| or 'forebears'. The real point, though, is that the word used to translate 'ancestral spirt' (rather than 'ancestor'), which in Bantu languages is most frequently a variant on the root -zim-, is assigned to a noun class different from that used for living persons or animals. Kopytoff attempts to hoist me with my own petard when he claims that I admit to the several possible meanings of this term, but the fact remains that while living being classes can be and are used to gloss the words we translate as 'elder' etc. to render 'ancestor', the reverse is not true. An elder among the Luguru may possess an mtsimu (pl. mitsimu); he cannot be one unless he is dead. As I also noted before, it is significant that in Swahili the only other words used to describe things which are assigned to this class (commonly used for trees, plants, rivers, mountains, the moon) are those we gloss (I would say 'translate') as god, mungu, pl. miungu and prophet, mtume, pl. mitume.
Kopytoff also chooses to disregard my other point: that in Ndebele the word used for ancestral spirit has the root -loz- (-loy- -log- and -loj- are cognates and connote witchcraft/sorcery). From this I developed the hypothesis I have discussed widely with African colleagues and with which they concur: namely, that there exists a spiritual power which can be tapped licitly or illicitly. The elder can tap it by way of the ancestral spirits to uphold his authority. The witch can tap it by his/her evil powers. But the source of the spiritual power tapped is the same.
As I made clear in my original article, I found myself in general agreement with much of what Kopytoff said, and am grateful to him for giving me the stimulus to carry out further research.
J.L. Brain
State University of New York
New Paltz
Brain, James L. 1973. Ancestors as elders in Africa: further thoughts. Africa 43, 122-33.
Kopytoff, Igor 1971. Ancestors as elders in Africa. Africa 41, 129-42.
Followers of the controversy that Igor Kopytoff's paper 'Ancestors as elders in Africa' has stimulated may be forgiven a certain bemusement, for whilst Kopytoff is claiming a different methodology ('cultural semantics') it is not clear that he is saying anything positively different from his adversaries. He is of course making a number of negative, polemical points, largely to do with the dangers of false conceptualisation, but these points (whose problematical substantiation has been demonstrated in recent correspondence) do not clear the way to any new interpretation of the role of ancestors, or of elders. I wonder whether the trouble does not lie with the view, which all |
parties seem to have accepted (and which is reflected in the heading to this correspondence), that what most characterises African ancestors, or elders, is their authority.
Let us return to the common Bantu terms that Kopytoff (I think very profitably) focuses upon: the nominal or adjectival stem -kulu (Guthrie's CSS*-kúdù) that can be associated with the verbal radical -kula (Guthrie's *-kúd-). The latter is general to a very large number of Bantu languages and has the virtually constant meaning 'to grow up', 'to grow (instransive)', 'to mature'. Where we have detailed accounts of the contexts of its use (e.g. Bemba or Ndembu) it is clear that when the word is used of persons the growth so denoted is both physical and social, and that it does not happen all at once but is gradual and relative (cf Turner 1968: 83; Richards 1956: 121 sqq. and Appendix A). The nominal and adjectival form, -kulu, often carries the sense of 'adult', 'grown-up' or 'mature' but it also appears frequently in kinship terms and other words denoting relative status, meaning 'elder', 'senior' or simply 'big' in the sense of socially important. Kopytoff's own suggested gloss is the French grand- an imaginative translation since this term did in fact come into our own kinship terminology to distinguish very much the same categories of kin (grandparents, grandchildren) that are distinguished by the Bantu -kulu (e.g. Bemba shikulu, grandfather, mwishikulu, grandchild). Returning, however, to the Bantu word, the point to make is that -kulu, even when its sense is simplest and most matter of fact (as in the Swazi 'great hut' of a homestead, indlunkulu, or Luganda mukulu meaning 'headman' or 'boss'), its reference is still intrinsically social and relative. Hence its widespread use in kinship terms - a feature that Kopytoff largely ignores. It is used to distinguish older from younger siblings (as in Ganda, Luba, Kikuyu, Kaguru) but even more commonly it distinguishes generations - the senior or 'grown' parents from those who are more immediately parents, the extended or 'grown' children from those who are more immediately a person's children. The former distinction, that is -kulu in grand-parental terms, is variable and exists alongside other terms for grandparents (e.g. the Swazi alternatives of babe'mkulu or gogo for grandfather) but the word for grandchild in eastern and southern Bantu languages is extraordinarily constant; Nyoro mwijukuru, Gisu umwitzukhulu, Kuria mocokoro, Ambo musikulu, Gogo mwizukulu, Nyanja mdzukulu, Ndembu mwijikulu, Zulu mzikulu, and so on. In all these terms -kulu (or -koro) is clearly present, associated with an only slightly less constant middle element -iju/-itzu-/-co-/-iji-/-zi-. How one should derive this term etymologically as a series in common Bantu is open to doubt: my |
