The River-God and the Historians

Myth in the Shire Valley and Elsewhere

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8978147
AutoresChristopher Wrigley (autor correspondente)
Ano1988
Volume29
Fascículo3
Páginas367-383
Data de publicação1988-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Journal of African History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s002185370003053x
OpenAlexW1979199346
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas20

Debates over the ‘Zimba’ period of Zambesian history prompt a new consideration of the mythical element in oral traditions. The work of Matthew Schoffeleers on Mbona, presiding spirit of a famous rain-shrine in southern Malawi, is exploited in order to cast doubt on his reconstruction of sixteenth/seventeenth-century political history. It is suggested that Mbona was the serpentine power immanent in the Zambesi; that reports of his ‘martyrdom’ at the hands of a secular ruler are versions of an ancient and widespread myth of the lightning and the rainbow, whose opposition establishes the due alternation of the seasons and the generations; that his journey to, and subsequent flight from, Kaphiri-ntiwa, scene of the Maravi Creation myth, is a variant of the visit made to the sky by Kintu, the ‘First Man’ of Ganda tradition, who introduced sex and death to middle-earth. It is not very likely that such stories attest the rise of a great military state c . 1600 and the ensuing suppression of religious institutions. Comparative mythology (which does not have to be technically ‘structuralist’) has positive as well as negative uses for the historian. The peoples of southern Uganda, Zaire, Zambia and Malawi appear to share a common heritage of religious thought and practice and there must be a historical basis for this cultural affinity. At the same time, differences between the myths reflect recent political divergence: whereas successful states such as those of the Ganda and Luba became more secular, the Mbona cult alone survived the disasters that overwhelmed southern Malawi in the nineteenth century

Ancient history · Archaeology · Cult · Mythology · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Ruler · Shire · State (computer science · African history and culture analysis · African history and culture studies · Classics · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law