The supernatural world of the Badyaranké of Tonghia (Senegal) - article ; n°1 ; vol.37, pg 41-72

W. S.Simmons

Description

Journal de la Société des Africanistes - Année 1967 - Volume 37 - Numéro 1 - Pages 41-72
32 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: JOURNAL_DE_LA_SOCIETE_DES_AFRICANISTES
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1967
• Nombre de lectures: 39
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

W. S. Simmons
The supernatural world of the Badyaranké of Tonghia (Senegal)
In: Journal de la Société des Africanistes. 1967, tome 37 fascicule 1. pp. 41-72.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Simmons W. S. The supernatural world of the Badyaranké of Tonghia (Senegal). In: Journal de la Société des Africanistes.
1967, tome 37 fascicule 1. pp. 41-72.
doi : 10.3406/jafr.1967.1417
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/jafr_0037-9166_1967_num_37_1_1417THE SUPERNATURAL WORLD
OF BADYARANKÉ OF TONGHIA
(SENEGAL)
PAR
W. S. SIMMONS
I. Introduction.
This article describes the collective rites and occult lore of the Ba-
dyaranké x. My information was acquired from numerous informants,
both old and young, some of whom had experience with Islam and
French Catholicism. The beliefs herein discussed reflect the ethnogra
phic present, and are not a reconstruction of pristine notions from pre-
colonial times. Certain Badyaranké terms do not convert easily into
English and the following glossary establishes the sense in which I
have utilized several fundamental words. The alluring subjects of s
econd sight and witchcraft have been introduced, but owing to their
abstract importance and great complexity, I have chosen to deal with
them in a separate article.
References to the Badyaranké in early non scientific accounts have
been assembled and summarized by M. Gessain (1958), who did the
first real field research among them in the villages of Maru, Kután,
Paonka, Nemetaba, and Bagadat in Guinea. Subsequent studies of
their language (Carreira, 1963) (Ducos, 1964) (Wilson, 1959, 1961,
1965) and social organization (Simmons : in press) have helped win
this tiny and historically obscure population from anonymity. The
Badyaranké number around 5,000 souls, and live in some 40 villages
in Senegal, Guinea and Portuguese Guinea, at the point where these
three countries converge. In less than half of these 40 villages are the
inhabitants all or predominantly Badyaranké. Although the Badya
ranké share their terrain with the Manding (who call them Pajadinca)
and the various Fulani of the Casamance and Badyar (who call them
Badyaradé) they are considered to be the most ancient inhabitants of
1. My choice of the Badyaranké was due to the counsel and advice of Pr. Robert Gessain,
director of Centre de Recherches anthropologiques, Musée de l'Homme, Paris. 42 SOCIÉTÉ DES AFRICANISTES
their area. The name, Badyaranké, is of French origin, and their name
for themselves is Udadia. Their language has been classified by Green-
berg as part of the Tenda sub group of the West Atlantic family (Green-
berg, 1963 : 8), and thus is related to the neighboring Coniagui and
Bassari.
The Badyaranké are primarily hoe cultivators and subsist on dry
and wet rice, sorghum, millets, and fonio. Their vegetables include
onions, tomatoes, beans, peppers, manioc and gumbo. Peanuts are
intensively cultivated and are the major cash crop. Domestic ani
mals include cattle (which are confided to the Fulani), sheep, goats,
asses, dogs, cats and chickens.
Political organization among the Badyaranké does not exceed the
village level. Never, even during the "turmoil of the Fulani wars of
the late 19th century, did the Badyaranké achieve any political unity.
Each village has its chief, selected by the elders, who coordinates
intra-village affairs. The village is made up of an aggregate of extend-
/ ed family compounds, each of which has its headman. The com
pounds consist generally of a nucleus of the married sons and uterine
nephews of one man. The compound is roughly circular : men live in
separate houses around the eastern perimeter of the circle, with a
single collective women's house, for all married and unmarried women,
and infants of either sex, at the western pole of the compound.
Although residence is strongly patrilocal and inheritance usually
patrilineal, Badyaranké society is made up of a number of absolutely
exogamous, totemic matri-sibs. Kinship is reckoned within this matri-
lineal frame of reference, and the patrilateral cross cousin is the pre-
C fered marriage partner. Cutting across the matrilineal organization is
a system of patronymics (names of salutation) that has little tangible
importance for social life. A father transmits his name of salutation
to his children, so in a terminological sense, patrilineages exist. But
these patronymic groups engage in no corporate economic activity,
are neither endogamous nor exogamous, and possess no collective ri
tual. The patronymic Kamara presents an exception, for knowledge
of the forge is passed from father to son, and blacksmiths are ideally
all Kamara.
Tonghia lies in the Arrondissement of Bonconto, and numbers about
310 souls. The village was founded some 65 years ago by migrants
from Timbi in northern Guinea. Tonghia is said to be the name of the
site, and the village itself is known as Wassadou. The present village
consists of a ring of 17 compounds around an open village center,
where stands a great kapok tree. Tonghia is divided into the two na
med halves, Satian to the east, and Bantasu to the west. The eastern THE SUPERNATURAL WORLD OF THE BADYARANKÉ OF TONGHIA 43
half is considered to be superior by those living there. Competition
between the two sides is expressed most overtly in wrestling contests ;
and each may possess the chieftainship no more than three successive
times. The chief, like the compound headman, officiates until senility
or death. During my stay of slightly more than a year at Tonghia I
resided in the compound of Niaboli Waliba, the present village chief.
2. Sacrifice of the matri-sib.
Although the matri-sib may assemble with other relatives and
friends for a funeral ceremony, only in one particular sacrifice known
as the padunko, does the matri-sib alone participate. This is the sole
rite performed exclusively by the matri-sib and the sole occasion when
they assemble to the exclusion of outsiders. In fact however, the effec
tive group includes only the matri-sib relatives of the particular vil
lage where the rite transpires. It is said that the matri-sib sacrifice
(padunko) is a species of asking shrine (koasé) : that it is the asking
shrine of the matri-sib. Always this sacrifice involves two discrete
events ; one makes a conditional request and if the request is grant
ed, one makes payments in terms of what was promised in the offer.
The sacrifice of the matri-sib is essentially piacular and consequentl
y performed irregularly in times of trouble. This was last done at
Tonghia two years before my arrival in 1964, but I collected notes on
nine occurrences of the rite. It was done for a pregnant woman who
had lost two previous children and feared losing a third, for an infant
boy sick with a cold, twice to prevent a young man from being drafted
into the French army, for a pregnant woman who had difficulty g
iving birth, for a woman with some stomach troubles, for a childless
woman who. wanted children, once to protect a young girl about to
be excised, and once for a woman with a running tropical sore.
In seven cases the rite was initiated by a mother in behalf of her
child and twice by women for themselves. First the mother goes to
the oldest living woman of her matri-sib in the village to ask that she
perform the rite for her child. The older woman then finds a stone
and places it at the head of her bed in the interior of the woman's
house. Since the senior woman of a compound generally sleeps to the
right of the front door, the rite was generally performed immediately
to the right of the interior of the door. The senior woman takes a cala
bash full of water in the morning before eating and addresses the stone
as if it were her mother and grandmother. She promises to pay a cock
and a hen, of any color, at a later date if the mother's request is reali
zed. Then she washes the stone with half of the water and she, the mo- SOCIÉTÉ DES AFRICANISTES 44
ther and the child drink the remaining half. This is the ideal pattern
but there can be variations. One young expectant mother had no elder
female relative in the village so she requested her husband's mother
to perform it for her. Once also it was done for a girl by her father's
sister, and one woman addressed not only her deceased mother and
mother's mother, but also her father.
The Badyaranké have no elaborate beliefs about ghosts and ancest
ors, and it is not even a certainty that the dead matrilineal ancestors
addressed in the sacrifice, can actually send misfortune to living people.
But it is possible that they can alleviate it. In the matri-sib sacrifice
one is simply trying to tempt the sacrifiant's deceased mother and
grandmother to help if they want to and if they can. One could never
invoke these ancestors to do another person injury or to make any
positive contribution to one's welfare.
If however the request is granted and the difficulty overcome, all
of the matri-sib relatives of the mother assemble in the later after
noon in the compou