 Bernardi, pp. 11, 76.

page 23 note 4 Bernardi, p. 10.

page 23 note 5 Bernardi, pp. 21–23. See also, Laughton, p. 4: ‘There is a traditional and ceremonial antipathy between successive age-sets.’

page 23 note 6 Bernardi, pp. 17, 39, 90.

page 24 note 1 Bernardi, pp. 73, 74.

page 24 note 2 Bernardi, pp. 92, 99.

page 24 note 3 Bernardi, pp. 160, 161, 150, 155, 136, 174, 142, 151, 161. This is not to say that the Mugwe is quite without political influence, and we are indeed told that his religious authority is capable of ‘political extension’ (p. 139) and a source of political power which a strong and ambitious man could exploit (p. 161); but this is a contingent matter of fact, whereas I am concerned with a conceptual system.

page 25 note 1 In one myth, God is described as creating man and then woman; but this is said by Bernard: (pp. 52, 55) to be Christian. However, there is still one clear contrary indication: in an invocation by the Mugwe, he refers to his people as ‘male, female … boys and girls ’, which tends to dispose of the idea. Bernardi, pp. 192, 121.

page 25 note 2 Bernardi, pp. 193–4. ‘White ’: lit. umutune, red; cf. the equation of red and white clans.

page 25 note 3 Bernardi, pp. 100–1, 110; Laughton, pp. 3, 5.

page 25 note 4 Cf. Needham, 1958, pp. 97, 99.

page 26 note 1 Bernardi, pp. 139, 152–3.

page 26 note 2 Hardeland, A., Dajacksch-Deutsches Wörterbuch, Amsterdam, 1859, pp. 53–54Google Scholar, s.v. basir; M. Perelaer, T. H., Ethnographische Beschrijving der Dajaks, Zalt-Bommel, 1870, p. 35Google Scholar; Schārer, H., Die Gottesidee der Ngadju-Dajak in Süd-Borneo, Leiden, 1946, pp. 64–67.Google Scholar

page 27 note 1 Bogoras, W., The Chukchee, Leiden-New York, 1909, pp. 449 ff.Google Scholar

page 27 note 2 Bernardi, p. 107.

page 27 note 3 Bernardi at one place even suggests that a referencc to a certain woman could have been ‘an indirect way of referring to the Mugwe ’ (p. 39). Note that these cases relate to the Imenti. I do not overlook the Agepossible relevance of the theme of reversal which so often characterizes ritual; but this is an enormous topic which I cannot broach here.

page 27 note 4 Lambert, H. E., The Systems of Land Tenure in the Kikuyu Land Unit (Communications, School of African Studies, 22), Cape Town, 1950, p. 7Google Scholar; Holding, E. M., ‘Some Preliminary Notes on Meru Agegrades’, Man, vol. xlii, 1942, p. 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laughton, p. 2.

page 28 note 1 Bernardi, p. 95.

page 28 note 2 Bernardi, pp. 13, 39, 60, 91, 94, 138, 139, 159.

page 28 note 3 Bernardi, p. 110.

page 30 note 1 Stenning, D. J., Savannah Nomads, London, 1959, pp. 39–40Google Scholar, 104–5, 106–8. Stenning himself appears not to have paid particular attention to Fulani ideology, and I should like to suggest that a structural analysis to elicit its ruling ideas may prove sociologically illuminating in a most general and profound fashion.

page 30 note 2 Unfortunately, we are not told whether the traditional Meru homestead is orientated or whether the relative positions of its members within it are of any significance. Laughton (p. 9) reports merely that thehutof the owner of the homestead is on the right as one enters, and that the huts of his wives are dislogy, posed anti-clockwise from this; but this, though it suggests a conventional arrangement, is not symbolically informative.

page 30 note 3 Das, T. C., The Purums: an Old Kuki Tribe of Manipur, Calcutta, 1945, pp. 195Google Scholar, 234; cf. Needham, 1958, pp. 90–91, 97.

page 31 note 1 There is a weaker, because less singular, parallel to this among the Ibo. The right hand is clearly superior and the use of the left is prohibited; but warrior who has killed a man with his own hands permitted, as a privilege, to drink with his left. Leonard, L. G., The Lower Niger and its Tribes, London, 1906, p. 310.Google Scholar

page 31 note 2 Hertz, 1909, p. 559.

page 31 note 3 Needham, 1958, p. 97.

page 31 note 4 Durkheim, E. and Mauss, M., ‘De quelques formes primitives de classification: contribution à l'étude des représentations collectives’, Année Sociologique, vol. vi, 1903, pp. 1–72.Google Scholar

page 32 note 1 e.g. Rassers, W. H., De Pandji-Roman, Antwerp, 1922Google Scholar. (It is not generally realized that the Leiden school of anthropology inherited and effectively exploited French sociological ideas at a time when they were all but ignored in Britain and the United States.)

page 32 note 2 Especially Kings and Councillors, Cairo, 1936.

page 32 note 3 Levi-Strauss, C., ‘The Structural Study of Myth’, in Sebeok, T. A. (ed.), Myth: A Symposium, Philadelphia, 1955, pp. 50–66Google Scholar; ‘La Geste d'Asdiwal’, Annuaire 1958–9, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études (Section des Sciences Religieuses), Paris, 1958.Google Scholar

page 32 note 4 Duméil, G., Mitra- Varuna: Essai sur deux représentations indo-européennes de la souveraineté, Paris, 1948 (1st edn. 1940)Google Scholar. At the end of his examination of Indo-European notions of sovereignty, Dumézil makes a brief comparison with the Chinese philosophy of yin-yang and concludes with the observation: ‘Il sera intéressant de confronter le mécanisme indoeuropéen ici dégagé avec d'autres mécanismes que le yang et le yin ’ (p. 211). It is satisfying and intriguing, then, to note how clearly we find in the present African context a Mitra-Varuna type of representation of sovereignty: elders = Mitra, the jurist, associated with this world, the day, masculine, senior, and the right; Mugwe = Varuna, the magician, associated with the other world, night, feminine, junior, and the left. Cf. also Dumézil, , Les Dieux des Indo-Européens, Paris, 1952Google Scholar, ch. ii.

page 32 note 5 Coomaraswamy, A. K., Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government, New Haven, 1942.Google Scholar

page 32 note 6 To pursue an indication of the former constitution of Meru society which I have already touched upon, I should guess that Igoki was the politically dominant moiety, while Nkuene possessed the complementary religious authority of which the presence of the Mugwe was the sign. Cf. also the balance between the social superiority of the wife-givers and the ritual indispensability of the wife-takers in certain systems of asymmetric alliance (Needham, 1958).