the sociological significance of ancestor-worship in ashanti

International African Institute

The Sociological Significance of Ancestor-Worship in AshantiAuthor(s): Edith ClarkeSource: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Oct., 1930), pp.431-471Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1155194 .

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THE SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI

BY EDITH CLARKE

T HE Institute has laid down its policy in ethnological matters in the Report of the Executive Council held in Berlin in

December, 1928. The Council then came to the conclusion that 'there was a gap between anthropological science on the one hand and the practical work of education and administration on the other, and that the Institute could render useful service by attempting to bridge this gap '. The following resolution was passed unanimously:

'The Council reaffirms its resolution to encourage studies of African life and institutions, more particularly with reference to such subjects as the family, law, economic life, ideas of land tenure, systems of education, phenomena of change and similar subjects which have a direct bearing on practical work and administration in Africa.' I

It was, I presume, due to an accident of omission that religion does not appear in the list of subjects the study of which is to be encour- aged.2 In Africa, above all ethnographic areas, religious dogma and practice lie at the very core of all aspects of culture, and no study of ' the family, law, economics, ideas of land tenure, systems of education' could be adequate that did not start off with an account of native belief. In giving an analysis of Ashanti religion I shall show that this is especially true of that culture.

Too often the student has not dealt fairly with the religion of 'savages '; nor, for the matter of that, has the practical man. Two of the principal modern schools of anthropology have concentrated, in the one case on the historical problems of the origin of belief in one or more cultures and its diffusion throughout others, and, in the other, on the process of the evolution of all forms of cult from a primeval religion.3 The practical man, in direct contact with the strangeness of

Africa, vol. ii, no. 2, p. I93. 2 The same omission occurs in Professor Malinowski's article on 'Practical

Anthropology' (Africa, vol. ii, no. i) in which the above-quoted principles of policy are more fully developed. 3 For a statement of the present position in the study of primitive religion and customs see Encyclopaedia Britannica, s.v. Social Anthropology.



432 SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF native rites, has adopted a different but no less unprofitable attitude, as a result of a more or less conscious assessment of all religions according to his own Western standards; dubbing all that did not conform to them 'superstition ', 'idolatry', or 'witchcraft', and proceeding, in the case of the missionary and administrator, to attack them with the highest of motives. Throughout, bad theory has resulted in bad practice.

The only anthropology that can further the aims the Institute has set itself is a practical anthropology which defines culture in general and institutions in particular in terms of function. Such an approach to the subject was outlined by Professor Malinowski in his article on 'Practical Anthropology'. The description of culture which follows, and the theory of institutions, as indeed the whole functional method which I have tried to apply to the analysis of the Ashanti material, is that laid down by Professor Malinowski in that article and elaborated in all his published work.

THE FUNCTION OF CULTURE. The culture of a people consists of a number of integrally related aspects-law, economics, religion, social organization-which arise in the first place from man's efforts at control and manipulation of his physical environment, for the satisfaction of his primary needs; and, in the second place, as a result of the necessity of organizing human activities and relations. Within each culture these aspects are correlated with certain more or less stable factors, such as a fixed racial and mental equipment and a permanent environment; but in the process of development they become subject to modification. Change may be produced by internal forces, as when a mechanical invention revolutionizes material culture and ultimately affects all aspects of economic, social, and moral life; or it may be produced, directly or indirectly, through contact with an external culture. In any case change never affects any one of these aspects alone. It is never possible, that is, to limit a reform of one department of culture to that department alone. This is especially the case with regard to religion, which is the central aspect of culture, the one that serves to integrate and co-ordinate all the others. Briefly to state the case: in any primitive culture its elements are so integrally related that inter-



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 433 ference with any one element should only be undertaken with the fullest knowledge of its likely repercussions upon the other parts and

upon the culture as a whole. Such knowledge can only come from an understanding of the culture as a whole and of its constituent institutions in particular.

In presenting an analysis of the religion of Ashanti it will be necessary in the first place to show it as part of an integral cultural whole, and secondly to establish its precise function in the whole body of culture. And, finally, within the religious sphere itself, we shall have to reformulate the various cults on the basis of this theory of functional value, that is, show which beliefs enter most fundamentally into the structure of the society, and, further, in how far the form of the society is correlated to them. This will lead to the question as to which of these beliefs become the dominant moral force of the society; and to a study of the mechanisms by which they are standardized into sanctions. This should give us understanding of the process by which, as norms of morality and rules of tribal life, that is, of economic co- operation, of legal practice and of social behaviour, they are impressed upon the individual by education and actually enforced.

THE FUNCTIONAL APPROACH TO RELIGION. The unity of culture and the integral relationship between its parts is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in the religion of the area under discussion. In Ashanti, family life, economic and social organization, rules of moral conduct and legal principle evolve out of a sociological theory of clan continuity which finds its most concrete expression in the religious dogma of ancestor-worship. The Ashanti believe in a variety of supernatural powers, and practise a number of cults, all of wliich we shall have to consider in turn. But the relevancy of these religious beliefs consists in their influence upon conduct, and this we find to be directly proportionate to their influence upon social organization.

Obviously not all the aspects of Ashanti religion play an identical or even equivalent role within the culture. In describing the meaning of these beliefs from the standpoint of their controlling effect upon conduct, we shall be particularly concerned to show the pragmatic relation of cult to social organization. Other principles of differentiation



434 SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF

between religious cults have actually been used. Thus the sensational magical elements which attracted the attention of the first West Coast travellers led to an exaggeration of the part played by the suman or fetish in West African cult, so much so that all West African religion came to be dubbed ' fetishism'.

The commonest fallacious approach is, however, that of consciously or unconsciously starting from the highly complex categories of

European thought and translating native religions into these categories, regardless of their sociological significance or functional im-

portance. This approach is to be found even in the work of our chief

authority on the area. But this is a fault common to many studies of primitive religion, in which the approach is made always from the side of dogmatics. The interest is mainly founded on what might be called the theory of native belief, that is, the native ideas concerning the supernatural world; while the way in which these ideas affect conduct in social matters is neglected. Religion has always two sides: on the one hand it is the relation of man to god, spirit, or spiritual power; on the other it is the relation established between man and man in virtue of their common dependence upon this supernatural being or

power. The key to the influence of a particular religious belief is not to be found in the definition of the attributes of the god. It is to be found in the meaning of this two-fold relationship and in its practical implications: in the part, that is to say, which religion plays in shaping and

controlling human behaviour, individual and social; in co-ordinating the systems of law and morality; and in providing the sanction for social organization and co-operative enterprise. The influence of the belief can, in fact, be arrived at only through the study of a whole body of sociological facts, without which, however clearly we have stated the native dogma, we can have no real idea of the dynamic power of religion in a given society. The point which I shall try to make in this paper is that it is these very fundamental sociological data which are lacking in field-work accounts: and that the omission is due to the mode of approach. I have, for the purpose of demonstrating my case, chosen one of the best ethnographical accounts of a primitive tribe which we possess, a record which is justly regarded as of the

highest quality and which was selected as such after a consideration



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 435 of a number of other West African authorities. Captain Rattray's three volumes, Ashanti, Religion and Art in Ashanti, and Ashanti Law and Constitution, are a monumental achievement in ethnographical research, and he devotes, as was admittedly necessary in view of the importance of religion in providing the sanctions for law and order in this society, some two-thirds of it to our subject. Yet it is on this, our best work, that I have been able to substantiate my criticism of the almost complete neglect of the type of facts necessary to establish the function of religion. I should like to say also that my criticism of Captain Rattray's material is not primarily destructive. The contribution I wish to make is a positive one. I shall try to show that the old approach, common to many European studies of primitive religion, leads to the neglect of certain basic elements; I shall try to show where these gaps in our knowledge exist; but I shall show, further, that my point of view, the necessity of which I have only been able to justify by a detailed and constructive analysis, enables us to reformulate the problems of religion, and to outline a programme of study in the field which shall em- brace the facts which alone can give us the key to the meaning of religion in a given society.

The inadequacy of the old approach is seen in the fact that in Ashanti the High God belief 'ranks highest', in other words it is given undue prominence, for no other reason than that it most nearly approximates to the Christian ideal; the departmental gods 'come next' in order of ideal merit; finally, in the lowest category of all, are the systems of magic, witchcraft, and fetishism proper.

If we reject classifications of this sort and yet insist that the sociological importance of the part played by these cults is not by any means equal, on what principle shall we base our analysis of religion ? We shall find it, I think, neither in the dogma nor in the rite, per se, so much as in the twofold relationship of which religion consists, a relationship on the one hand between a man and the particular spiritual being, and on the other between man and man, through their common relation to this supernatural being. The facts which define this relationship are not to be found in the intellectual implications of the dogma, or the mechanical elements of the rite, but in their sociological, emotional, and moral effects.




Certainly our study of Ashanti religious data shows that all the elements of religious belief here arise out of and influence some form of social relationship. It is, I believe, a universally valid generalization that religious dogma is everywhere correlated to social structure. The

relevancy of any belief is, therefore, in direct proportion to the degree of this correlation. Thus the ' most important 'aspect in the religious system of a community would be that which most strongly controls social behaviour. This is a principle of classification which introduces no extrinsic criteria, nor any irrelevant comparisons with our own culture or beliefs. This approach gives a very different orientation to the whole problem of religion. It entails both a limitation and an

enlargement. Value, merit, to the functional anthropologist, are not

arbitrary but empirical distinctions. Religious facts are relevant, not because they embody a 'lofty' metaphysical or ethical concept, but because, and in so far as, they lead to a modification of the individual's conduct in accordance with certain ideas. A religious belief may be crude according to western standards, but to judge of its importance within the particular religious system on any such grounds is to intro- duce an irrelevant, because subjective and extrinsic, criterion into an argument of fact.

THE BELIF IN 'NYAME. What then of the 'Supreme God '? We are given the following facts with regard to him : (a) 'Nyame is the 'One great God, Who is the Firmament upon Whom ultimately all life depends' (Ashanti, pp. I40-I). He is a Creator God. (b) There are

temples to 'Nyame with an organized cult and priesthood (Ashanti, p. 143). 'In remote corners of the older palaces ' there are altars to him (Ibid., p. 142). (c) Every compound in Ashanti contains an altar to the sky god, in the shape of a forked branch cut from a certain tree which the Ashanti calls 'Nyame dua (God's tree) (Ibid., p. 142). 'Quite apart from... ceremonial occasions I do not suppose (sic) that a day passes among any of the old folk upon which some little

offering is not cast upon the roof of the hut or placed on the altar be- side the door to the great God of the Sky', who is ' of all the Earth the King and Elder' (Ibid., p. I44). (d) 'Every Ashanti temple is a

pantheon in which repose the shrines of the gods, but the power or



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 437

spirit, that on occasions enters into these shrines, is directly or indirectly derived from the one God of the Sky whose intermediaries they are' (Ibid., p. I4I). (e) There are in many Ashanti proverbs, in saluta- tions, prayers, greetings, and in the Great Oath, reference to 'Nyame. (e.g.' Of all the wide earth 'Nyame is the elder '; ' If 'Nyame gave you sickness he also gave you medicine '; 'If you wish to tell anything to 'Nyankopon tell it to the winds.') In addition to this some priests described by the author wore round their necks ornaments in the shape of crescent moons on which were embossed the sun, moon, and stars; and representations of the altar to 'Nyame are found on Ashanti weights. (f) 'The genealogical trees of the most famous gods, which are rivers or lakes ... show them as " sons of the Supreme Being ", i. e. children of the Sky' (Ashanti, p. I43). (g) Reference is made to 'Nyame in certain rituals, as e.g. the pre-birth rite at the sixth or seventh month of pregnancy, at the propitiation of the husband's ntoro (Ashanti, p. 5 I); or again in the Bara ritual for girls at puberty.

Now this is a very imposing array of facts, and if we accepted them at their face value we might have to agree not only with Dr. Marett that the case for 'Nyame as a High God has been very strongly made out, but with Captain Rattray that the belief in him as the source of all divine power is the keystone of Ashanti religious theory, even although the most predominant cults remain those of the samanfo and the abosom. But if we examine exhaustively the full body of religious material which we are given in the three volumes, we are forced to conclude that there is no adequate documentation for any such view of the function of the sky god. Let us take the points enumerated in detail.

(a) We shall deal first with the statement that 'Nyame is the 'One great God upon whom ultimately all life depends '. In the first place, 'Nyame is in no sense the Creator of the world and of men as Jehovah is in Hebrew mythology. According to one myth' the earth was there already', with men and women on it; 'they did not however bear children ... they had no desire, and conception and birth were not known at that time' (Ashanti, p. 48). 'Nyame sent a python who taught them to mate. According to another myth men and women were already on earth going about their business when the Creator

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was ' on his journey about the earth making things '.I There seems, therefore, to be no belief in a creation of the earth and men by 'Nyame. He is merely a factor in the fertility of men and nature, and not the exclusive one.

In the native theory of procreation (which will be discussed pre- sently) 'Nyame is not regarded as responsible for the production of children. Again, prayers for fertility, sacrifices by barren women and childless men, are set within ritual directed towards the propitiation of ancestral spirits and gods; though 'Nyame is mentioned in the formulae, his name is mentioned along with that of other mythological figures, such as Asase, the earth goddess, the leopard, the creature that rules the underworld.2 Conception itself is the result of the fusion of the ntoro and abusua in the act of coition. These elements are identified physically as blood and semen; spiritually as the reincarnation of the spirits of dead ancestors. Their conjunction in any one human

being is determined by the particular clan and, possibly, ntoro division, I Ashanti, p. I23. Cf. p. 28I, where we read of the 'place where the Creator

made things'. 2 These other mythological beings are almost completely neglected by our

authority--of the creature that rules the underworld and of the god of the sea (Opo) we know only their names. It would appear that all departments of nature have their specific deities: Asase for the earth, the leopard for the forest, a ' creature' for the underworld, Opo for the sea, and 'Nyame for the sky. In connexion with this it is interesting to note that there is a quite materialistic conception of the sky god. Thus in the Drum language, quoted on p. 278 of Ashanti, the spirit of the sky is described as stretching to Kwawu (a locality on the Gold Coast). It would appear, also, that Asase and the creature that rules the underworld are one and the same persons. In the chapter on 'Land Tenure' (Ashanti, p. 2I5) we read: 'The Ashanti name for the Earth is Asase Ya, Aberewa (Old Mother Earth), sometimes qualified by the phrase Asase bo ne nsie, i.e. Earth, the Creator of the Underworld.' Asase seems to be the spirit of the soil: she is propitiated whenever it is dug, whether for a grave or for agricultural purposes. When a coffin is being carried it is lowered twice before being placed on the ground to give the earth goddess due notice. When land is sold yams are given to Asase. According to a proverb the earth goddess owns the world, as the leopard owns the land. The earth was sacred and dangerous; the Golden Stool, which was brought down from the sky by the priest Anotchi, a famous magician who lived in the reign of Osa Tutu, was never allowed to come in direct contact with the Earth-it must be placed upon an elephant's skin '. The feet of the king of Ashanti were likewise never to touch the ground 'lest a great famine should come upon the nation' (Ashanti, p. 2I6).



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 439 to which the parents belong. The determining religious dogma here is, therefore, that associated with the ancestral cult.

(b) Passing now to our second point, we are told that 'Nyame has

temples (of one of which we are given a photograph), a priesthood, and an organized cult. We are, however, given no elaboration of this statement with the exception of a half-page description of an annual

ceremony to 'Nyame, at which the chief, assisted by the priests of the cult, offers a sacrifice to 'Nyame, after which he sleeps in the temple for

eight nights (Ashanti, pp. I43-4). We have, thus, in contrast to the innumerable rites in connexion with the ancestral spirits and with the abosom, one annual ceremony, attended by the chief and a few priests. Other participants are not mentioned-presumably the people take no part in the ceremony. Apparently it concerns the chief alone; his

prayer is a personal one: 'I pray you for life and I pray you for

strength.' The ceremony is completely devoid of the social and

political importance of such ceremonies as the Adaes, the Odwira, or the Apo. The connexion of the chiefly caste with 'Nyame is not

brought out clearly by our author, but it is possible that there is a

sociological correlation here. (See below (c) in the evidence with

regard to oaths.) There is no evidence of any wider sociological correlation; no

evidence of an important cult to the sky god, participated in by individuals of any sociological group; no evidence of the belief domi-

nating or controlling any of the specific forms of social organization, nor of its being the supernatural reference for individual morality.' When it comes to the ritual of big ceremonial occasions; to the ritual of such crises as birth, naming, puberty, marriage, divorce, death, and

burial; or to the religious sanctions in legal and economic transactions such as the transfer of land, the punishment of adultery, the tilling of the ground, the weaving of cloth, we find references to 'Nyame either

entirely lacking or of the most perfunctory character, while the

spiritual agencies propitiated are those of the samanfo or the abosom. The actual structure of the social organization-the division of the

Captain Rattray may, of course, have facts in support of his contention that this is, in reality, the case; but if this is so, he has not given them to us, and without them I cannot accept the argument as proved.

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people into abusua and ntoro exogamous divisions'-is based, as we have seen in examining the theory of conception and the ritual of

pregnancy and childbirth, primarily on the belief in the ancestral

spirits, and to a large extent also on the belief in the abosom. The ethical and legal rules of conduct within the family, clan, and the

paternal exogamous divisions are also sanctioned primarily by these two beliefs.

(c) With regard to the forked branch in every Ashanti compound (which apparently from Fig. 5 also holds a brass pan 2 in the crotch), this may be a very important fact, but, as far as our information goes, it may equally well mean very little. We need to be told whether there is any regular system of worship associated with the altar; how often

offerings are made to it and on what occasions, with what prayers and

petitions, and by whom and on whose behalf. The second quotation, the reference to the 'supposed' daily cult to 'Nyame, is all the information we have concerning it, and the statement is so tentatively made that it is worth very little. If there is a daily cult among the old people, and if it is of great significance, it should have been described. As it is, the mere record of the presence of an object of cult, without any explanatory data, leaves us completely in the dark as to the meaning of that object.

(d) We come now to the assertion that the power of the gods is derived from the Supreme Being. This is an ex cathedra statement which never receives any adequate documentation. We do not even know whether it represents the author's opinion, or whether it was a statement made to him by a native. If it was the dictum of a priest further research would still be necessary-it might represent the belief of all the worshippers, it might be the traditional faith, but it

equally well might be the rationalization of a primitive individualist

voicing a philosophy in no way representative of the common people. I On the point of the exogamy of the ntoro group the author is somewhat

unconvincing. On p. 38 of Ashanti he writes: 'the ntoro ... (like the abusua) is exogamous.' But in the next page it is only' (possibly) ... always exogamous'. Surely this point could have been ascertained without any doubt.

2 It is not clear whether this pan is regarded merely as a receptacle for food offerings or a shrine. It usually contains, however, a Neolithic celt called Nyame akuma (God's axe).



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 441 As a matter of fact, from a very careful examination of the whole data given us by the author referring to the cult of the abosom, I find it quite impossible to accept the fact as established that the power of the abosom is 'directly or indirectly derived from 'Nyame' (Ashanti, p. I4I.)

(e) I deal with the value of this type of evidence later.

(f) The genealogies of only a few of the abosom are actually given. The others do not, however, seem to fall into this catagory of' sons of 'Nyame'. Thus one at least was a tree-spirit (Religion and Art in Ashanti, chap. i); others, again, are the tutelary spirits of towns, villages, or localities; others yet, through their connexion with the ntoro, would appear to be 'familiar spirits' of individuals. The derivation of their power in these cases from 'Nyame is entirely dependent on this statement and I cannot find any other proof of it.

(g) In both these cases, as in a number of others, 'Nyame is invoked in prayers which include a general reference to all the supernatural powers regarded as potent by the Ashanti. He is generally mentioned first, but I cannot see that this is sufficient to warrant the assumption that he is the source of all supernatural power in the 'lesser' gods.

We must conclude, therefore, that the part played by'Nyame is pro- portionately small. His temples and priesthood exist, it is true, but if they represent an active sociological influence we are not given any evidence of it. Since our author's appreciation of the importance of 'Nyame is such as to make it unlikely that he should not have been aware of the sociological reflections of this profound influence had it existed, we must conclude that the cult does not produce any great effect upon the religious or moral life of the people. In the same way the daily gifts to him may be evidence of a belief in his ever-present influence, and it is possible that future investigators may produce the facts that would make us accept without any hesitation the statement that the belief in 'Nyame is one of the most vital and dynamic forces in Ashanti religion-that he is, in fact, indeed an African Jehovah.I But though there is unquestionably a considerable amount

I This comparison, made by the author (see Ashanti, pp. I40-1), implies certain attributes if taken literally-and it is apparently said in all seriousness. I shall, in the next section of this paper, have to consider what these attributes are, and




of' lip-service' paid to him, in proverbs, pious sayings, in the honorific titles ascribed to him, and in songs in his praise, we have not in these three volumes sufficient sociological data to show that the effect of 'Nyame upon the actual relations of individuals to one another in all aspects of daily life at all justifies the claim.

Positively it is impossible to say that the facts we are given prove more than that 'Nyame is a sky god, one of the sources of fertility, and that he is the father of the gods. If our author's statement, that he is the equivalent of the Jehovah of the Israelites, be taken literally, then it must either be based on very much fuller data than he has put for- ward in his books, or else the conclusion represents a personal con- viction for which there is no support in the actual facts.2

It has been necessary to be very precise as to the actual part played by 'Nyame in the life of the people in order that we may deal with the secondary problem which arises directly out of such statements as the one referred to above-the problem, that is, of whether 'Nyame is or is not a High God.

Is 'NYAME A HIGH GOD? What then are the attributes generally ascribed to a High God, and which by implication are accredited to 'Nyame when he is described as the equivalent of Jehovah? Father Schmidt's definition is as follows: 'The High God is supposed to live in the sky and is not clearly soul-like [i.e., I suppose, he is not logi- cally deducible from animism]. He is, however, eternal, omniscient and omnipotent, without ever abusing his power. He acts as the founder of moral law, rewards the good and punishes the wicked by

whether they are at all implicit in the nature of 'Nyame as it arises out of the preceding considerations.

I Even as to this there is some confusion. The genealogy of only four abosom is given, but it is stated simply that all others are, like them, sons or descendants of the sky god (see below, the Abosom). On the other hand some abosom seem to be almost animistically conceived, and merge into the grade of suman, where their connexion with 'Nyame is not self-evident.

2 Captain Rattray does not himself use the term High God, though it is used of 'Nyame by Marett in the chapter he has written for the second volume of the trilogy. Nevertheless, our author's conception of 'Nyame does not seem to differ fundamentally from that of Father Schmidt's High God-if his comparison of him to Jehovah holds true, and his frequent allusions to Ashanti 'monotheism' be taken at their face value.



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 443 disease and death, nay even in a hereafter. He is asexual, and such

anthropomorphic traits as are ascribed to him result from the later influence of mythology.' Lang's definition, which' differs in not stress-

ing the occurrence of a definite, though as yet little standardized cult, in the form of sacrifice and supplication',I makes the High God ' a

primaeval eternal Being, author of all things, the father and friend of man, the invisible, omniscient guardian of morality'. They are agreed, therefore, that the essential attributes of a High God are his omni- science, omnipotence, and his relations to man as the creator of his

being and the source of his moral laws. Lowie, on the other hand, maintains that had a god not a priest nor

a temple in his honour, nor an atom of cult associated with him, ' the lack of these objective features would not necessarily imply a corre-

sponding lack of the subjective conditions' which are the essence of

religion. With Marett he is agreed to find objective facts religious only 'in so far as the emotional attitude characteristic of religion clusters about their objects'.3 To satisfy his requirements, therefore, we should have to know much more about the emotional attitude which the idea of 'Nyame inspires in the native mind. At the same time, an emotional attitude becomes socially and culturally relevant when it is embodied in an organized and traditionally defined cult and code of morals; and such standardized emotional attitudes of cult and morals can only be observed among a primitive people in their objective manifestations-in actions, that is, and modes of conduct. A method which stresses the subjective and emotional attitude, irrespective of its cultural manifestations, may lead to serious misconstructions. One devout Ashanti, or even a number, with a private and personal religious attitude towards 'Nyame would not establish the case; any more than the obsessions of a pervert, or the intellectual precocities of an exceptional genius, can be taken as characteristic of a culture.

Writers on the religion of West Africa who have treated the material comparatively have claimed that this material provides evidence of a universal belief in a High God; and, in the case of Ashanti,

1 LQwie, Primitive Religion, p. I 27 2 Ibid., Introduction, p. xii. 3 Marett, The Threshold of Religion.



444 SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF our main authority has given grounds for the justice of the claim, in this area at any rate, by his assertion that 'Nyame is equivalent in nature and attributes to Jehovah. It is claimed, that is, that the sky god or creator god, found throughout West Africa, approximates to the High God concept as defined by the writers quoted above. Thus Professor Westermann, in an article on Gottesvorstellungen in Oberguinea, concludes that the sky god is omnipotent and omnipresent, the creator, guide, and preserver of the world and all that is in the world, the possessor of the highest moral attributes, a father god of infinite mercy, justice, and goodness.I He maintains that' the negro feels also directly that the God of the Christians is equal with his Sky god', in which opinion he is 'rightly confirmed by the missionary .2 The evidence that this is so which he gives is based on the etymology of the name, a linguistic analysis of his titles, and popular sayings and proverbs descriptive of his power and character. After a considerable amount of such evidence he concludes: 'From these names already there results his character and attributes; they are Might, Wisdom, Justice, and above all goodness.... He is the Creator and the Main- tainer.... He is the Keeper of Justice.... But his outstanding quality is goodness .... The goodness of God is absolute .... Of God one receives good gifts unconditionally. It is His nature to be good. . . . One expects God to punish morally wrong actions.'3 After this it is somewhat surprising to find the same author saying that:' The ideas about him carry something indefinite, too far removed from daily life and its necessities. God lives in words of wisdom and in songs, but not so much in the fear and the hope of the pressing everyday.'4 And: 'The belief also that God punishes evil only rarely would prevent wrong actions, for this indeed the rules of the clan are relevant.'5

Now in the first place it is not quite clear whether these statements do not contain some internal contradictions.6 God cannot be at once

I See Africa, vol. ii, no. 2. Cf. also the article by Cardinall, 'The State of our present Ethnographical Knowledge of the Gold Coast Peoples', in Africa, vol. ii, no. 4. 2 Westermann, op. cit., p. 206.

3 Ibid., pp. 203-5. 4 Ibid., p. 206. 5 Ibid., pp. 206-7. 6 They do, but they are not the only ones found in the statements and beliefs

of primitive people.-EDITOR.



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 445 the possessor of all moral attributes and the maintainer of the moral order of the universe, according to laws of perfect justice and goodness, and yet keep aloof from the fears and hopes and everyday affairs of men. Nor can he ' be expected to punish morally wrong actions ' and yet ' but rarely prevent wrong actions', for which the clan is responsible. Moreover, it is hard to reconcile the concept of a High God, supremely good and ethical, whose wisdom does not control ordinary human actions, whose goodness remains enshrined in words, and whose justice is not concerned with the prevention of wrong actions. To meet a possible criticism on the meagreness of observance and ritual in connexion with the sky god Professor Westermann contends that it is 'the distance, the loftiness and the generality' of the concept which results in an absence of cult. The High God is as remote from human affairs as the physical sky is from earth and its puny inhabitants. Pious sayings alone, unsupported by any concrete acts of obedience or devotion, are produced as proof that the belief in him lies at the foundation of all moral and social order. This surely is a self-contradictory position. For social order consists in acts and not in pious sayings, and religion as the core of organized tribal life must control morals and cult, or it is not religion at all, but at best some sort of folk-lore.

If we make a comparison with Christianity, it might no doubt be argued that in many respects, and in some sects, God is almost as otiose as this sky god, while the active cult of the believer centres round His Son, the Mother of God and a host of mediating saints. But the comparison would be altogether superficial and misleading. The belief in God the Father, even though, in some forms of popular belief, he be construed as a remote and terrible judge whose critical eye can only be made pitiful through the intercession of the well- beloved Son, lies at the very foundation of Christian ethics and behaviour. The qualities of the other Persons of the Trinity, the ideal moral character of the holy saints, as of all men of goodwill, are primarily attributes of God. He is the final reference and the core of belief. To this conclusion we are led neither because of etymological nor historical arguments, nor because of prayers and pious sayings descriptive of Him, but because of the dynamic value of the belief



446 SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF in Him in the systems of morality which are dependent upon Chris- tian dogma for their sanction. All the Christian sacraments, whether it be the Holy Communion, Marriage, Baptism, or the Roman Catholic Confession, compel the believer to give witness to the existence of One God in three Persons; and this belief controls almost everything he does in religious practice, social conduct and moral behaviour. To put the matter concretely, the First Person of the Trinity could not be abstracted from the Christian religion without the whole complex system collapsing. The question then is whether the African sky god is in any way an equivalent of the Trinity? Does he function at all in a comparable manner?

Let us return to Ashanti and consider an infringement of any moral or social law. What do we find ? A complete endorsement of Professor Westermann's assertion that it is the clan which is responsible for the

punishment of 'wrong' actions, we might perhaps add spiritual agencies associated with the clan. If an Ashanti wife breaks one aspect of the moral code it is her husband's 'kra which has to inform his obosom, who then informs his sunsum, and it is this last which wreaks punishment upon the erring wife. The obosom acts here as the man's ' own' personal god, through an association with the ntoro division or paternal' clan '. In the case of incest, where the penality used to be death or banishment, but is now commuted to a fine and several sheep, the blood of the sacrificed animals is poured upon the ancestral blackened stools. It is the samanfo who are propitiated for a breach of clan law. In neither of these cases is 'Nyame held to be concerned. In fact, the more deeply we penetrate into the complex ramifications of the social organization of these people, the more strongly are we driven to conclude that it is the belief in ancestral spirits (samanfo) and in the abosom which provides the sanctions for law and custom, and that, in this way, 'Nyame has small importance.

Before going in detail, however, into the matter of the supernatural sanctions underlying social organization and moral law, it will be necessary to outline the other aspects of Ashanti religion in brief.

THE ABOSOM (GODS). The abosom are a class of nature deities, water and tree spirits; the four principal ones, Tano, Bea, Apo, and



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 447 Bosomtwe, are, according to the portions of a creation myth given us by our authority, the four sons of 'Nyame, sent by him to earth to receive and confer blessings upon mankind. They became the principal lakes and rivers of Ashanti, and 'all other rivers' are also regarded as 'sons of the Supreme Being' and as containing some of his essence and spiritual power. According to our authority, this power or essence is transmitted through water-thus, in any shrine of an obosom the power or spirit is always derived from an object put into the shrine by the priest and, in some way, 'associated with water '. There are 'hundreds of abosom' all of which are lineally descended, so it is stated, from these original four. 'As a woman gives birth to a child, so may water to a god', said a priest. All, we are told, derive their power 'directly or indirectly from the one great God of the Sky '. The connexion of the abosom with 'Nyame is thus specifically stated in myth. The statement, however, that they derive their power 'directly or 'indirectly ' from him, and the still wider generalization that hence all power is from 'Nyame would appear to be the author's own deduction. If we examine the material before us, moreover, the association of all the abosom with 'Nyame is neither self-evident nor easy to discover. It rests indeed primarily on statements by the author and evidence such as the remark of the priest in the temple of Ta Kora: ' Ta Kora came from 'Nyame, the Sky God, and needs no help from ordinary suman.' This temple and this priest were, however, a noticeable exception to the general use of suman, which are found in all other temples of the gods, and adorn most of their priests. The derivation of their power from the Sky god needs considerable documentation before it can be accepted as in any way substantiated. It may be a living belief, but if so we should expect to find it reflected in ritual, dominating the whole cult of the abosom, and much more prominently expressed in religious action than is the case. Without such documentation we can only question whether it is more than a recondite dogma, enshrined in folk-lore, part of the esoteric equipment of the priesthood, and in no way a dominant force in the religious life of the individual. A study of the ritual connected with the gods leads us in fact to believe that they are very similar in dogmatic construction to the type of nature

I Ashanti, p. 143.



448 SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF deities found fairly uniformly throughout West Africa.' With the possible exception of the god Edinkira2 they are uniformly water gods, and since rain comes from the heavens, there is an obvious link with the sky god. The shrines for the gods are brass pans in which, among other ingredients, there is always some 'object associated with water ', which is the really relevant element. The actual sources of the sacred rivers, the Lake itself of Bosomtwe, any crossing or ford of a river are the sites of temples or lesser shrines of gods.

It is, however, very difficult to arrive at the exact nature of the gods from the material we are given.3 On the whole, from a consideration of the ritual, they would appear to be nature gods, associated with local territorial or sociological units, to which they stand in the relation of guardian spirits. At the Apo ceremony, where all the shrines of the gods are purified by being sprinkled with water, the various local gods return to their own districts for this part of the ceremony, and are sprinkled with their own local water. Again, in the account of the making of a shrine for the god Ta Kwesi, we find that he is ' created ' to be a god for the chief, and for the spirit ancestors of the village,

I For an account of the so-called Jujus of the Ibibio cf. P. A. Talbot, Life in Southern Nigeria, chapters ii-iv.

2 Religion and Art in Ashanti, p. 2. For another somewhat mysterious personage who may be a god, see the account of Santeman Kobina, who figures in the rites of the Sacred Grove at Santemanso (Ashanti, p. 132): 'I cannot be quite certain about the Santeman Kobina, who is invoked .... He is not a human spirit ... All were emphatic upon that point. My clerk informed me that it was " the spirit of nature ", and ... the old Queen Mother said it was the soul of the leaves and the trees and of the earth at that spot.' We are further told that Kobina ' means that the day of observance of this spirit is Tuesday '. The rites fall into the standard obosom complex, but the spirit is not apparently connected with either 'Nyame or water.

3 Besides the small portion of the 'creation myth' referred to above, and the statement that besides being regarded as descended from the Sky god, the power of the abosom is also believed to be derived from 'Nyame, our authority gives us a number of ceremonies at which the conspicuous ritual is concerned with the worship of the gods. The sociological data which would link the cult to any specific group of people, define its precise meaning in their lives, and enable us to understand its place in the larger system of co-ordinated beliefs, is unfortunately very inadequate. The whole matter of the connexion between the ntoro and the obosom is never clearly set forth. I deal with the question in the following section, but only very briefly.



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 449 and in the prayers to him he is asked to give health, fertility, and safety to the people' of the village ', and begged to remain with them always and not go away at the request of any one, except the King of Ashanti (Ashanti, pp. 146-7). An obosom may be consulted by an individual in cases of sickness, barrenness or sterility, failure of crops and so forth. But again we do not know whether the god consulted by a man on such occasions would be chosen quite indiscriminately from the whole hierarchy, or whether, on the contrary, it would be the obosom connected either with his village or with his ntoro division. In the same way, in the public rituals of the cult, such as the Apo cere-

mony, where the chief officiates, we are not told whether he does so through any connexion between his ntoro and the god, or whether, in his capacity as chief, he represents the people in any rite connected with the tutelary god of the village or town. Certainly the public ceremonies of the obosom as we have them described are occasions of

large tribal gatherings, when the priests and priestesses of the various gods gather from all over the country, and with them come the fol- lowers of their gods. The shrines are paraded in the streets amid scenes of great splendour and pomp. For it all the outlying clans as- semble, and the ceremony has the public function of being the occasion

upon which the sub-chiefs pay homage to the head chief, and the

political unity of the tribe, state, nation, is affirmed.

THE NTORO. The ntoro, as we have already said, is one of the com-

ponent elements in man and is defined as in the one case semen, and, in the other, spirit. Sociologically it defines the paternal clan to which the individual belongs, and it is inherited through males only. Thus, although a woman has a ntoro spirit which she inherited from her father she cannot transmit it, and her children will have the ntoro of their father. The division which it denotes 'is' or 'possibly is' exogamous. The ntoro is further defined as a man's 'familiar spirit' (Ashanti, p. 45) and has a cult associated with it, i.e. the 'washing of

I The mortuary ritual proves that individuals having the same god are under definite obligations to one another. We are not told, however, precisely what is the nature of these obligations, nor the extent to which they are legally and morally bind- ing and to which they control co-operative activities.



450 SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF the ntoro', and taboos, or 'things hateful to it'. The connexion between the ntoro and the abosom is, as we have already indicated, not

clearly stated. There are certain significant similarities in the ' com-

plex ' or system of rites connected with both categories of belief. Thus the ntoro is defined as spirit, semen, or saliva. Its characteristic rite is the 'washing of the ntoro'. The ntoro is important in the naming of a child, a rite which must be performed by a member of the same ntoro division, and in which the grandfather or other paternal ancestor spits into the mouth of the child. Further, at death, we are told that the

spirit (' the sunsum or ntoro ') of a man' about to quit the body for ever, flits from wherever the dying man or woman may be, to the Lake of Bosomtwe and says goodbye'.I Now it is not clear here whether

every man's ntoro goes to this Lake of the Last Farewell at death, or

only those of the Bosomtwe ntoro division. But if ntoro and obosom are

interchangeable words as seems to be the case, then the source to which the ntoro returns at death would be the obosom. This is confirmed

by a passage in a chapter on cross-cousin marriage in Religion and Art inAshanti, where we read: ' The ntoro does not accompany the saman to the spirit world, but... joins the group ntoro god (obosom) or spirit.. .' In this connexion we should note that, in the myth which tells of the

origin of the Bosomtwe ntoro, the first man to hold this ntoro was the son of Twe, the lake spirit, and a leper woman. Since the spirit, the ntoro element, is always derived from the father, and is never transmitted except through males, he presumably inherited this spirit from the god of the lake, Twe, after whom he was named Twe Adodo. We

may, therefore, conclude that this particular ntoro was derived from the water god Twe, but whether we can legitimately generalize from this that all ntoro divisions are associated with an obosom; and, con-

I Ashanti, p. 55. In a book called Among Nigerian Head Hunters, by Captain Wilson-Haffenden, shortly to be published by Messrs. Seeley Service & Co., Ltd., which I have had the privilege of reading in manuscript, the author finds among the Kwottos a belief in two souls-ekiti which he defines as the paternal, or spirit soul; and the kofi or maternal, matter soul. After death both these ' souls ' return to the source from which they are believed to have come. The ekiti returns 'to an association with water, conceived as, in the form of rain in the sky, the source and home of the male fertilizing element in nature; . . . the " maternal soul"

(kofi) ... goes back whence it is believed originally to have come, to an association with earth . . .' (p. 291).



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 45I

versely, that all abosom are associated with a patrilineal division of the tribe, it is not possible, on the evidence, to be certain. The latter deduction does not seem possible, since there are 'hundreds of abosom' and there cannot be hundreds of ntoro divisions. Also some are definitely local divinities, and the ntoro is not a local division. Thus the direct, exclusive, and reciprocal correlation between the abosom and the ntoro divisions cannot exist. On the other hand, the ritual simi- larity between the fundamental rite of the ' washing of the ntoro ' and the purification of the shrines of the abosom by ceremonial washing in the sacred river of Tano is significant. The points are of capital sociological importance, and it is to be regretted that they were not investigated and stated definitely by the author. I consider, however, that the 'importance' of any particular obosom is directly proportionate to the degree in which he is regarded as specially identified with a sociological division. At least I should like tentatively to suggest that where the correlation exists it results in a crystallization of belief and in a definite enlargement of the sphere of activity and the ritual importance of the particular god, due to these factors.

I find, that is, that there are several types of abosom. There are, for example, abosom which would appear to be trees or plants or animals; thus we have a tree spoken of as an obosom, having a priest who called himself Edinkira okomfo or the priest of Edinkira; while in the Apo ceremony, at the washing of the shrines of the gods, the prayer of the okyeame includes a reference to 'Leopard, plants, beasts, Creature that possesses the Underworld, God of the Sky, Thursday Goddess of Earth, and all gods of the world come hither .. .' which would seem to indicate that the leopard, plants, and beasts are also gods. These gods appear to be dissociated from any particular individual or group of individuals, unless they come under the category of tote- mistic guardians of individuals, but on this whole subject our author gives us no information whatever, beyond saying that if there is totemism at all it is associated with the ntoro divisions. Moreover we are given the hint that, in the Brong Adaes, the obosom cult permeates a type of ritual which in Southern Ashanti is devoted exclusively to ancestral spirits. The Brong people, we are told, represent an isolated branch of the original stock from which the Ashanti



452 SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF came. It is possible, therefore, that these abosom were at one time much more actively associated with human affairs under nomadic conditions and that the family cults developed at their expense with the gradual increase of centralization, resulting from settled agricultural conditions. But this is pure speculation. At present this type of obosom which remains a nature god, dissociated from any social unit or individual, does not exert any profound influence upon social organization or conduct. A second class of obosom tend to ' merge' into suman. They are, in the words of our authority, ' elevated' fetishes. Such a one would be the god of Kum Aduasia. There are, however, other abosom which play a very active and dominant part in controlling human behaviour, a part only second to that of the samanfo. These are the gods which are associated either with the ntoro divisions or with villages, towns, groves, as their tutelary spirits. It is, I believe, definitely through their association with these sociological units that their power becomes enlarged, and that there results this ' grading ' of the gods into hierarchies, which our author states to be an empirical fact, but which he never explains either by a sociological correlation or in any other way.

One final point as to the sociological importance of the ntoro, a point which has been admirably stressed by our author. The Ashanti are matrilineal but patrilocal. Inheritance, succession, clan membership, are all counted through the mother. The cult of ancestors, by far the most important cult in the whole religious system, is limited to matrilineal ancestors. Politically the importance of the mother's brother, as the head of her clan, and thus also the legal head of her children, is considerable. But, as in all predominantly matrilineal societies,' there is a compensating stress on the father's side, emotionally initiated but institutionalized and traditionally defined in the ntoro cult. This sociological stress is embodied in dogma. It is through the sociological association that the ntoro cult enters most deeply into the lives of the people, as can be seen from an examination of the various rites connected with it.

To summarize these points: I find that there is a mythological Cf. Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Societies, and see also Encyclopaedia

Britannica, s.v. Social Anthropology and Kinship.



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 453 foundation for the belief that the four main abosom are sons of 'Nyame, and we are further told that all others are their descendants. In point of fact we learn that Tano has ' sons ', and another god, Ta Kwesi, is called Tano's fire. A new god may be 'created' by a priest at any time by the similar process of making a shrine and calling into it an 'emanation' of an already existing god. The importance of these gods in the whole religious system is dependent, however, not on the mythological but on purely social facts. It would seem that when the obosom has become linked with a social division of the people, either through his connexion or identification with the ntoro, or through the particular relation in which he stands to a town or village, he becomes of enormous social value. Where he is a nature spirit pure and simple, as in the case of the god Edinkira, he is, for all the mythological connexion with 'Nyame, much more on a level with the suman This would explain the cases mentioned by our authority, in which gods 'merge into suman '. But this merging obviously takes place between all categories. The various types of belief are never set in water-tight compartments. There are evidences of gods and spirits mingling in cult, being credited with similar powers over fertility and evil destiny-in origins even they merge and compound. Effective differentiation and specialization takes place definitely, however, through their relation to social order, and out of this arise new elements which affect vitally the value of their cult and individual men.

THE SUMAN OR FETISH. Fetishism' was, in the opinion of the earlier writers, the most prominent aspect of West African religion. Confining the use of the term to the cult in connexion with suman,' our author regards it, on the contrary, as ' the least important' feature of Ashanti religion ' because it is concerned with spirits of an inferior status'. In this paper I have been concerned to prove that this criterion is inadmissible and irrelevant. The point of view implied in the statement has, moreover, led the author to neglect to give us any-

I The suman is defined by Christaller as ' a charm, amulet, talisman worn as a remedy or preventative against evils or mischief, such as diseases and witchcraft, consisting or composed of various things such as feathers, hair, and teeth of various animals '.

Hh




thing like an adequate account of this aspect of religion. Quantitatively, it is dealt with in some 6 pages out of over 60o devoted to the subject of religion; while the quality of the material we shall have to criticize on several points. It is all the more unfortunate because, in the author's own words, the cult has the backing of strong emotions and passions, and arises out of vital human needs. Thus he writes: ' The labour and infinite pains, the prayers, the spells, the sacrifices, the abnegation, the heart-burnings, the disappointments, the hopes that are inseparably bound up in each one of these poor fetishes, we can only imagine in part, but they should never quite be lost sight of when we are considering such objects, or judging the makers of them' (Religion and Art in Ashanti, pp. i-2). The sociological and psycho- logical data that would enable us to do more than 'imagine in part' these essential elements in the cult are not given. Actually we have a description of a number of such objects, a description which consists in (a) an account of the material components of these objects of cult; (b) a list of taboos (which is incomplete, being given of some of the suman only), the infringement of which results in a loss of power to the suman; and (c), in some cases, half a dozen words as to the use to which the suman is put, i.e. the particular evil against which it is used as a prophylactic (e.g. 'this suman is, etc.', which would make the suman nothing more than a mascot), a theory which is inconsistent with the author's definition which we shall have to discuss later. From this we are only able to deduce the possible function of the cult, and to make some estimate of its probable relation to the whole system of religious beliefs. For a clear understanding, however, we need much fuller details as to the way in which they are made or obtained, the actual way in which they are used, on what occasions and for what purposes; how they are owned, inherited, and transmitted; and the way in which they satisfy the 'hopes that are inseparably bound up in each one of these poor fetishes '-that is, their relation to the fundamental needs of man. With regard to the dogma underlying the belief, we have contradictory evidence which the author has made no attempt to reconcile or explain. Thus we have a number of unco- ordinated answers given him by unspecified individuals in answer to the question: What is the difference between an obosom and a suman?



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 455 These tend to show that, whereas the obosom derives its power from 'Nyame,

' the suman come from mmoatia (fairies), by whom they were first made and from whom they are still obtained. You place ten cowries on a rock, go away; on your return you find your cowries gone, having been replaced by a suman ' (Religion and Art in Ashanti, p. 23). On the other hand, the author gives us an account of the making of a Kunkuma suman, 'the greatest suman in Ashanti', 'the father and elder of all suman', in which there does not appear any reference to the mmoatia. In fact, the priest takes an old broom and apparently makes it magically effective by a rite consisting of de- liberately bringing into contact with it every object and word which normally would be most deeply tabooed to him; and, in the second place, by reciting over the object an incantation: ' If I hear that word or utter it by mistake may it not touch me' (i.e. do me evil). By carrying this suman with him, he can with impunity break any of the taboos associated with his own god, or any of the other fetishes owned by him. Kunkuma is apparently the name given, not so much to an individual suman as to a type or class of fetish, since there is also a Kunkuma in the second collection of suman described by our author. It is not clear whether this would apply to all the other suman in the collections, which are given names, the etymology of which we are only occasionally told. Nor do we know whether suman are owned by any individual who chooses to procure one from a medicine man, or whether they are the property of medicine men only, and inherited within the profession.

Besides the account of the making of this suman we are also given an invaluable but all too brief account of the method of using the sabe or oten fetish for black magic, on the orthodox and widespread pattern of' sympathetic magic'. Again the process here contains no reference to mmoatia. In addition to this, in a chapter dealing with goldsmiths and gold weights we have an account of a rite called Kyekyere Nkabere, in connexion with the Nkabere suman depicted on one of the weights. Here again there is the usual magical complex of rite, incantation, and specially prepared material made by a medicine man. On the other hand, in the account of the Apo ceremony already referred to, we have the story of Kum Aduasia, 'the priest of a god

Hh




[i.e. an obosom] who, I much suspect, was an elevated suman'. In addition to this, in all the temples to the gods, there are suman ranged alongside the shrines of the gods, and we are told that the ' lesser gods [i.e. the abosom] . . . are graded in a regular descending scale, until

they reach, or at times almost merge into, that class which the Ashanti themselves name suman, who are amongst the lowest grades of superhuman powers' (Ashanti, p. 86). As Professor Westermann rightly points out, there would seem to be a 'straying over' from one cate-

gory of belief to the other. The details of the process we can only surmise, since even in the case of his friend Kum Aduasia, Captain Rattray does not give us the reasons that led him to conclude that the

priest's god was no more than 'an elevated suman '. It would appear, possibly, that there are, therefore, two lines of

development of the cult of the suman, one which results in the predominantly magical rites and identification of the object with the

personal needs and desires of one individual, for exclusively personal ends, defensive and offensive, and another which tends to merge the suman with wider interests and greater power. The sociological correlation which might enable us to establish the case is, however, unfortunately lacking, and it remains an hypothesis. The author's definition of the suman derives the potency of the object from the

presence in it of ' a spirit or spirits of an inferior status, generally belonging to the vegetable kingdom '.I Unquestionably the prevalent animistic beliefs are carried over at times into the fetish-and also into the shrines of the gods.2 But they would seem to be accessory rather than essential and in some cases completely lacking. Thus the

description given of the manufacture and use of the Kunkuma, and the Oten suman, contain no reference to spirits. There is, on the con-

I Captain Rattray's definition of a suman is as follows: 'A fetish (suman) is an

object which is the potential dwelling-place of a spirit or spirits of an inferior status, generally belonging to the vegetable kingdom; this object is also closely associated with the control of the powers of evil or black magic, for personal ends, but not necessarily to assist the owner to work evil, since it is used as much for defensive as for offensive purposes.' Religion and Art in Ashanti, p. 23. On the evidence given us, however, there is very little support for the conclusion that the potency of the fetish is due to an in-dwelling spirit.

2 See his account of the making of a shrine for a god, Ashanti, chapter xiv.



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 457

trary, a typical magical complex of a rite performed by a special class of individuals (the ' medicine man ') or priest over an object with no inherent religious associations, an incantation or spell forecasting or defining the use of the object, and a series of prohibitions or taboos to be observed by those using the object. It is unlikely, however, that the cult of the suman, any more than that of the abosom or the ancestral spirits, should remain static and completely differentiated from the rest of the religious system. Primarily, it would seem to be a magical process par excellence; but in describing the abosom cult we dealt with the question of the merging of one category of belief into another. Here again detailed sociological data might show that in the cases in which the suman becomes 'elevated into the category of the abosom', there the animistic elements become predominant and it is definitely regarded as 'the potential dwelling-place of spirits'. We are unfortunately given no information as to the process by which this ' elevation' takes place, but I hazard the conjecture that it would run parallel with an enlargement of the sociological correlation. The power and the nature of an obosom, as we saw, is enlarged and developed in direct correspondence with the degree in which it is trans- formed from a nature god into the guardian spirit for a social or local division of the tribe. In the same way, the stmnan, primarily a magical implement, in some cases becomes the mouthpiece of a spirit of the lower orders of nature-trees, leaves, the animals of the forest. In the absence of any information as to the how or why of this development it is perhaps unwise to speculate, but it is highly probable that further investigations would show the process to be at least paralleled if not induced by an enlargement of the sociological factors.

Besides the suman referred to above, there is a particularly interesting object of cult which is described in the chapter on fairies, forest monsters and witches, and which is there called a fetish or suman. ' The most striking part of the fetish were representations of two life- sized models in clay of female breasts which, supported on a column, formed a kind of altar .. .' We are also told that 'it had its men and women attendants and its temples, exactly on the same lines as the orthodox abosom ', and that it was used for the purpose of discovering witches. The model was adorned with six suman in anthropomorphic




form. The author gives the names of these ' dolls ' (which are of both

sexes) but no details about them, beyond the fact that: 'When the attendants, male and female, of the fetish were summoned to a village for the detection of witchcraft, these suman themselves assumed the form of witches, a ball of fire, and by making the witches call Ka cha! Ka cha! Ka cha! enticed real witches to approach them, when they would seize them and wound them or kill them, i.e. their sunsum

(spirit) with the knife that Kwaku holds ' (Kwaku being the name of one of the dolls or suman). We do not know what Kwaku signifies, but a few lines previously we had been told that a certain individual had a suman also used for detecting witches and that he 'summoned the spirit of Sasabonsam Kwaku to enter into it '.

The Fwemso suman, however, is obviously a composite object, consisting of a typical feminine fertility symbol accompanied by six suman in anthropomorphic form. In a foot-note to the name' Fwemso' we read ' another name, I believe, for the Aberewa fetish '. We have no other allusion than this to the Aberewa fetish, but the Fzemso suman

'formerly had its head-quarters on the shore of Lake Bosomtwe', and it will be remembered that here the Bosomtwe ntoro originated through the union of an old woman with the lake spirit Twe. This old woman's name is 'not known but she is spoken of as Aberewa, i.e. the old woman' (Ashanti, p. 56). Finally, Aberewa is another name for Asase, the Earth Goddess (ibid., p. 215). It appears, then, that a distinction should be drawn between the elements of this object. Obviously it consists of a female fertility symbol (a model of a woman's breasts), is named after the Earth Goddess, and has associated with it a temple, priests and priestesses, and taboos (one of which is not insignificant-i.e. direct contact with blood of sacrifices is taboo, but menstrual blood is not). In addition to this, grouped with it and serving as agencies in the execution of its function of detecting witchcraft, are a number of fetishes, which are apparently unusual in being of anthropomorphic form.

We have found outselves in every case handicapped in arriving at the core of the religious problem in Ashanti, through the inadequacy of our material.I Nowhere is this discrepancy more disconcerting than

I have been considering mainly Captain Rattray's material, because, as I have



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 459 in the case of the suman or fetish. I imagine that the author believed that the subject had been considerably over-stressed by earlier writers on West Coast religion, and that in his desire to bring out the more ' elevated' and 'inspired' elements in Ashanti religion he has quite illegitimately ruled this category out of court. Only so can we explain his almost entire neglect of the whole subject of magic.

I believe that, in the same way as we found reason to conclude that the abosom were not a homogeneous class, so the suman are also differentiated into three main types. Thus there is the type, illustrated by the oten or sabe fetish used in black magic, where there is the usual typical magical configuration of specially, magically prepared ingredients; rite and incantation; taboos to be observed; a specific limited function for the object; and its use for personal or individual ends. In this class there is no evidence whatever of any spirit being concerned in the matter. In the second place we have suman which are alleged to be potent through a connexion with fairies, from whom they are obtained; or because they are the 'potential dwelling-places of a spirit or spirits of an inferior status, usually belonging to the animal kingdom'. We are not given any concrete case of a suman which its owner claimed had been obtained from mmoatia. Medicine men claim to have lived with fairies and learned their arts from them, and it appears that these medicine men and priests are the makers and owners of suman. In the third place, there are suman which, through some process or other, the exact nature of which we are not told, ' merge' into a higher category and seem to be impinging upon the abosom. I think that it is possible that this process is a sociological one, and that, so soon as a suman tends to become, perhaps through hereditary transmission, associated not so much with an individual as with a family, or a professional class, or a social unit of some kind or other, so also does it tend to become credited with spiritual identity rather than purely magical power.

said, he has given us one of the best accounts of religion of any West African tribe. My criticism applies specifically to his, in many ways, brilliant work. But it could be made even more strongly against the accounts of religion given by other West African writers, in some of which the sociological data are almost entirely negligible.




THE CULT OF CLAN ANCESTORS. We come now to what the author considers 'the preponderating influences in Ashanti religion '- 'these are neither Saturday Sky god, nor Thursday Earth Goddess, nor even the hundreds of abosom gods with which the land is filled, but are the samanfo, the spirits of the departed forebears of the clan (abusua)'.

I shall here deal with the eschatological beliefs of the peoples only in so far as they are necessary to a full understanding of the ancestral cult. Three spirits are recognized to exist in the individual, all of which persist after death. In the first place, there is a mogya or blood

spirit, which is inherited by a child from its mother. There is an Ashanti proverb that a 'woman has no soul' which she can transmit; only a small kind of sunsum given her by her father,' but this she cannot transmit, only her blood '.1 This element, for which we should use the term 'blood or body soul' rather than soul,2 determines clan

membership descent and the inheritance of property, the Ashanti

being matrilineal. The mogya is present in the child from conception. Though inherited through the mother by both male and female children, the mogya can only be transmitted by the females. It is the mogya which gives the individual clan status, which persists after death, and bodily form, which also persists after death. In the second place, the child inherits from the father a ntoro spirit, of which we have

already given an account. This is transmitted in the act of coition and is recognized as the cause of conception. A child belongs to the abusua of its mother through the inheritance of the mo,gya, and to the ntoro division of the father through a corresponding process. Both abusua (matrilineal clan) and ntoro (patrilineal clan) divisions are exogamous. Both require certain ritual obligations and the observance of taboos

(e.g. 'washing' the ntoro and things 'hateful' to it). There is apparently a connexion between every ntoro and an obosom, and some ntoro have totems and linked totems. We see thus the extraordinarily close correlation between religious dogma and sociological theory. In addition to these two, every individual has two other principles or souls, e. g. a 'kra soul and a sunsum or shadow soul.

The' souls' have a distinct history after death: the mogya, or blood and body soul, at death retains its form, personality, and clan status,

I Religion and Art in Ashanti, p. 3 18. 2 Ibid., p. 319.



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 461 and as a saman or ghost goes to the spirit world and awaits reincarnation, which can only take place, as we have already said, through a woman of the same clan or abusua. The ntoro is separated by a rite from the mogya and goes to join the group ntoro or obosom god. It does not go to the spirit world. It is reincarnated through a male of the same ntoro division, but independently of the abusua with which it was linked in a previous existence. The 'kra accompanies the saman to the spirit world and may quit the body before death. Like the ntoro it is also separated from the clan in the mortuary ritual. The sunsum does not go to the spirit-world, and may leave the body before death. It apparently remains, after a man's death, in close connexion with his Stool, to which it is also attached during his lifetime, though we are not told the precise nature of this relationship. The saman or ghost is, therefore, the mogya or blood (abusua) element, which has been separated from the ntoro (or patrilineal spirit) and from the 'kra in the mortuary ritual. The saman is a clan (abusua) ghost. The ritual of ancestor-worship, so long as it is in accord with this dogma, is a clan ritual. Moreover, it is dependent upon the continuity of the clan. The samanfo are limited in their operations to their own clan. They are 'the real landowners' who 'continue to take a lively interest in the land from which they had their origin or which they once owned'. Since reincarnation only takes place within the abusua group, the saman is dependent upon the continuance of this group for the possibility of a return to the world. The religious dogma is dependent, therefore, on this theory of clan continuity; and is intimately correlated with clan organization as it functions in such matters as descent, prohibited and prescribed marriages, laws of property and land tenure. The one cannot be understood without the other. They are two aspects of the same institution. Moreover, the sentiments upon which this

complex institution rests are consistently homogeneous. Nowhere do we see more clearly the complete interdependence of dogma and social

organization than in the process of the maintenance and traditional transmission of these sentiments.

THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE DOGMA. Thus the conception that 'The dead do not die' (to borrow a Bushman proverb), that



462 SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF in a mystic duality of blood and spirit they return, by a dogmatically controlled process of reincarnation, to their own clan, is a religious dogma which has far-reaching sociological effect, in fixing the precise form of the social organization and regulating the tone of social morality or ethics. This belief in the continuance of the clan can be shown to be borne out in the ritual of birth and death. For example, the mortuary ritual may be explained as having the specific object of ensuring the ghost a safe journey to the spirit-world, and maintenance in it, where, as a saman, he or she 'will receive honour and propitiation ... as long as the clan exists '.I The dogma is dependent upon the social institution, the clan, the members of which alone can perform the necessary rites at the initial instance of the death, and later in the various ritual acts associated with the ancestor-cult. Not only is the performance of these mortuary rites limited to abusua or blood relatives, but their performance by an individual is held in the courts to be conclusive proof of his standing in a certain relationship to the dead person.2 Moreover, the belief in the power and influence of the clan ancestors controls all social, economic, and ceremonial acts. Thus, 'Should the wife of a weaver be unfaithful to her husband a sheep must be sacrificed to the loom and another on the ancestral stools.' 3 The application may be extended to all other forms of law and custom which are impressed upon the individual by a process of education within the specific groups of social organization. A man driven to mortgage his land pours rum over his ancestral stools, if a chief,' to inform his samanfo of the transaction' and beg their assistance in redeeming it.4 The farmer, before tilling the ground, sacrifices a fowl, allowing the blood to drip on the ground with the prayer:' Grand- father So and So, you once came and hoed here and then you left it to me ... do not let the knife cut me,' etc.5 But the power of the

I Religion and Art in Ashanti, pp. 103 and 90o. 2 Ibid., p. 155. 3 Ibid., p. 234. 4 If the clan becomes extinct its land passes to the Stool, but the family ghosts

cannot be transferred with it. To avoid the possibility of extinction slaves were allowed to inherit property, though not Stools, in order to carry on the cult of the family ancestors.

5 Ashanti, p. 2 5.



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 463 ancestral spirits is operative only upon and through their descendants, the clan. Moreover, they are dependent upon the clan not only for existence in the spirit-world but for reincarnation in this.

All the significant birth ritual is concerned with the clan ancestral spirits. It is true that pre-natal rites and those which immediately follow birth seem to be concerned almost as much with the ntoro as with the abusua, in accordance with the native theory of procreation. Thus during pregnancy the woman has to observe in addition to her own taboos those in connexion with her husband's ntoro. This is due to the belief that the abusua (mnogya) and ntoro elements are operative from the moment of conception. Moreover, on the eighth month of

pregnancy there is a rite, already referred to, for the propitiation of the husband's ntoro.' Again, on the eighth day after the birth of the child there is the Nteatea rite, already described, when the child is named by its senior ntoro relative, and it is then for the first time

regarded as a member of the human family. The ritual for these first

eight days is for the purpose of aggregating the individual to the human group, and propitiating those spiritual forces which, in the absence of such ritual regard, might cause harm to both mother and child. It has, therefore, a sociological aspect. The emotional tone, on the other hand, would seem to be the same as in the ritual associated with puberty (for girls) and that of death.

The puberty rites for girls (the Bara rites) do not merely symbolize, as the author says, the rebirth of the girl into the clan. They have a

deeper sociological meaning, and give public and ceremonial recognition to the fact that the girl, as a potential mother, may now serve as

I After birth the two spirits in the child are not regarded as abruptly severing connexion with the spirit world. Birth does not automatically affiliate them with the new environment. This has to be done by a succession of rites, each stage being marked by definite ritual acts. There is even a special name for the child during this transitional period, when it is known as a 'ghost child'. If it should die during this stage it is not accorded funeral rites 'lest the mother should become sterile', and the body is mutilated and beaten to discourage the ghost mother, who at its birth mourned her loss as if it were the death of her child, from sending it back to earth. It is significant that the precaution is for fear of the sterility of the mother. We have seen the importance that is attached to fertility in Ashanti prayers. A barren woman cannot supply clansmen to serve the ancestral spirits. Again, therefore, we see the sociological significance of the rite.




a medium for the perpetuating of the clan.I Although both 'Nyame and Asase (the earth goddess) are invoked in a preliminary prayer, it is the samanfo, as the spirits most concerned in the continuance of the clan, who are propitiated by sacrifices and implored 'not to let this infant come to puberty only to die .2 The main actors in the Bara rites are all, so far as can be gathered, women of the girl's abusua, though our authority fails to give us the necessary information to enable us to be positive on this point. Very soon after the birth of the child there is an increasing stress upon the (abusua) maternal ancestral spirits which is in accord with the matrilineal principle of counting filiation. As the abusua or clan determines descent, succession, and property, so the ghosts of the clan (the saman) are now the sociologically relevant spirits in the individual's religious practices. He propitiates them, consults them, and derives the sanctions for his laws and customs from them. On the other hand, there is always a compensatory and important ritual associated with the ntoro divisions, which are, of course, traced through the male parent. In some cases we find a cult devoted to the obosom who is regarded as the ancestor in the male line. This is especially so in the cult of Twe, the lake-spirit, from which the Bosomtwe ntoro division trace their descent.

Full funeral rites are accorded only to the adult clansman or clans- woman, and are for the purpose of insuring that 'his or her name shall be held in pious memory as long as the clan exists'. The cult of ancestral spirits, and we might say all religious cult in Ashanti, 'is intimately bound up with the predominating desire for the fertility of man and of nature '. Always, to ghosts or gods, the prayer is: ' Give us children; give us good hunting; give us a good harvest; such is the basis and essence of every prayer.'3 In corroboration of this we find that the annual Odwira ceremony or Feast of the Dead ' held in honour and propitiation of the Ashanti Kings who had gone elsewhere' 4 is also a first-fruits ceremony. This aspect was so prominent, in fact, that Bowdich described it as the yam festival. It is a spectacular

After the Bara rite a girl is addressed by children as Ena (mother). 2 Religion and Art in Ashanti, p. 70. 3 Ibid., p. I20. 4 A euphemism for ' had died'. See op. cit., p. I27.



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 465 state affair, the occasion of barbaric pomp and display, and politically the means of the reaffirmation of the unity and dependence of the whole peoples in and upon their kings. It is also a purification ceremony of the shrines of the kings themselves, the stools, of the nation as a whole, and of the suman or fetishes. Here we have an instance of the intimate relation between the various religious cults and also of the identity of their main aim, i.e. the insurance of fertility in man and nature and thus the securing of human welfare. This one

ceremony contains rites which are concerned with departmental gods, ancestral spirits and fetishes. Also we have confirmation of the correlation of these facts with social organization.

The mortuary ritual for commoners is almost entirely concerned with the ancestral spirits. There are one or two details which are concerned with other spiritual powers. Thus, like many other primitive peoples, the Ashanti believe health to be the natural state of man unless he be interfered with by evilly disposed supernatural beings or by witchcraft. In the first case the man may consult an obosom priest and be told that the spirit of his ancestors is calling for him. In one of the songs sung during a wake there is a reference to

'Nyame as ' the creator of Death ',' and to ' Mother Tano the river '. Before the grave is dug a libation is poured on the ground and the earth goddess is invoked as follows: ' Goddess of Earth, receive this wine and drink. Your grandchild, So and So, has died. We beg of

you that we may dig a hole.'2 For the rest, the mortuary ritual is concerned with the ancestral spirits, and is performed according to traditional and inviolable laws regulating the procedure, the people taking part in the various acts, the gifts presented to the dead, the formulae with which they are presented. For example, in the case of an adult male leaving issue, the abusua or clan relatives are collectively responsible for certain stipulated contributions. The wives' contribution, as that of the children, the grandchildren, and the brothers'

grandchildren, with the exception of the wives' ntoro relatives, are also all fixed according to time-honoured custom. A third class of persons, who are neither blood nor ntoro relatives but are none the less kin, such as the mother's brothers' children, the father's sisters' children,

I Religion and Art in Ashanti, p. I 5 . 2 Ibid., p. 5.




need not contribute at all, but usually do so. The invariable formula at the presentation of the gifts to the dead man (who is supposed to hear what they say) is: 'Let your family have long life and health. May we get more money to pay for your funeral. Do not let any of us fall sick. May the women bear children.'I

THE PERSISTENCE OF THE CLAN AFTER DEATH. It will be remembered that, for good or evil, the ghost can only affect his own clansmen. ' The clan persists in the graveyard ',2 and beyond it. The clan

represents the full cycle, not of dead and living, since death does not constitute a breach of continuity, only a passage from one stage to another, but, on the one hand, of human clansfolk with an existence dependent upon the superhuman powers which control the fertility of man and nature; and, on the other, a body of ghost clansfolk, the

samanfo, who can, to a certain extent, control the superhuman forces, but are themselves dependent upon the human group for their persistence. The Ashanti has always 'a horror of his family becoming extinct, and the purchase and rearing of nnonko mma (slaves) was his insurance against this possible calamity ',3 which would have resulted in the ancestral home and its spirits being forgotten and neglected. On the other hand, the rupture between the spirit, which at death goes to the land of spirits (samandow), and the relatives who are left on earth is accelerated and emphasized by various rites in the mortuary ceremonies. The spirit is speeded on its way and given provisions for the journey; care is taken to ensure its prosperity and comfort in its new home; and all these necessary attentions can only be done for it by members of its own matrilineal clan (abusua). In the Sora rite, on the sixth day after the funeral, the last link with earth is severed; and with the destruction of the Sora hut and the sweeping of the ground where it stood, the ghost is reminded that the funeral is finished and that all that should be done has been done for him. ' Come and receive this wine and drink and begone and rest peacefully.' 'Death is not to be taken home.'4

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS. Our analysis has shown that religion I Religion and Art in Ashanti, p. 158. 2 Ibid., p. 16i. 3 Ashanti, p. 44. 4 Religion and Art in Ashanti, pp. I64-5.



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 467 is never a matter of belief and mythology alone. Nor does even the ritual enactment of belief exhaust the sphere of religious influence. Its direct control of social organization and of traditional modes of conduct is at least as important. Again, throughout our study we found that it is not only the spectacular sides of ceremonial, nor the 'elevated' and impressive aspects of belief, which are of importance. The humble every-day instances of ancestral cult; the daily cult of the abosom at fords, trees and groves, and in rites connected with the ntoro -a cult of which we receive only glimpses here and there-de- serves as full treatment as the more sensational and dramatic ceremonies. Religion possesses always its sociological and ethical as well as its ritual and dogmatic aspects. Moreover, it is relevant, theoreti- cally and practically, in so far, and only in so far, as it affects the life of the people. The recognition that religion has thus several aspects reveals it as a closely knit system permeating the whole of culture. This point of view led us to a reshaping of the religious material, showing the manner and the degree in which religion controls all

aspects of social organization, of economic, legal, and ceremonial life, and provides the sanctions for rules of conduct. This process of cor-

relating belief with social facts and individual conduct led us to a clearer understanding of the dynamic nature of religion, and thus to its value to the Ashanti culture as a whole. As far as our information

goes, the sociological setting and, therefore, the sociological influence of the samanfo appears to be most fully developed. The belief in ancestral spirits has two aspects. On one hand it is a religious dogma: the dogma, that is, of reincarnation controlled by clan descent; on the other it is defined sociologically as the continuity of the clan, which

persists beyond death and must persist if reincarnation is to be possible. The belief in samanfo lies at the basis of all the laws and customs

regulating the lives of individuals within the family and the clan. The belief is operative in the outstanding physiological and spiritual crises of life, it also influences every co-operative activity of daily life.

Though the samanfo provide the sanctions for clan regulations, the abosom play a large part in controlling social life. The sociological context for this latter type of belief is, however, almost entirely neglected in the Ashanti material at our disposal. We know that,




through an association with the ntoro divisions, through the fact that it acts as the guardian spirit of individual men and women, and also through its association with local territorial or social divisions, the obosom exerts a profound influence upon human conduct. It presumably has a daily cult, though our authority confines his account almost entirely to large public ceremonies. On these public occasions what scanty sociological evidence there is seems to indicate that the cult cuts across the purely family and clan rituals of the samanfo and is the means of a wider tribal integration. But the abosom cult must obviously have an equally fundamental if more homely side, through its identification with individuals, as their guardian spirits, and in virtue of its protective relation to local areas. And it is probable that, had we been given it, this more prosaic aspect would have proved to be the more fundamental. Certainly it is through these facts that we should have become aware of the exact meaning of the relation between the obosom and ntoro divisions as a whole and the members of them in particular, a relation which is nowhere clearly stated.

There is no evidence that these deities are regarded by the Ashanti as dependent for their power upon 'Nyame. The assertion has been made by our authority and the fact is confirmed in myth, but apparently it plays no part in cult. From an examination of the ritual of the gods, of the constitution of their shrines, and of their concrete processes and effects, they would appear to be autonomous deities, completely independent of the sky god. The only way in which they differ fundamentally from the nature deities of cognate West Coast religions is in the added strong sociological correlation, possessed by the obosom and not apparently by the Ndemm. With their identification with an important local or social division comes immediately an enlargement of power and a corresponding crystallization of dogma. I imagine this process to lie behind the obvious 'grading' of the abosom; some, through an association with large social or political units, becoming more important than others which remain nature gods, with no attachment to any division of social organization. But the data for a complete understanding of the factors which go towards this development are almost entirely lacking.'"

I Thus we know next to nothing of the influence of religion upon the industrial



ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN ASHANTI 469 The part played by 'Nyame we found to be relatively insignificant.

There is no basis for the assumption that he is a Supreme God and the source of moral law. On the contrary, his influence upon social organization and individual conduct is, if we have been given all the facts, extremely slight. He is merely a sky god, associated with fertility, unattached to any specific sociological division, not concerned with the daily affairs of men. Where he is invoked it is always in association with the other singular-by which I mean differentiated, individualized, and outstanding-deities in the Ashanti pantheon, such as Asase, the earth goddess, 'the Creature that possesses the Under- world ', and ' the Leopard that rules the Forest '. These mythological beings, though their names appear frequently in prayers, in conjunction with 'Nyame and the departmental gods and spirits, are almost entirely neglected by our authority, who has singled out 'Nyame alone for what seems to be an exaggerated consideration. It might be argued that he was implicitly concerned in all cases when the abosom were invoked; but this claim rests entirely on the assertion that he is the father of the gods and that they derive their power directly or indirectly from him, and there is no evidence that this is an active belief. The only sociological correlation which we can deduce from the material is that between 'Nyame and the chief, but this alone is not sufficient to justify the more exaggerated statements as to his nature and influence. The case for the samanfo is, on the contrary, abundantly substantiated, and they are apparently still to-day the preponderant influence in determining the laws which regulate clan behaviour.

The information which would enable us to estimate the effect of the belief in the suman upon economic and social life is entirely lacking. and agricultural life of the people, though this must certainly be as strong as it is over their social organization. We are told nothing of the effect of magic upon trade, exchange, manufactures. The treatment of arts and crafts is from a purely technological and museum point of view, completely divorced from its sociological context; nor are we given any facts regarding the transmission of professions or crafts, except for one remark in the third volume to the effect that a son inherits his father's obosom and trade. It is probable that here, as elsewhere among primitive peoples, this follows with the inheritance of tools, and would therefore be controlled by the dual units of the abusua and ntoro. These are facts of obvious practical and theoretical importance and for which the anthropologist, the missionary and administrator alike, are entirely dependent on the field-worker.

I i



470 LA SIGNIFICATION SOCIOLOGIQUE DU We know nothing of the sociological context of this type of belief, it is never given its place within the cognate system of religious belief, nor is it correlated to the social organization. We know nothing of the way in which magic is used in agriculture, economic activities, arts and crafts; nothing of the transmission of the magical objects themselves, or whether such transmission tends to create a hereditary class of medicine men; nothing of the effect which the power of

making or owning such objects has upon the status of the individual. This is the type of concrete information which we have a right to demand of the field-anthropologist. Through it alone can we arrive at a clear understanding of the meaning of the belief in the lives of the people. Thus it is by relating belief to social facts that we have been enabled to see the religious data in a correct perspective with

regard to the culture as a whole, and to assess the relative importance of the various aspects of religion. This we did not by introducing irrelevant and extrinsic criteria but by analysing the actual part played by the various beliefs-in sky god, abosom, ntoro, saman, and suman

respectively-in controlling social organization and regulating economic, political, and religious behaviour. The grave neglect of the

sociological correlation which we had to complain of in the works on Ashanti religion which we have been considering is not, unfortunately, confined to one author alone. It is the defect of most accounts of

primitive and civilized religions alike. Yet the neglect of the sociological aspect can only lead to a misapprehension of the whole

religious phenomena. The recognition of it as the core of the moral

problem can alone give us full insight into the inner meaning of rite and dogma. EDITH CLARKE.

Resume LA SIGNIFICATION SOCIOLOGIQUE DU CULTE DES ANCiTRES

DES ASHANTI

Dans les societes primitives, la religion se mele a tous les aspects de la civilisation; son tude est en consequence de premiere importance pour des raisons theoriques et pratiques. Ceci est particulierement vrai dans l'Ashanti ou les sanctions de la loi et de la coutume sont avant tout naturelles.

La religion des Ashanti offre quatre aspects. En premier lieu, il existe une croyance au Dieu-Ciel 'Nyame; elle a peu d'importance au point de vue social. Le



CULTE DES ANCETRES DES ASHANTI 471 culte est sans portee. Dieu-Ciel provoquant peu de sanctions pour les actes sociaux, on declare explicitement qu'il ne s'occupe point des affaires journalieres des hommes.

Le culte des ancetres est en rapport intime avec la structure de la societe, notam- ment avec la constitution de la famille et la division des clans. I1 fournit les sanctions attachees aux regles de morale et d'attitude sociale, et determine certaines obligations particulieres et les devoirs reciproques des individus et des groupes. Les indigenes considerent la paternite comme un phenomene physique et spirituel. Le culte du ntoro uni a la division sociale coordonne le double systeme des clans, il reagit contre l'importance attachee a la parente en ligne maternelle par les regles de descendance et d'heritage.

A cote du culte des ancetres celui des abosom (dieux) est le plus important. Les dieux appartiennent a deux categories. Parfois ce sont de petites divinites de la nature avec culte local ou individuel, le suman ou fetiche, possede dans d'autres cas par certaines personnes, peut devenir leur dieu et etre adopte avec le temps par un groupement social ou territorial. Lorsque l'obosom devient ainsi la divinite tutelaire d'une cite ou d'un groupement social, ou bien lorsqu'il est considere comme le protecteur d'une division de ntoro, il a une grande importance sociologique.

Le culte du suman n'est pas suffisamment traite par notre auteur Rattray, de sorte qu'il est impossible de se former une idee nette du role de la magie dans cette societe. Mais il y a des preuves qu'il est tres important, et nous supposons d'apres quelques faits que la magie a une influence predominante dans la vie journaliere.

Le but de cette etude n'est pas de fournir simplement une analyse de la religion des Ashanti, mais de degager certains principes generaux permettant de decouvrir la fonction sociale de la religion. Nous avons considere le dogme religieux et la pratique au point de vue du role qu'ils jouent en donnant a la societe une armature, des sanctions juridiques et coutumieres, ainsi qu'en affermissant la morale individuelle. Nous avons montre que la croyance en 'Nyame, samanfo, abosom et suman sont en rapport de diverses manieres et a des degres differents avec l'organisation sociale et la conduite individuelle. Le criterium de notre jugement sur la valeur de ces notions dans la civilisation des Ashanti a ete precisement la nature de ce rapport.

Les principes de la methode ont ete appliquees a une religion et a une civilisation. A l'interieur de celle-ci nous avons montre que cette investigation sociologique et dynamique nous amene a reclamer des modalites d'enquete temoignant une preoc- cupation nouvelle et plus etendue des faits. Nous sommes ainsi conduits a rejeter certaines classifications, certains jugements sur les religions primitives bases sur ce que celles-ci sont ou ne sont pas en harmonie avec la civilisation occidentale et la morale chretienne. Nous pouvons mieux comprendre la relation existant entre la superstition et l'ordre social que nous desirons maintenir dans les societes indigenes.

Bien que degagees par l'etude d'une seule civilisation nos conclusions ont une valeur universelle parce que fondees sur des lois sociologiques universelles.

Enfin nous avons montre que cette recherche sociologique, en permettant l'analyse objective des religions primitives au point de vue du controle qu'elles exercent sur l'organisation sociale et de leur importance a l'egard de celle-ci, fournirait a l'administrateur et au missionnaire le type d'anthropologie essentiel pour eux.

Iiz



the sociological significance of ancestor-worship in ashanti

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