Ship of Fools Page 10
Interestingly, there was a ritual process that can be considered as scapegoating and which is entirely different from the sacrifices I have been describing. In one of the regions, every ten years, a turtle used to be killed and its shell filled with earth from a dead man’s grave, considered very impure. Turtles themselves are thought liable to be inhabited by well-spirits, because they are often found in wells and pools, but these spirits are not considered as real evil spirits though they can be dangerous. From my knowledge of Konso culture I think the killing of the turtle and the preparation of its shell would have been ritually consecrated. The shell with the earth was given to a man from outside Konso who was paid to travel slowly through the region for three months “to purify the land”, as the people expressed it. He never entered any of the towns but lived in temporary shelters close by, and had food brought to him. It was very important that he should not be seen by women and children, and when he moved a horn was blown so that the women could hide. After three months, when he had visited all the towns of the region he took the shell with the earth in it down to the Sagan river, which forms one of the boundaries of Konsoland, and threw it in. He was not supposed ever to return to the region which was why he was an outsider. So while the Konso had the idea of casting all their sins on to some focus—the scapegoating of the turtle and the grave earth, which was then expelled—the effectiveness of the ritual depended on the three months of travel through the region, not from the sacrifice of the turtle alone.
There is, however, another ceremony in a different region where we can actually find evidence of human sacrifice. In order to understand what I am about to describe, it is necessary to realise first of all that for the Konso the hunting of dangerous animals like lions and leopards is a really important proof of manhood, like killing enemies in battle, and successful hunters have a triumph ceremony. Their society is also divided into “boys”, unable to marry or have a triumph ceremony, “warriors”, who may do both, and “elders”, who act principally as councillors and mediators. But one is placed in the classes of boys, warriors, or elders not according to one’s actual age, but by the position of one’s father in the system. This means that there is not a close correlation between chronological and social ages, and many so-called “warriors” may in reality be young boys, for example. Promotion from one grade to the next only occurs every eighteen years, at a great ceremony, the Katapaha, which is held at this time for the promotion of the boys, Farayta, into the warrior grade, Xrela. One of the main features of this is the requirement of the Farayta boys to go into the bush and hunt for a dik-dik, or pygmy antelope, which they have to catch with their bare hands without shedding its blood, which of course is not real hunting at all, but play hunting. They bring it to the sacred place of the Moora Damalle to be sacrificed by the Bamalle, a regional priest, and its hide is cut into strips and distributed to the Farayta youths who are due to be promoted to Xrela.
What is the significance of the dik-dik here? As we have seen, the hunting of leopards and lions for the Konso is comparable to war, the fundamental test of manhood, and it is in this context that we have also to consider the sacrifice of the dik-dik here. The ritual status of the dik-dik is of particular interest because it is a very insignificant animal and is also wild, unlike cattle, sheep, and goats and in these respects quite different from the other examples of sacrificial animal. We can understand more about the dik-dik when we learn that it is a totem of Ishalayta clan, who are thought of as “innocent, kind-hearted, happy, harmless, and praiseworthy”, and in the same way the dik-dik is a “harmless, grass-eating wild animal, known for its grace, calm, and peaceful life”. In these respects it clearly has the innocent and harmless qualities of childhood, and I suggest that in fact it has to be understood as a symbol of childhood in Konso ritual.
This association with childhood becomes especially clear when we consider the details of a special hunting ceremony, the Karra, in which the men of one particular town go into the bush for several weeks to hunt a leopard and bring its skin back. The purpose of the ceremony, which is held in the tenth year after the Katapaha ceremony, is to mark the formal entry of the younger sons into Xrela, the warrior grade. At Katapaha only the eldest sons were formally inducted into Xrela, and their set was given its own name, but now it is the turn of their younger brothers also to formally become Xrela, and also be given their own set name. So in some ways it repeats the Katapaha ceremony in marking the induction of “boys” into warrior status, and here, too, the Karra ceremony also involves the hunt for the dik-dik and its sacrifice.
A little boy is recruited to act as the inakarra , “son of Karra”, at least eight months before the beginning of the Karra. He is treated as a member of the senior set and therefore, despite his real age, as “old”, and all ceremonial activities require his approval. He is groomed for the role by the orkipa, the leaders of the senior set, and fed with a special diet of meat, butter, and beer brewed with honey, all of these being the classic marks of consecrating a victim for sacrifice. He is also required to taste the food of every feasting group during the Karra before anyone else partakes of it. One of the inakarra’s first duties is to lead a group of orkipa to the Bamalle’s homestead where the Bamalle performs a ritual in which he symbolically sharpens a bunch of their spears. The orkipa present him with a gourd of milk from the first lactation of a cow, and another of grain. The Bamalle asperses the group and blesses them: “Let your spear be sharp; let it kill; have luck with your kill; Korria (Konso), I have blessed you; catch the game with bare hands; find it timid; get it without spears, without difficulty, without danger; be plenty; be strong”. There are really two blessings here, one for the real hunters of leopards or lions, who will need sharp spears, but the second blessing with the reference to catching game with bare hands is not for the real hunters, however, but to the boys of the younger set who will hunt the dik-dik.
In the weeks before the hunt for a leopard begins the inakarra leads the boys, who will later form the new set, Karmoha, down to the lowlands where they are expected to catch a dik-dik with their bare hands, without harming it or shedding its blood, and take it back to the Bamalle. Remarkably, it appears that in the not very distant past (around 1950) the inakarra was in fact abandoned there to die ¹ , or at least to make his way home unaided. It was said that even if some inakarra survived, they became deaf and dumb or mentally retarded, and this therefore seems to have been a form of child sacrifice. (Indeed, it is possible that Katapaha itself also involved a similar child sacrifice, since at the time of the 1971 Katapaha the Governor of Konso had to promise the Provincial Governor that he would ensure that no such thing would occur.) What, then, is the significance of the child sacrifice here?
In the Karra ritual the dik-dik is brought back by the boys from the lowlands and then sacrificed by the Bamalle. Its skin is cut into strips on which are sewn nine cowries in three rows, that are worn on the little finger of the left hand (obviously the weakest of all the fingers) by a group of young boys, numbering about 12, known as the chehiteta. These are recruited from the teenagers who will shortly become the youngest age-set, Karmoha, of the warrior grade. They assemble in an abandoned residence of the town and who, as a rite of manhood, are made to copulate with a divorced lady who volunteers to do this. Those who refuse to do this (or are perhaps too young) are selected to be the chehiteta and wear the cowries (which are female symbols, it should be noted) on the dik-dik skin, in addition to carrying out errands from the hunting ground to the town every time they are requested to.
The dik-dik is therefore a central ritual element in both the Katapaha and the Karra, involving the attainment of warrior status by those hitherto classified as “boys”, as children. The hunt for the dik-dik is not real hunting at all, but play hunting since it must be caught with bare hands and its blood must not be shed until it is sacrificed. The strips of its skin with feminine cowrie shells are carried on the weakest finger by those chehiteta who have not had intercourse with the
arapalayta , and this suggests that it has a general association with weakness and general lack of manliness, quite the opposite of the bull or the leopard. I propose, therefore, that the poor little inakarra is to the adult hunters what the poor little dik-dik is to the leopard, and that the inakarra is therefore the symbol of childhood which, like the little boy himself, has to be ritually abandoned in the bush before real manhood can be attained.
4. Conclusions
Understanding sacrifice in any particular society is a complex matter, then, as these examples have shown, and requires detailed knowledge of the culture. Knowledge of Tauade culture shows us that sacrifice can have many different occasions and a number of different purposes: it serves to enhance community solidarity but only in competition with other groups, and individual reputation in competition with other members of the group. Pig killings are not scapegoating and not a response to communal violence, but are a form of social competition and the ceremonial marking of significant events and rites of passage in individual lives. Sacrifice among the Konso cannot generally be explained in terms of scapegoating either; there is a specific and unusual ritual for this in one region, but while the sacrificed bullock is treated as the enemy of the warrior grade it is not a scapegoat. The sacrifice of the ram by the poqalla for his lineage is quite different in nature, and we have seen that the significance of the inakarra ’s sacrifice lies in the symbolic opposition between childhood and manhood.
Again, the frenzied outbursts of communal violence which Girard sees as a permanent threat hanging over primitive societies in general also bear no relation to reality as far as people like the Konso are concerned, since they have a well-developed set of procedures and institutions for maintaining the peace and controlling violence that are also quite independent of sacrifice. Even in Papua New Guinea the violence of the Tauade comes nowhere close to consuming society. While they are much less able to control violence than the Konso are, compensation and avoidance are still reasonably effective in limiting its effects, and we have also seen that pig-killing ceremonies in general have no particular relation to communal violence.
At the end of this enquiry the facts therefore give considerable support to Hubert and Mauss who say that sacrifices have a great diversity of forms and purposes, and that it is quite false to suppose that “all the possible kinds of sacrifice have emerged from one primitive, single form” in the manner Girard proposes. (Hubert & Mauss 1964: 95) On the contrary, the only unity that the institution possesses is an abstract structure in which a victim is first sacralised or consecrated, and finally destroyed:
[F]undamentally, beneath the diverse forms it takes, it always consists in one procedure, which may be used for the most widely differing purposes. This procedure consists in establishing a means of communication between the sacred and profane worlds through the mediation of a victim, that is, of a thing that in the course of the ceremony is destroyed. (ibid., 97)
Girard, however, dismisses Hubert and Mauss, but his alternative theory of the mimetic causation of violence, and of sacrifice as a scapegoating mechanism to restrain it, is contradicted by the facts on every hand, as we have seen from even the small sample presented here, and is wholly untenable from the anthropological point of view. The same can be said of his complete obsession with violence. This being so, his whole theoretical edifice is shown to be without foundation and simply collapses. While he quotes some very sound anthropologists like Evans-Pritchard, Lienhardt, Victor Turner, and Chagnon, he has no scholarly understanding of primitive society, which requires very much more intellectual background than pulling a few books off library shelves. It is a curious feature of the intellectual world that many people think themselves perfectly qualified to dogmatise about primitive society while knowing very little about it. Evolutionary psychologists are one example, and Girard is another. There are some theories in anthropology that many of us consider mistaken, like cultural materialism for example, but at least they are supported by evidence and rational arguments. One is unable to say the same of Girard’s ideas, however, and it is quite remarkable that he could have spent so much time and effort writing so many books, and constructing this grandiose theory of “philosophical anthropology”, this world of fantasy, without bothering to run it past a few real anthropologists who could have told him that he was certainly not “the new Darwin of the social sciences”.
Notes
1 . Because of the treatment of the child, there were apparently a number of court cases in about 1950, as a result of which the custom was abandoned, and now the inakarra is only symbolic, consisting of a jika spearhead wrapped in a cloth called charfa with an ostrich feather tied to its tip as though it were a human head (see Hallpike 2008: 322).
Chapter V: The Man-Eating Myth reconsidered
In this gallery of absurd theories about primitive Man I find serious fault with a variety of biologists, evolutionary psychologists, literary philosophers, linguists, historians and journalists, but in fairness a space should also be found for some anthropologists. Some time ago I dissected Professor Adam Kuper’s claim that there is no such thing as primitive society (Hallpike 1992), but another prize candidate for the butcher’s block has to be Professor William Arens’s book The Man-Eating Myth . It was published by Oxford University Press in 1979, and claims that cannibalism is a racist and colonialist myth perpetuated by Westerners, including credulous anthropologists who should know better, and that there is no reliable eyewitness evidence that it ever existed as a social custom in any society (as distinct from occasional “survival cannibalism”). The book created something of a sensation when it appeared, and although we are approaching its fortieth anniversary it is still in print, with respectable sales on Amazon and discussed at great length in Wikipedia, and so seems worth a further assessment. Besides telling post-modernist academia what it wanted to hear, it has clearly satisfied a popular need as well, about which the following extract from a review on Amazon gives us a clue:
The reason this book caused such a ruckus when it was released, is not just the fact that it made anthropologists look as disreputable as phrenologists: charlatans, shysters and hucksters practicing a crank pseudo-science. Among the highly educated, it’s fashionable to ridicule the bumpkins and yokels for being gullible enough to buy into astrology, creationism and other forms of nonsense. But as W. Arens proved with ‘The Man-Eating Myth’, the intelligentsia is just as easily fooled as what Mencken called ‘the booboisie’ ¹ and that in many cases, ‘PhD’ means ‘piled high and deep’.
It is undoubtedly true that cannibalism is the feature of primitive society most apt to be sensationalised by the popular press in particular, and books with titles like Where Cannibals Roam , A Naturalist in Cannibal Land , The Last Cannibals , Mountains, Gold and Cannibals , or Two Years Among New Guinea Cannibals are sure to find eager readers. Anthropologists would also agree that many accounts of cannibalism are exaggerated, based on rumour, or simply false. Probably all societies have contrasting images of the wild and the tame or social: standard images of the wild are incest as opposed to respect for kinship rules, eating food raw as opposed to cooked, nudity as opposed to clothing, hairiness and long hair as opposed to smooth skin and short hair, and eating human flesh as opposed to animal flesh, so it is not surprising that accusations of cannibalism are often used to stigmatize “the other”. For example, the Konso had a horror of cannibalism, and a very old man told me that in his youth he had been to Addis Ababa (about four hundred miles to the north) on an errand for the Imperial Government. He stayed there for some time, and on his way back he was misdirected about the road, and after walking “for a year” he reached the land of the cannibals, the pulkoota . Their mouths, he said, “stuck out like this”—holding his fingers towards his mouth and clearly indicating an ape-like face—and they had tails and eyes in the backs of their heads. They used to buy people and also kept prisoners captured in battle. They would cut them up into strips and hang these up to dry. They lived only on human
flesh and cultivated no fields. He managed to avoid them and eventually made his way back to Konso (Hallpike 2008: 379). And when I first began living among them, some of the mothers would tell their children that if they did not be quiet and go to sleep the terrible white man would come and eat them. The Konso conception of cannibalism is an excellent example of a pervasive theme of Arens’s book, that cannibalism is a stigmatization of the savage “other”.
If this were all that Arens is saying it would be accepted as a commonplace of anthropology, but he raises the commonplace to the sensational by claiming that there is no evidence that cannibalism has ever existed at all: “[E]xcluding survival conditions, I have been unable to uncover adequate documentation of cannibalism as a custom in any form for any society. Rumors, suspicions, fears and accusations abound, but no satisfactory first-hand accounts.” Although we may find this extremely surprising, he nevertheless goes on to assure us that “I have marshalled the available material to support this premise, rather than manipulating the data to generate the kind of foregone conclusion which characterizes the current thinking on this topic” (Arens 1979: 21-22).
Before we go any further, however, it is very striking that Arens never makes any attempt to explain why the refusal to eat human flesh must apparently be such a powerful and universal human imperative that cannibalism has never existed anywhere as an accepted social practice. He simply assumes it to be self-evident. One might be unwilling to believe, in principle, that any society could possibly have institutionalised incest between mothers and sons, or the eating of human faeces, for example. But in primitive societies especially, meat is highly prized, particularly by those dependent on agriculture because they can only eat it relatively seldom. Since people in many societies are willing to eat stinking meat, why is it inconceivable for them to eat fresh human meat, especially of enemies killed in battle? Indeed, the idea of cannibalism is quite familiar to Christians when they take the sacraments of Christ’s Body and Blood. Arens’s unwillingness to believe in the very possibility of cannibalism as an institution appears, in fact, to be his own ethnocentric Western prejudice.