Ku-tahikia in Kikuyu.—Reference has been made to purification by the medicine man, which generally concludes the ceremonies connected with the removal of thahu. This ceremony is the same in all cases in [135]which it is considered necessary; it may vary a little according to the practice of a particular medicine man, but that is all.
The writer was recently present at one of these ceremonies, and the procedure was as follows: The medicine man first received a sheep; he then made a small incision between the hoofs of the right foreleg and rubbed a little medicine into the wound. The medicine consisted of a powder made from the mararia bush and mahunyuru, which is the epidermis and hair of a sheep. Probably the idea underlying this was a consecration of the animal for the purpose of the ceremony. The medicine man then brought a number of sprigs of various plants:
He separated these into two bundles, and bound each at the base with the creeper ihurura; they resembled two hand brushes of green leaves.
The mother of the patient or person who was to be purified then fetched about a pint of water from the stream, carrying it in a couple of banana leaves laid over each other. A small depression was scooped in the ground, and the water, still in the banana leaves, was deposited therein. The medicine man and the patient squatted opposite each other. The former then put a variety of powders in the water. These were enumerated as follows:
He then produced the dried right black forefoot of a sheep, dipped it in the water, stirred up the contents, and placed the wetted foot in the mouth of the patient, who licked it vigorously and then expectorated the liquid on the ground. This was repeated some twenty or thirty times, the medicine man incessantly recounting all kinds of dangers and evils in a chanting voice with a general refrain, “May you be delivered from all these.” He then took one of the bundles of plants and dipped the lower end in the water. The patient licked it and expectorated, as above described, the medicine man chanting the whole time.
The same procedure was adopted with the second bundle of leaves.
The patient then stood up; the medicine man took one of the brushes, dipped it in the water, and sprinkled the patient’s head and wiped the front of his body with the wetted bundle of leaves. The patient now turned round and the back of his body was similarly treated.
The patient then knelt down and washed his face with the water and washed each foot and leg. This done, he wiped his face, feet, and legs, first with one bundle and then with the other. The patient then put his finger into the water and pierced the banana leaf basin, and the water soaked away into the earth. Thereupon the medicine man gathered up the banana leaves and his bundle of leaves and deposited them on the village manure heap, kiaraini.
There was still a final stage of the proceeding, viz., the anointing with white clay, ira. The patient still stood in front of the medicine man, who took from a small gourd some of the white earth, and smeared it down the line of the nose, on the upper lip, under the chin, on the right and left big toe, and on the palms of both hands. A little of the medicines called irura and [137]muhokora were then taken and a little placed in the palm of each hand of the patient, who crossed his hands and, holding them in this position, alternately licked each palm. The medicine man then licked a little of the above medicine, and the ceremony was finished.
The purification ceremony cannot be performed without payment; it is otherwise of no avail.
Ceremonial Blessing by a Medicine Man (Kikuyu).—This is believed to be efficacious, upon certain occasions, against evil and as a purification. The medicine man gives the supplicant a powder made from an aromatic root called muhokora. It is of a greyish brown colour; a little is poured into his hand and he eats it. The medicine man also eats some, with the object, perhaps, of showing the patient that nothing bad has been mixed with it.
The medicine man then takes a long narrow gourd with tiny holes on one side of it and shakes out, as from a pepper castor, a powder made of the roots of the muhokora and mchanja muka plants, and at the same time uttering a prayer. The patient receives the powder on his hands and rubs it on his head and down the middle of his forehead. The medicine man now takes a draught of beer and ceremonially spits a little on to each of his breasts, first, however, spitting a little on the ground as a libation to the ngoma, or ancestral spirits.
The general idea of the purification ceremony is of a dual character; its first object is to cast out the contamination of an evil influence and, this being done, to re-establish normal relations between the worshipper and his deity. It is believed that among African natives the idea of the evil influence is not very concrete, but among other peoples the evil influence assumes the shape of a demon, the nature of which may be identified by a magician and expelled by him by the use of appropriate formulæ. The one is a higher development of the other. In Math. xvii. 14, and Mark ix. 14, for instance, we find the founder of the Christian [138]religion playing the part of the magician and casting out an evil spirit. The only parallel to this class of procedure among the African natives under investigation is the curious Engai possession of the Kamba and the ritual undertaken to cure persons possessed: the odd point about those ceremonies, however, is that although the afflicted person for whom the dances are convened may be cured, others will be seized during the proceedings, the affliction apparently becoming infectious.
Kithangaona cha muchi—The Purification Sacrifice for a Village (Kamba of Kitui).—If sickness becomes prevalent in a village, the headman will consult a medicine man, who may declare that the spirit (imu) of a person who died long ago is bothering the people and needs appeasing, and he will therefore order a fowl to be taken round the village ceremonially and killed. This is supposed to be very efficacious in restoring the good luck of the village, and is done as follows: the village head will walk round outside the village with some ashes in his right hand and a fowl in the left; on reaching a point opposite the gate of the village the fowl will be released and allowed to fly inside. It is then caught again and its throat is cut and the knife is afterwards buried in the cattle kraal. The children of the village eat the fowl. The village head then prays to the deity (Engai) to remove the sickness and keep it from the village, and afterwards prays to the imu, or spirit, of the deceased person who is supposed to have brought the sickness. It is stated that they first pray to Engai because the imu is believed to have gone to Engai.
The aiimu which afflict villages are said to be usually those of deceased medicine men who, when alive, were supposed to communicate with Engai in their dreams. They declare that they have seen someone glowing like a fire, giving such and such a message.
There is another kithangaona cha muchi, which [139]also deals with sickness in a village, but differs from the previous example in which a fowl is used. As with European physicians, the practice of medicine men varies for individual patients.
The magician, having decided that the sickness is due to the imu of a deceased person, will order the women of the village to grind some mawele or wimbi flour and cook it and make porridge.
The porridge is brought to the hut of the afflicted person and some butter is added; the people present dip their wooden spoons in the porridge and each one eats a little and then throws some on to the floor as an offering to the imu; the senior wife of the village head commences and the others follow suit.
The village head then brews some beer, drinks a little, and pours some out to the troublesome imu. Having done this he kills a he-goat, cuts a strip of meat from the breast, cooks it, and deposits it at the door of the hut. It is probably eaten by the village dogs or fowls, but this does not matter.
The people then pray to the spirit and say, “We have given you food, beer, and meat, we beseech you to allow the sick one to recover.”
Kithangaona cha mburi—The Purification Sacrifice of the Goat.—On some occasions the medicine man will advise that the ceremony of kithangaona cha mburi be performed. This is done as follows: The evening before the ceremony, the head of the village puts a stone in the hut fire and leaves it there all night; next morning he calls a small boy and girl, and the former, accompanied by the headman, leads a male goat round the outside of the village, followed by the girl. The goat must be all one colour and not spotted. When the party reaches the gate of the village the headman takes a half gourd of water and places it on the goat’s head between the horns. The red hot stone is brought out from the glowing embers in the hut, dropped into the bowl of water, causing the water to boil and give off steam. A hole is now dug at the door [140]of the hut of the village head, who holds the stone over the hole and prays as follows: “Engai muimu mivo nathika dikoni wao mivo nathika hivia nathika wao pamwe nabia hii,” which, freely translated, means: “Oh God, I do not wish to see the sickness enter my village, so now I bury this stone and bury the sickness with it.” The goat is not killed, but is allowed to go free. This is an unusual proceeding. It is a curious example of a combination of magic and primitive religion.
Kithangaona cha munda—Prayers for Crops (Kitui).—When a villager sees that his crops are suffering from drought, the ravages of insect pests, and so forth, he will go to a river bed and cut the branch of a tree called kindio which grows there. He will then take the egg of a fowl, dig a hole in the ground, among the crops, and place the egg in it, planting the branch of the kindio tree in the hole. He prays to the deity (Engai) beseeching him to make his crops grow like the kindio, a tree which never withers. The egg is said to be used because of its nourishing properties, and it is also believed that no bad influence can penetrate its shell. This is a very pretty example of homœopathic magic.
The Dedication of the Bull—Kithangaona cha nzau—Kitui A-Kamba.—It sometimes happens that when a man consults a magician about a contemplated marriage, or some other matter, the magician informs him that in his village a cow is in calf and that this cow will bear a bull calf which will be of a certain colour, red or black or spotted. He tells the owner that the calf must not be killed or sold in the ordinary way, as it will be the property of the ancestral spirits (nzau ya aiimu), or will be dedicated to them. If, however, it is necessary at any time to kill this beast, some beer must be brewed, and the meat must be divided among the owner’s wives. No portion with a bone in it must be given to a stranger, but all the bones should be collected and buried in the cattle kraal. The meat of [141]the beast must be cooked and offered to the aiimu, and some of the beer poured out to them. The bones of the carcase may be broken, if so desired.
A beast thus dedicated to the aiimu will never die of disease. If, for any special reason, the owner wishes to sell or kill such a bull, a substitute must be found for it, and an important ceremony has to be observed. The original animal and the substitute are tied and thrown on their sides; the two animals are then placed touching each other. Some hair is cut from the forehead, the chest, and the tail of the original beast and placed on the substitute, the animals being then released. The aiimu are addressed, and it is explained to them that owing to pressing reasons the original beast has to be killed or sold, as the case may be, but that a suitable substitute has been provided. Some beer is brewed, and a libation of it is poured out in the hut of the village head.
Old Testament Parallels.—It is considered that the principle of thahu or thabu existed among the Israelites, and the following references to Mosaic law may be reasonably quoted:
Leviticus xix. 8: “Therefore everyone that eateth it shall bear his iniquity because he hath profaned the hallowed thing of the Lord and that soul shall be cut off from among his people.”
This refers to the eating of a sacrifice of peace offerings on the third day; it may be eaten the day of the sacrifice and the following day, but if eaten at all on the third day, inflicts a thabu on the culprit.
Leviticus xix. 22: “And the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of his trespass offering … and the sin which he hath done shall be forgiven him.”
This can be taken as a case of a man who has committed a crime against tribal law, and takes a ram to the priest or one of the elders of the tribe, who [142]performs the ceremony of tahikia to cleanse him from his sin.
The elaborate ceremonial laid down in Leviticus xiv. dealing with the case of purification from the plague of leprosy might be the procedure adopted by a Kikuyu medicine man to-day: the use of special plants, the sacrifice of a ewe lamb of the first year. The latter is identical with the mwati of Kikuyu practice.
It is laid down in verse 19 that: “The priest shall offer the sin offering and make atonement for him that is to be cleansed.” This certainly looks as if the plague were the result of evil-doing on the part of the patient, and of the nature of a thahu, and is quite in accordance with present-day beliefs in Kikuyu and Ukamba.
The comminatory chapters xxviii. in Deuteronomy are of considerable interest as a parallel to the cases quoted as existing to-day in Africa, e.g., xxviii. 45: “And all these curses shall come upon thee and shall pursue thee and overtake thee till thou be destroyed.”
General Remarks on Thahu and Thabu.—It will be well to review the results of this inquiry. It should be noted that in a number of cases, about one-third of those enumerated, the thahu is brought upon the offender or brought upon a third party, by the intentional act of the offender; in other cases the person, and sometimes the live stock, are the victims of circumstances over which there is no control.
The investigations throw a vivid light upon the complicated nature of the life history of a Mu-Kikuyu or Mu-Kamba, and it is evident that a native of one of these tribes cannot go through life without becoming thahu or thabu some time or other.
Mr C. Dundas, writing on this subject, says with regard to the Kikuyu people: “The fear of thahu is always present, a man may be subject to it without knowing the cause. When anyone goes on a journey [143]he cannot tell whether he may not have contracted thahu in strange houses and villages, and therefore when he returns he will kill a goat for purification before he enters his village. This was done on one occasion by a number of elders who had been on a journey with me, but as they were representatives of the western part of the district, the goat was killed on crossing the Kamiti River, which river they regarded as the boundary of their country.”
Unmarried men and girls are not subject to thahu. On one occasion a woman in hospital was said to be suffering from thahu caused by having touched the genitals of a strange man; the symptoms of thahu were in reality only a bed sore, but a medicine man was called in to cure her. A case, in which a man was sued for a goat for the purification of a woman whom he had raped, and who, in consequence, could not suckle her child until she was purified, was tried before a kiama. The idea seemed to be that the child would become thahu.
The thahu is, however, in nearly all cases removable by the elders and medicine men for payment, and it may therefore be urged that the belief has not much value as a moral restraint. This view cannot, however, be seriously maintained for the following reasons: Take the case of a person who commits an act which he knows will bring thahu; it must be clearly understood that he never questions the validity of the principle; he goes about with the burden of the misdeed on his conscience, and this worries him so much that he gradually gets thin and ill, and puts it down to the thahu. It therefore ends by his confessing to the elders and begging them to free him from the curse. It is in essence nothing more or less than the confession and absolution of the Christian Church. Then again we have to consider the publicity of kraal life, where very little goes on which is not known to the neighbours; polygamy also increases this, a man confides in one wife, she tells another wife and so it goes through [144]the village; if one person commits an act which inflicts thahu on himself or a neighbour, it will gradually leak out by some means or other, and public opinion will insist on measures being taken to remove it. No living person would ever dream of evading the wrath of the ngoma, or ancestral spirits. Occasions may, of course, arise when the commission of a prohibited act may involve a third party, and the person who committed it may preserve silence on the point, but the elders will in most cases be in possession of complete information as to the movements of every person in the neighbourhood, and, moreover, the demeanour of the conscience-stricken culprit will invite suspicion, so in practice it is but rarely that the offender is not detected.
In some of the examples of thahu which are cited above, cases will be noted in which the hut is affected and has to be forthwith demolished if the curse is not removed; this feature appears to be worthy of note, and it may in some measure account for the low type of domestic architecture among these tribes. Obviously there is but little incentive to build large permanent structures if, owing to the incidence of a thahu, the owner may have to demolish them at any moment. The author’s attention was first called to this point by a learned French missionary who has studied the Kikuyu for many years.
It must not be assumed that every native is conversant with all the acts of omission or commission by which thahu or thabu may be incurred and there are doubtless variations in different areas, i.e., the thahu of Western Kenya are not identical in number and character with those of Kyambu district. All the tribesmen, however, know a certain number, and if anything untoward occurs to a man he will consider it advisable to consult an elder; the elder will cross-examine him and ask if he has done so-and-so, or omitted to do certain things. Eventually the applicant will admit having done something which results in a [145]thahu; the way is then clear, and appropriate treatment must be sought in the proper quarter. Ridiculous as most of these taboos appear, they probably have a general value in regulating conduct in communities where legal restraint is in an undeveloped state.