Ìgbo initiation; phallus vs. umbilicusCahiers d'études africaines 145, 157-211. [ISSN 0008-0055]

This article fills in a placeholder blurb in my dissertation (§4.5, pp. 304f.). The Éhugbò text on pp. 195-201, copied verbatim from thedissertation pp. 343-48, had been originally transcribed with more attention to content than to dialect-particular inflectional morphologyand consistency of orthographic word division — both issues in need of reconsideration.

Significant correction: On pp. 177f., I proposed in passing that the Ìgbo nouns for 'reincarnating spirit double' and 'day(light)', both ofwhich are pronounced chí, share a common root which is still productive in the language as a so-called 'verb extension' meaning either'repeat' or 'return'. This idea is however disproved by one simple fact which I should have checked at the time, namely that the predicativeroot in question has an aspirated onset consonant in all Ìgbo dialects which include this phonological feature, whereas the two nouns donot (cf. pp. 110 and 119 of Rev. Ígwè's 1999 Ìgbo-English Dictionary). Hence it is impossible for that predicative root to be historicallyconnected to either of the two nouns, and so an alternative explanation is required if the nouns are etymologically linked to each other atall. (Of course the null hypothesis is also possible, that 'day(light)' and 'reincarnating spirit double' are accidental homophones in Ìgbo, butas astute a cultural commentator as Òdógwu Chínù á Àchebé ventures otherwise, in his famous 1975 essay "Chí in Ìgbo cosmology".)Moreover there can be no doubt that the 'day(light)' meaning of chí is ancient, indeed it is reconstructed by Mukarovsky (1976, 146, 152)all the way back to a stage close to the ancestor of the entire Niger-Congo language family, therefore it would be highly unlikely for anetymology of this word to be still recoverable Ìgbo-internally. Accordingly, a new proposal is made in the final section of thismanuscript, taking into account a cosmological comment in Melzian's È dó dictionary for the analogous noun èhi: "It is believed to be'with a man all the day' " (1937, 51). Based on this remark (which is probably attributable to Melzian's primary consultant, Mr. H.G.Amadasu), and on supporting evidence cited there, I suggest that the Ìgbo noun for 'reincarnating spirit double' is historically identical tothe noun for 'day(light)' thanks to a trivial metonymy of a thing to its canonical context, motivated by an assumption which was originallymade by Northcote Thomas (1914, 19) and which can scarcely be doubted by anyone who has compared the two neighboringcivilizations, to the effect that the cosmological pragmatics of È dó èhi and Ìgbo chí are remarkably parallel. The analogy is furtherdemonstrated at Ágbò ("Agbor"), the intermediate border kingdom with strongly bicultural Ìgbo and È dó leanings, where èhi appears incountless personal names in the same 'slot' in which chí is found in the eastern Ìgbo counterparts, to all appearances synonymously, e.g.Èhi edú = Chí nà-edú 'the reincarnating spirit-double leads'.

UPDATE 23 April 2014: The standard assumption that twins infanticide had economic utility, reducing investment in offspring of lowerlife expectancy, still begs a cultural explanation for a widespread but far from universal precolonial practice. Ethnographers mayparaphrase local opinion about "uncanny" (Thomas 1913, 12) or "unnatural" births: "For a woman to bear more than one child at a timewas regarded as degrading humanity to the level of beasts" (Úchèńdù 1965, 58; cf. Basden 1921, 57f, Thompson 1971, 10, 79), but vaguesentiments of aversion, potentially reflecting "secondary reasoning and reinterpretations" (Boas 1910, 67), fail to address intricatelystratified legal-cosmological codes like the 100-plus nsó àla 'communal taboos' (lit. 'things prohibited by the earth'), including birthomens, operant at Ǹri well into the 20th century (Ó nwuejìó gwù 1981, 52ff.). Schapera dismissed the "obvious explanation" of genericabnormality as circular, seeking instead "the meaning of the various customs related to twins" in indigenous ideas such as the "occurrenceof two individuals with identical personalities" (1927, 134ff.), but despite this advice the most influential 'theory' of the matter merelyrephrased the commonsensical account in elevated terms like "paradox", "anomaly", "dilemma" and "structural contradiction" (Turner1969). In two adjacent northwest Cameroun communities speaking Benue-Kwa (socalled wide Bantu) languages, terms rendered inEnglish as "single twin" are ritually applied to biologically singleton births by oraclists seeking to interpret "individual and socialproblems in [terms of] the behavior of discontented ancestors" (Diduk 1993, 552, cf. Argenti 2011, 283, 286). Extending the idea to Ìgbo,hypothetically the chí could have been regarded as the individual's twin, and conversely one member of a biological twin birth — butwhich one?—was therefore the other one's chí. If so, then a twin birth could not lead to further reincarnation. This conjecture awaitsrelevant evidence pro or con.

Argenti, N. [2011]. Things of the ground; children's medicine, motherhood and memory in the Cameroun grassfields.Africa 81, 269-94.

Basden, G. [1921]. Among the I[g]bos of Nigeria; an account of the curious & interesting habits, customs & beliefs of alittle known African people by one who has for many years lived amongst them on close & intimate terms. Seeley,London.

Boas, F. [1910]. Introduction. Handbook of American Indian Languages 1, 1-83. Government Printing Office,Washington, D.C.

Diduk, N. [1993]. Twins, ancestors and socioeconomic change in Kejom society. Man 28, 55-71.

———[2001]. Twinship and juvenile power; the ordinariness of the extraordinary. Ethnology 40, 29-44.

Ó nwuejìó gwù ("Onwuejeogwu"), M. [1974/1981]. An Ìgbo Civilization; Nri Kingdom & hegemony. M.Phil Thesis,University College, London/Ethnographica, London for Ethiope, Benin-City.

Schapera, I. [1927]. Customs relating to twins in South Africa. Journal of the Royal African Society 26/102, 117-37.

Thomas, N. [1913]. Anthropological Report on the Ì[g]bo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria, 1; law & custom of the Ì[g]bo ofthe Ó ka neighborhood, S. Nigeria. Harrison, London.

Thompson, R. [1971]. Sons of thunder; twin images among the Ò yó and other Yorùbá groups.African Arts 4.3, 8-13, 77-80.

Turner, V. [1969]. Paradoxes of twinship in Ndembu ritual. The Ritual Process; structure & antistructure, 44-93. Aldine,Chicago.

Úchèńdù , V. [1965]. The Ìgbo of Southeast Nigeria. Holt, New York.