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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Great Mother and the God of the Lake: Royal and Priestly Power in Ulungu |
Author: | Willis, Roy |
Year: | 1991 |
Periodical: | Zambia Journal of History |
Issue: | 4 |
Pages: | 21-29 |
Language: | English |
Notes: | biblio. refs. |
Geographic terms: | Tanzania Zambia Africa |
Subjects: | Lungu chieftaincy History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Religion and Witchcraft Anthropology, Folklore, Culture folklore Lungu (African people) Mythology |
Abstract: | The historical traditions of the Lungu of northeast Zambia and southwest Tanzania appear to reflect an ancient encounter between an established, priestly authority based on territorial shrines, and incomers bearing a statist ideology and possibly of Luba origin. Lungu social organization and traditional culture are based on an uneasy accommodation between two major symbolic figures: the lake god Kapembwa, whose cult has become predominant in the southern Lake Tanganyika region, and the 'Great Mother' of Lungu chiefship, Mwenya Mukulu. The mixture of reciprocity and antagonism between the two primal forms of power and authority, priestly and royal, is reenacted in periodic ritual dramas, most notably in the ritual called 'Amapepo', 'prayers', an annual pilgrimage to the Kapembwa shrine in which royal and priestly representatives jointly participate. Notes, ref. |