The Didemic Diarchic Boni

THE DISCUSSION about what are commonly called dual systems (variants: dual organizations, tribal halves, Zwei-Klassen Systeme, Dual-Ordnungen, tweedelingen, tweeeenheidsbeginsels, etc.), carried on for so many years, will only lead us to significant results when a more refined taxonomy becomes more or less generally accepted. At present this is not the case, not by a far cry. Therefore, I think, it is as yet too early to try to formulate hypotheses thought to be possibly of a more or less general validity. But what can always be done, in the meantime, is to augment the already available empirical material on which future generalizations must rest. Now in this paper the reader should not expect more than just that. What needs explanation is, however, the reason for my using two distinct terms in the title above. I may suppose that the interested reader will have guessed that there is some purpose behind it, a purpose other than a predilection for using Greek (or Latin). That guess is right. The use of two technical terms, both old and yet new, foreshadows creation of the much-needed taxonomy. The number of terms available is large enough, but since some of them, like dualism, moiety, have but vague connotations, I suggest that didemic and diarchic express what I want to describe in a more precise manner. When I call the Boni hunters' didemic, I mean to say that I suppose that their villages 'invariably' comprise two wards each consisting of a 'kindred' (and not necessarily of a 'deme' in the sense Murdock used the term). By adding that they are diarchic I sum up a number of traits belonging to what may be called (for convenience) the political sphere, and come to the conclusion that two (village) headmen wield authority side by side and at the same time, an institution called Doppel-Hduptlingstum byJensen. In any future comparative study, I think that it would be much less fruitful to compare 'dualities' in several cultures than e.g. to consider either dicephalous systems as they operate(d) among Galla, Pokomo, or Nyakyusa (to mention a few cases), or didemic organization in a Boni camp, in Lamu town or in Mogadishu, and in the symmetrical kraals of the Zulu. Likewise one could legitimately compare the diarchy of the Kikuyu sub-tribes with the diarchy in ancient Carthage, in Pharaonic Egypt, or in the merchant town of Merca.2 And only then should we begin to know something about various forms of dualism-at least in Africa. All the same this is not to gainsay the usefulness of a preliminary survey as Jensen or Haekel made some ten years ago. What is apparent is that we must carry on, formulate problems, put forward hypotheses, test them, arrive at some theory, and see whether in the long run we can explain the existence or non-existence of 'dual systems', and the form in which they appear. According to current ethnological thought the so-called 'helot hunters' or hunting nomads3 of East and North-East Africa are thought to belong either to the BushmenHottentot group of tribes, left far behind on the common trail, or to the Protohamitic forerunners of the main Hamitic invasion from the north, the bulk of which consists of Galla, Somali, and kindred peoples farther north. Some think they are of composite

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