Water Spirits Research Articles

The Waters and Water Spirits in Votian Folk Belief

The Waters and Water Spirits in Votian Folk Belief

Genii of the River Niger

The river Niger, a source of life and danger for the people in impoverished eastern Mali, is also the origin of elaborate mythology. From his travels through Mali and down the in a dugout canoe, Jean-Marie Gibbal has created a personal documentary of the cultures of the region. The result is at once an ethnography of cultures in crisis and a evocation of the environment and people he encountered. Gibbal portrays the river as the dominant, cohesive force among people in the face of social and environmental strife. He focuses on the Ghimbala healing cult, which centres on the river, and how the cult structures social relations in the region. Gibbal relates the Ghimbala rites, nocturnal ceremonies of spirit possession and seance which animate the water spirits, or genii, that inhabit the river. The genii, he finds, provide the strength of social identity in a world where famine and competing versions of Islam threaten to overpower traditional culture. In its original French publication, Genii of the River Niger was honoured with an Alexandra David-Neel literary prize in 1989.

Mammy Water: In Search of the Water Spirits of Nigeria

Mammy Water: In Search of the Water Spirits of Nigeria

A Month for the Entertainment of Spirits; Mammy Water In Search of the Water Spirits in Nigeria

. Month for the Entertainment of Spirits. 1992. video by Kean Gibson. 30 minutes, color. Purchase $250; rental $50.Mammy Water: In Search of the Water Spirits in Nigeria. 1991. film by Sabine Jell‐Bahlsen. 59 minutes, color. Purchase $995 16mm, $295 video; rental $60.

Kauṇḍinya, Preah Thaong, and the "Nāgī Somā": Some Aspects of a Cambodian Legend

Legendary reports about the origin of Cambodia and of its early ruling dynasties can be found in ancient Chinese texts, Cambodian royal annals and folktales, all of which mingle various traditions and historical events and add mythical trimmings and motifs. Thes mythical aspects are both indigenous and Indian. Of central importance is the presence of a supernatural ancestress, in whom the indigenous concept of water spirits is overlain with that of the Indian nāgas, which in the course of Indianization gave the ancestress her name. The Indian notions of a lunar and a solar race are also important. Historical persons (Kaundinya I, II, Liu-ye), personifications or symbols that cannot be identified (the nāga princess) and invented etymologies (Kambu, Merā) must be carefully distinguished.

The Origins of ‘Centaurs’

T HE possible origins of the ancient Greek horse-human hybrid 'centaur' have taxed the learning and ingenuity of many scholars who have approached the problem of this monster's genesis from various angles. Paul Kretschmer, 'Mythische Namen', Glotta, 10 (1920), pp. 50-8, 211-12, offered an etymological explanation of Ktvrcvpa; according to which the word means 'Wasserpeitscher' (water-whipper). According to this explanation 'centaurs' were originally water spirits.' 'In that case, one might believe that they were originally spirits of the precipitous mountain torrents. At all events, their character is rough and violent. They resemble the spirits of wood and wilderness2 which appear in the folklore of northern Europe. They represent the fierce and rough aspects of nature.'3 Martin P. Nilsson, the author of the foregoing quotation, was later to view Kretschmer's etymological explanations with greater scepticism when he stated in his Geschichte der griechischen Religion (Munich 1955), p. 231, 'Die Etymologie und die Deutung der Ursprungs sind unsicher und mogen auf sich beruhen.' Two further authorities regard the etymology of Ktvzvopa; as uncertain.4 The Greeks themselves were not without ideas about the origins of centaurs. Palaiphatos, who was perhaps a contemporary of Aristotle, approached the problem with euhemeristic pragmatism5 and rationalized the myth of Ixion and Nephele whose illusory union led to the birth of Centaurus :6 'When Ixion was king of Thessaly, the country was much plagued by herds of wild cattle. On his offering a reward for their destruction, certain enterprising archers from a village called Nephele went out on horseback and shot them down. Hence arose the tale that Ixion was the father by Nephele (the Cloud) of a race of beings called Kentauroi (prickers of bulls) who were a mixture of man and horse.'7 However, the meaning 'bullprickers' seems to have been as firmly rejected by modern scholars as Kretschmer's 'water-whippers'. Another explanation is given by Plutarch in his Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti (Beasts Are Rational), 990F: 'For men have, in fact, attempted to consort with goats and sows and mares ... From such unions your Minotaurs and Aegipans, and, I suppose, your Sphinxes and Centaurs have arisen.' That centaurs might have been the product of interspecific breeding is a belief that was held not only in classical antiquity, but in seventeenth-century Europe. For example, A. Pare, in chapter 19 of his Des Monstres et Prodiges (1573)8 quotes several 'cases' of half-human, half-animal monsters which are alleged to be the fruit of bestial intercourse. Etymological, allegorical, and physiological approaches to the problem under discussion have so far, it seems, yielded no evidence which wins confidence and compels belief, and many explanations do not reach the level

: Duminea: A Festival for the Water Spirits . University of Ibadan.

: Duminea: A Festival for the Water Spirits . University of Ibadan.

Aspects of the use of copper in pre-colonial West Africa

Copper and its alloys were for centuries staples of the import trade of West Africa, first across the Sahara, then by sea after the opening up of the Guinea Coast. However, little attention has been paid to the reasons behind this ancient and sustained demand. Although the uses of copper were many and changed from time to time and from place to place, the evidence of written, archaeological and artistic sources suggests that they fall largely into four broad and overlapping categories: a medium or standard of exchange, ornamentation, insignia of rank and power, and objects of cult and magic in a narrower sense. The preference for copper and brass over other metals for many purposes appears to have been determined by magic and the ritual properties ascribed to it, as well as by scarcity and practical and aesthetic considerations. Myth and legend may help to elucidate the uses of copper and brass by fitting them into a cosmological framework: thus along the Middle Niger copper is explicitly linked with the génie de l'eau and with myths of creation, while in the Niger Delta brass is frequently associated with the water spirits.

Medicines and Fetishes in Igala

Opening ParagraphThe Igala-speaking peoples of Nigeria live in the middle belt zone of that country, close to the confluence of the river Niger and the river Benue. Ancestor cults of various kinds are central to their religious system, but there is also an important cult of the earth as well as cults of diverse spirits known collectively as ẹbọ. The latter includes the spirit of smallpox, Iye, spirits associated with water, called Alijenu, and other spirits inhabiting the fringes of cultivated land. Culturally the Igala have many close affinities with the Yoruba from whom they are separated geographically by the intervening Niger and the settlements of other peoples. But the main emphases of Igala religion are slightly different from those of Yoruba religion. Thus the cult of ẹbọ which in a rudimentary way resembles the cult of orisha among the Yoruba occupies a more marginal place in Igala religion than the orisha cults do in the Yoruba system of belief. Ancestors and the earth cults play a more direct and central role in Igala than in Yoruba. One belief which appears to be basic to both systems of thought, however, is the belief in medicine, called ogwu in Igala. Yoruba beliefs about medicine have not been published in enough detail to make systematic comparison possible. But it is hoped that the account given here of the Igala side of the picture may stimulate further work on this potentially interesting comparison.

Research Items

THE RELIGION OF MENTAWEI.—Mentawei Islands, lying west of Sumatra, owing to political conditions, have received more attention from Dutch and German than from English-speaking ethnologists. They were, however, visited in 1926 by Mr. Edwin M. Loeb, as a, research scholar of the University of California, and he has now published an account of the religious organisation of the Pageh group of islands in the Publications in American Archceology and Ethnology, vol. 25, No. 2 of that University. He deals more especially with the punen system. The punen is the community religious festival (as distinct from the lia or family festival) which is attended by all members of the uma, the communal house. The festival is of long duration, sometimes lasting for years. It takes place at the building of a new communal house, the choice of a new priest, the making of a new field, the spilling of blood in the village, an epidemic, and so forth. The main ceremonial acts are the slaughter of pigs and chickens, the sacrifice of their livers and haruspication. The souls of the dead members of the uma are invoked to return, and imitative dances are held, and towards the end of the festival monkeys, deer, and sea turtle are hunted. All men sleep in the uma and sexual intercourse is taboo. The religious beliefs of the Mentawei Islands are animistic. They believe in nature spirits, souls, and ghosts; but the nature spirits, with a few exceptions, are not given names. They are the spirits in the sea, the jungle, and so forth. The exceptions are a god who causes earthquakes, the original meaning of his name being ‘grandfather’. It is on account of this god that a human sacrifice used to be offered at the building of the uma. Other specially designated gods are two water spirits, the first being propitious if due sacrifices are offered and no ritual sin has been committed, and the second is evil. The soul cult is specially directed to the preservation of health and long life, while ghosts are the bringers of disease to whom prayer is offered for purposes of witchcraft, and to whom sacrifice is made only when they have entered a village bringing sickness, to induce them to go away.