As to Utikxo, Mr. Beiderbecke, like Dr. Callaway, thinks that Kaffirs, living near Hottentots, borrowed their name for god, Tixo (Utikxo), and dropped Unkulunkulu. Among the Ovaherero, in a region 'which had not yet been under the influence of civilisation and Christianity' (1873), Mr. Beiderbecke found that a god called Karunga was believed in. 'Look at our oxen and sheep: is it not Karunga who has made us so rich,' as Jehovah made the Israelites? Mukuru was used by believers in Kuringa as the name for the missionaries' God. Mukuru 'is in Otyihereró the name for god.' The derivation is unknown, but Omurunga, the sacred fan-palm tree, must be derived from Omuru, not Omuru from Omurunga. The Otyihereró word for spirit differs from both: it is Otyimbosi. As a god, Karunga seems to have no sacrifices: these are made to ancestral spirits. Karunga does not appear to be offended by sin, but this seems merely to be inferred from his receiving no atonement, as the spirits do. When people are dying they say 'Karunga has bid them come.' Traces of him as a creator are very dubious, but rain, thunder, and so on come from him, as proverbial sayings prove, and he is prayed to in time of danger—the prayers may be post-Christian. The Omuambo creation tale, or one of the tales, makes Kalunga, like Morimo, come out of the earth, and create men and women. He is no ghost. 'They also had ghosts,' the witness said, I but Kalunga was quite a distinct and unique being.'[25]
My bias in favour of my own theory is unconcealed, but I conceive that South African belief in a god, 'a unique being,' indicates itself in Mr. Beiderbecke's evidence.
There are different words for this being and for ghosts and spirits; though in other cases philology finds cognate African words for both.
Dr. Callaway concludes: 'It appears that in the native mind there is scarcely any idea of deity, if any at all, wrapped up in their sayings about a heavenly chief. When it is applied to God it is simply the result of teaching. Among themselves he is not regarded as the Creator, nor as the preserver of men; but as a power, it may be nothing more than an earthly chief, still celebrated by name—a relic of the king worship of the Egyptians; another form of ancestor-worship'—only he is not worshipped![26] Dr. Callaway, a most impartial inquirer, has given several cases of very old Zulus, who in childhood heard from their elders about a creator, a creative lord. But this excellent collector had just a trifle of most justifiable bias. He was arguing to prove that Unkulunkulu, Uthlanga, Utikxo, and the rest were not safe equivalents to be used by missionaries for God. And they were not safe equivalents. Umpengula argued that point to perfection. Unkulunkulu, he said, was a name to deceive children with; you must not come to us with a new great god, and call him by the name of a being whom every adult Zulu despises.[27] But that the name was despised, say in 1860, by 'convinced manes-worshippers,' by no means proves the non-existence of a higher belief in the past. Mr. Ridley deemed Baiame a fit name for the Christian God: probably it was imprudent to employ it in teaching natives.
Urged by his justifiable objection to the use of native names to indicate the Christian God, Dr. Callaway, in the conclusion just quoted, forgot, or had abandoned, his opinion that the evidence of old Zulus represented a blending of beliefs, beginning with 'a primitive faith in a heavenly Lord or Creator.'[28] I entirely go with his conclusion that the natives at large, of his generation, did not regard 'the heavenly chief as the Creator or preserver of men,' and that 'they had scarcely any notion of deity at all.' But, on the evidence collected from very old people by Dr. Callaway, I feel disposed to think it probable enough that, under stress of military life, conquest, and ancestor-worship, the Zulus may have forgotten and almost obliterated the higher belief which the old men had heard of in their infancy. If so, the Zulus fall into the general line of my argument. Their faint traditions (as in the case of Atahocan) have dwindled to children's tales. They are not the 'theoplasm' of a god who was in course of becoming. But, of course, it may be argued that these faint rudiments came in, with Utikxo, through the Hottentots, who picked them up in conversation with the Dutch. This process, however, does not apply to the belief in superior beings, carefully concealed from the native women, the children, and the Europeans, by the Australians. Nor does it apply to the American Kiehtan, Ahone, Andouagni, Atahocan, and many others. Such are the hesitating conclusions which I venture to draw from what we are told about religion among the peoples of South Africa. In favour of my theory is the fact that the oldest evidence, that of persons born before the genius of Chaka revolutionised Zulu life, agrees with what I expect to find, a creative tradition.
The success of either of the competing theories—that which sees elements of a high religion among low savages, and that which denies the existence of these elements—does not appear to me to affect our ideas about 'the truth of religion.' Each theory regards religion as a thing evolved by mankind in accordance with their essential nature. The only question is as to the sequence of stages of evolution. Suppose that the beginning of religion was (as in my hypothesis) regard for a maker and father, who was credited with sanctioning morality, and, in some cases, with rewarding or punishing the good or bad in a future life. These ideas occur in modern religion. But the circumstance that they also occurred in primitive religion would not prove modern religion to be 'true.' It would only prove that the men who evolved primitive religion were really human: very like their descendants. Why not? They did not produce the higher ideas pure: or at least, as we find them, they are always contaminated, soften overlaid, by myths of every degree of absurdity and viciousness. But it is to be observed that the faith of primitive man, as far as it is represented by the evidence which I offer as to very backward man, had not some of the worst elements of the creeds of more advanced races. Sacrifices there were none. But when agriculture arose, it brought with it hecatombs of human sacrifices, especially if we agree with Mr. Frazer's theory stated in 'The Golden Bough.' So far it cannot be doubted that, as man advanced in social progress, he became more deeply stained with religious cruelty. In similar fashion the religion of peace and goodwill came to be accompanied, thanks to the nature of mankind, by religious cruelties as barbarous as those of the Aztecs. Tantæ molis erat: so hard has it been to elevate the race in any one direction without introducing new depressions in other directions.
[1] Folk Lore, March 1901, p. 21. Presidential address.
[2] Callaway, Religion of the Amazulu, p. 10 1868.
[3] Primitive Culture, ii. pp. 312, 313, 1873.