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| Dance staff "oshe shango" - Tribal Auktion (21 March, 2015). |
Their religion, manners, customs, laws, language, etc : with an appendix containing a comparison of the Tshi, Gรฃ, Ęwe, and Yoruba languages.
Chief gods
(4) Aganju and Yemaja.
Before her amour with the hunter, Odudua bore to her husband, Obatala, a boy and a girl, named respectively Aganju and Yemaja. The name Aganju means uninhabited tract of country, wilderness, plain, or forest, and Yemaja, "Mother of fish" (yeye, mother; eja, fish). The offspring of the union of Heaven and Earth, that is, of Obatala and Odudua, may thus be said to represent Land and Water.
Yemaja is the goddess of brooks and streams, and presides over ordeals by water. She is represented by a female figure, yellow in colour, wearing blue beads and a white cloth. The worship of Aganju seems to have fallen into disuse, or to have become merged in that of his mother ; but there is said to be an open space in front of the king's residence in Oyo where the god was formerly worshipped, which is still called Oju-Aganju — " Front of Aganju."
Yemaja married her brother Aganju, and bore a son named Orungan. This name is compounded of orun, sky, and gan, from ga, to be high; and appears to mean " In the height of the sky." It seems to answer to the khekheme, or "Free-air Region" of the Ewe peoples ; and, like it, to mean the apparent space between the sky and the earth. The offspring of Land and Water would thus be what we call Air.
Orungan fell in love with his mother, and as she refused to listen to his guilty passion, he one day took advantage of his father's absence, and ravished her. Immediately after the act, Yemaja sprang to her feet and fled from the place wringing her hands and lamenting; and was pursued by Orungan, who strove to console her by saying that no one should know of what had occurred, and declared that he could not live without her. He held out to her the alluring prospect of living with two husbands, one acknowledged, and the other in secret ; but she rejected all his proposals with loathing, and continued to run away.
Orungan, however, rapidly gained upon her, and was just stretching out his hand to seize her, when she fell backward to the ground. Then her body immediately began to swell in a fearful manner, two streams of water gushed from her breasts, and her abdomen burst open. The streams from Yemaja's breasts joined and formed a lagoon, and from her gaping body came the following: — (1) Dada (god of vegetables), (2) Shango (god of lightning), (3) Ogun (god of iron and war), (4) Olokun (god of the sea), (5) Olosa (goddess of the lagoon), (6) Oya (goddess of the river Niger), (7) Oshun (goddess of the river Oshun), ( 8 ) Oba (goddess of the river Oba), (9) Orisha Oko (god of agriculture), (10) Oshosi (god of hunters), (11) Oke (god of mountains), (12) Aje Shaluga (god of wealth), (13) Shankpanna (god of small-pox), (14) Orun (the sun), and (15) Oshu (the moon).
To commemorate this event, a town which was given the name of Ife (distention, enlargement, or swelling up), was built on the spot where Yemaja's body burst open, and became the holy city of the Yoruba-speaking tribes. The place where her body fell used to be shown, and probably still is ; but the town was destroyed in 1882, in the war between the Ifes on the one hand and the Ibadans and Modakekes on the other.
The myth of Yemaja thus accounts for the origin of several of the gods, by making them the grandchildren of Obatala and Odudua ; but there are other gods, who do not belong to this family group, and whose genesis is not accounted for in any way. Two, at least, of the principal gods are in this category, and we therefore leave for the moment the minor deities who sprung from Yemaja, and proceed with the chief gods, irrespective of their origin.
(5) Shango.
Shango, the god of thunder and lightning, is, next to Obatala, the most powerful god of the Yorubas ; he was the second to spring from the body of Yemaja. His name appears to be derived from shan, " to strike violently," and go, " to bewilder ; " and to have reference to peals of thunder, which are supposed to be produced by violent blows.
He has the epithet of Jakuta, "Hurler of stones," or "Fighter with stones " (Ja, to hurl from aloft, or ja, to fight, and okuta, stone) ; and stone implements, which have long ceased to be used in West Africa, are believed to be his thunderbolts. To wield the thunderbolt is certainly one of the proper functions of the sky-god, and the process by which he becomes deprived of it is not by any means clear. It does not appear to be the result of advancing culture, for the Zeus of the Greeks and the Jupiter of the Romans, who had respectively the epithets Kerauneios and Tonans, retained it ; as do the Nyankupon of the Tshis and the Nyomno of the Gas ; while, like the Ewes and Yorubas, the Aryan Hindus made another god, namely, Indra, offspring of Dyaus, wield the lightning.
The notion we found amongst the Ewes that a birdlike creature was the animating entity of the thunderstorm has no parallel here, and Shango is purely anthropomorphic. He dwells in the clouds in an immense brazen palace, where he maintains a large retinue and keeps a great number of horses ; for, besides being the thunder-god, he is also the god of the chase and of pillage.
From his palace, Shango hurls upon those who have offended him red-hot chains of iron, which are forged for him by his brother Ogun, god of the river Ogun, of iron and of war ; but this, it should be observed, is seemingly a modern notion, and the red-hot chains furnished by Ogun have a suspicious resemblance to the thunderbolts of Jupiter, forged by Vulcan. The Yoruba word for lightning is mana-mana (ma-ina, a making of fire), and has no connection either with iron (irin) or a chain (ewon) ; while the name Jakuta shows that Shango is believed to hurl stones and not iron. The iron-chain notion, therefore, appears to have been borrowed from some foreign source, and, moreover, not to yet have made much progress.
The Oni-Shango, or Priests of Shango, in their chants always speak of Shango as hurling stones ; and whenever a house is struck by lightning they rush in a body to pillage it and to find the stone, which, as they take it with them secretly, they always succeed in doing. A chant of the Oni-Shango very commonly heard is, " Oh, Shango, thou art the master. Thou takest in thy hand thy fiery stones, to punish the guilty and satisfy thine anger. Everything that they strike is destroyed. Their fire eats up the forest, the trees are broken down, and all living creatures are slain; and the lay-worshippers of Shango flock into the streets during a thunderstorm crying, " Shango, Shango, Great King ! Shango is the lord and master. In the storm he hurls his fiery stones against his enemies, and their track gleams in the midst of the darkness." "May Shango's stone strike you," is a very common imprecation.
According to some natives, Oshumare, the Rainbow, is the servant of Shango, his office being to take up water from the earth to the palace in the clouds. He has a messenger named Ara, " Thunder-clap," whom he sends out with a loud noise. A small bird called papagori is sacred to Shango, and his worshippers profess to be able to understand its cry.
Shango married three of his sisters : Oya, the Niger ; Oshun, the river of the same name, which rises in Ijesa and flows into the water-way between Lagos and the Lekki lagoon, near Emina; and Oba, also a river, which rises in Ibadan and flows into the Kradu Water. All three accompany their husband when he goes out, Oya taking with her her messenger Afefe (the Wind, or Gale of Wind), and Oshun and Oba carrying his bow and sword. Shango's slave Biri (Darkness) goes in attendance.
The image of Shango generally represents him as a man standing, and is surrounded by images, smaller in size, of his three wives ; who are also represented as standing up, with the palms of their hands joined together in front of the bosom. Oxen, sheep, and fowls are the offerings ordinarily made to Shango, and, on important occasions, human beings. His colours are red and white. He is consulted with sixteen cowries, which are thrown on the ground, those which lie with the back uppermost being favourable, and those with the back downward the reverse.
He usually goes armed with a club called oshe, made of the wood of the ayan tree, which is so hard that a proverb says, " The ayan tree resists the axe." In consequence of his club being made of this wood, the tree is sacred to him.
The priests and followers of Shango wear a wallet, emblematic of the plundering propensities of their lord, and the chief priest is called Magba, " The Receiver." As amongst the Ewe tribes, a house struck by lightning is at once invaded and plundered by the disciples of the god, and a fine imposed on the occupants, who, it is held, must have offended him.
Persons who are killed by lightning may not, properly speaking, be buried ; but if the relations of the deceased offer a sufficient payment, the priests usually allow the corpse to be redeemed and buried. Individuals rendered insensible by lightning are at once despatched by the priests, the accident being regarded as proof positive that Shango requires them.
A common idea is that Shango is subject to frequent outbursts of ungovernable temper, during which he thumps and bangs overhead, and hurls down stones at those who have given him cause for offence.
By Ellis, A. B. (1894).
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