The two ghosts having been thus safely lodged in the two precious parcels, the next thing was to install them in the temple, where they were to enter on their career of beneficent activity. A site having been chosen, the whole country supplied the labour necessary for building the temple; and ministers were appointed to wait upon the dead king. The officers of state who had held important posts during his life retained their titles and continued to discharge their duties towards their old master in death. Accordingly houses were built for them near the temple. The dowager queen also took up her residence at the entrance to the temple enclosure, and became its principal guardian. Many also of the king's widows of lower rank were drafted off to live inside the enclosure and keep watch over it. When the queen or any of these widows died, her place was supplied by another princess or a [pg 171] woman of the same clan; for the temple was maintained in perpetuity. However, when the reigning king died, the temple of his predecessor lost much of its importance, though it was still kept up in a less magnificent style; indeed no temple of a dead king was allowed to disappear altogether.[448] Of all the attendants at the temple the most important probably was the prophet or medium (mandwa), whose business it was from time to time to be inspired by the ghost of the deceased monarch and to give oracles in his name. To this holy office he dedicated himself by drinking a draught of beer and a draught of milk out of the dead king's skull.[449]
Oracles given by the dead kings of Uganda by the mouth of an inspired prophet.
The temple consecrated to the worship of a king regularly stood on a hill. The site was generally chosen by the king in his life, but sometimes his choice was set aside by his successor, who gave orders to build the temple in another place.[450] The structure was a large conical or bee-hive-shaped hut of the ordinary pattern, divided internally into two chambers, an outer and an inner. Any person might enter the outer chamber, but the inner was sacred and no profane person might set foot in it; for there the holy relics of the dead king, his jawbone and his navel-string, were kept for safety in a cell dug in the floor, and there, in close attendance on them, the king's ghost was believed to dwell. In front of the partition which screened this Holy of Holies from the gaze of the multitude there stood a throne, covered with lion and leopard skins and fenced off from the rest of the sacred edifice by a glittering rail of brass spears, shields, and knives. A forest of poles, supporting the roof, formed a series of aisles in perfect line, and at the end of the central nave appeared, like the altar of a Christian church, the throne in all its glory. When the king's ghost held a reception, the holy relics, the jawbone and the navel-string, each in its decorated wrappings, were brought forth and set on the throne; and every person who entered the temple bowed to the ground [pg 172] and greeted the jawbone in an awestruck voice, for he regarded it as the king in person. Solemn music played during the reception, the drums rolling and the women chanting, while they clapped their hands to the rhythm of the songs. Sometimes the dead king spoke to the congregation by the voice of his prophet. That was a great event. When the oracle was about to be given to the expectant throng, the prophet stepped up to the throne, and addressing the spirit informed him of the business in hand. Then he smoked one or two pipes, and the fumes bringing on the prophetic fit, he began to rave and to speak in the very voice and with the characteristic turns of speech of the departed monarch, for the king's spirit was now in him. This message from the world beyond the grave was naturally received with rapt attention. Gradually the fit of inspiration passed: the voice of the prophet resumed its natural tones: the spirit had departed from him and returned to its abode in the inner room. Such a solemn audience used to be announced beforehand by the beating of the drums in the early morning, and the worshippers brought with them to the temple offerings of food for the dead king, as if he were still alive.[451]
Visit paid by the living king to the temple of his dead father. Human victims sacrificed in order that their ghosts might serve the ghost of the dead king.
But the greatest day of all was when the reigning king visited the temple of his father. This he did as a rule only once during his reign. Nor did the people approve of the visits being repeated, for each visit was the signal for the death of many. Yet, attracted by a painful curiosity, crowds assembled, followed the monarch to the temple, and thronged to see the great ceremony of the meeting between the king and the ghost of his royal father. The sacred relics were displayed: an old man explained them to the monarch and placed them in his hands: the prophet, inspired by the dead king's spirit, revealed to the living king his destiny. The interview over, the king was carried back to his house. It was on the return journey that he always gave, suddenly and without warning, the signal of death. Obedient to his [pg 173] orders the guards rushed upon the crowd, captured hundreds of spectators, pinioned them, marched them back to the temple, and slaughtered them within the precincts, that their ghosts might wait on the ghost of the dead king.[452] But though the king rarely visited his father's ghost at the temple, he had a private chapel for the ghost within the vast enclosure of the royal residence; and here he often paid his devotions to the august spirit, of whom he stood greatly in awe. He took his wives with him to sing the departed monarch's praise, and he constantly made offerings at the shrine. Thither, too, would come the prophet to suck words of wisdom from the venerable ghost and to impart them to the king, who thus walked in the counsel of his glorified father.[453]
The souls of dead kings worshipped in Kiziba.
In Kiziba, a district of Central Africa on the western side of Lake Victoria Nyanza, the souls of dead kings become ruling spirits; temples are built in their honour and priests appointed to serve them. The people are composed of two different races, the Bairu, who are aboriginals, and the Bahima, who are immigrants from the north. The royal family belongs to the Bahima stock. In his lifetime the king's person is sacred; and all his actions, property, and so forth are described by special terms appropriated to that purpose. The people are divided into totemic clans: the totems (muziro) are mostly animals or parts of animals: no man may kill or eat his totem animal, nor marry a woman who has the same totem as himself. The royal family seems to have serpents for their totem; after death the king's soul lives in a serpent, while his body is buried in the hut where he died. The people revere a supreme god named Rugaba, who is believed to have created man and cattle; but they know little about him, and though they [pg 174] occasionally pray to him, particularly in the case of a difficult birth, he has no priests and receives no sacrifices. The business of the priests is to act as intermediaries, not between God and man, but between men and the spirits. The spirits are believed to have been formerly kings of the world. The highest of them is a certain Wamara, who rules over the souls of the dead, and who would seem to have been a great king in his life. Temples are built for him; they are like the houses of men, but only half as large. A perpetual holy fire is kept up in each temple, and the priest passes the night in it. He receives white sheep or goats as victims, and generally acts also as a diviner or physician. When a man is very ill, he thinks that Wamara, the lord of the spirits of the dead, is summoning him to the far country; so he sends a sacrifice to Wamara's priest, who prays to the spirit to let the sick man live yet a while.[454] This great spirit of an ancient king, who now rules over the dead, resembles the Egyptian Osiris.
The worship of ancestral spirits among the Bantu tribes of Northern Rhodesia.
The Bantu tribes who inhabit the great tableland of Northern Rhodesia revere a supreme being whom they call Leza, but their ideas about him are hazy. Thunder, lightning, earthquakes, rain, and other natural phenomena are grouped together under his name as manifestations of his power. Among the more progressive tribes, such as the Awemba and the Wabisa, the great god is thought to take some interest in human affairs; and though they do not pray to him, they nevertheless invoke him by his names of praise, which set forth his attributes as the protector and judge of mankind. It is he, too, who receives the souls of the departed. “Yet, as far as the dominant Wemba tribe is concerned, the cult of Leza is outside their ordinary religion. There is no direct access to him by prayer or by sacrifices, which are made to Mulenga and the other great [pg 175] tribal and ancestral spirits instead. For upon such animism is founded the whole fabric of Wemba religion.”[455] The ancestral spirits whom the Awemba and all other tribes of this region worship may be divided into two main classes. First come the spirits of departed chiefs, who are publicly worshipped by the whole tribe; and second come the spirits of near relations who are worshipped privately by each head of a family.[456] “Among the Awemba there is no special shrine for these purely family spirits, who are worshipped inside the hut, and to whom family sacrifice of a sheep, a goat, or a fowl is made, the spirit receiving the blood spilt on the ground, while all the members of the family partake of the flesh together. For a religious Wemba man the cult of the spirit of his nearest relations (of his grandparents, or of his deceased father, mother, elder brother, or maternal uncle) is considered quite sufficient. Out of these spirit relatives a man will worship one whom he considers as his special familiar, for various reasons. For instance, the diviner may have told him that his last illness was caused because he had not respected the spirit of his uncle; accordingly he will be careful in future to adopt his uncle as his tutelary spirit. As a mark of such respect he may devote a cow or a goat to one of the spirits of his ancestors. Holding the fowl, for instance, in his hands, he will dedicate it, asking the spirit to come and abide in it, upon which the fowl is let go, and is afterwards called by the name of the spirit. If the necessities, however, of the larder demand that it should be killed, another animal is taken, and the spirit is asked to accept it as a substitute! Before beginning any special task, such as hoeing a new garden, or going on a journey, Wemba men invoke their tutelary spirits to be with them and to assist their efforts, in short ejaculatory prayers usually couched in a set formula. Among many of the tribes in the North Luangwa district longer formal prayers are still made to all the deceased ancestors of the clan at the time of harvest, asking them to protect the crops and to drive away illnesses and evil spirits from [pg 176] the family, which honours them with libations of beer and offerings of the first-fruits.”[457]
The worship of ancestral spirits is apparently the main practical religion of all the Bantu tribes.