Somo islamisés des rives du fleuve. Mais il n'y a là que des attitudes plus ou moins burlesques réalisées par des marionnettes actionnées par des hommes cachés derrière un rideau; on n'y distingue aucune intrigue. Par contre, dans la colonie française du Niger et dans certaines villes Haoussa, on peut voir sur quelques marchés, lors des grandes fêtes musulmanes, une représentation véritable dans laquelle paraissent des poupées de bois. L'opérateur est assis, dissimulé par sa blouse; il présente par l'échancrure de celle-ci et d'une main invisible les personnages ordinaires de la comédie: le mari, la femme, et l'amant. Cette pratique semble venir de l'Afrique du Nord. D'autres divertissements du même genre ont une origine purement régionale, ainsi que l'a montré P. Amaury Talbot.' Cet auteur a décrit en effet les très intéressantes manifestations de l'Akan, auxquelles il a assisté au village d'Awa, sur la rivière du même nom, affluent de la Kwa-Ibo river dans la Nigéria méridionale. Au-dessus de couvertures, tendues pour les soustraire aux regards, plusieurs hommes font mouvoir des marionnettes de bois grossièrement sculptées qui parlent, chantent et dansent. Une vingtaine de ces figurines forment la troupe dans laquelle on trouve: le grand-père, la grand'mère, le père, la mère, le fils aîné et sa femme, la fille aînée, son mari, et le mendiant, ainsi que des comparses de moindre importance. Lorsque chacune des poupées paraît pour la première fois un coq noir se hausse jusqu'à elle et la touche pour lui communiquer la faculté de se mouvoir et de parler. La voix des opérateurs est modifiée par l'emploi d'une tige de céréale, recouverte à une extrémité par la membrane prélevée sur une aile de chauve-souris. P. A. Talbot attribue à ces représentations un caractère magique. Dans la première partie de celle à laquelle il assista, les petits acteurs de bois se bornèrent à parler et à chanter d'une manière fort décousue et sans se préoccuper d'une intrigue quelconque. Plus tard intervint une scène de séduction entre deux des personnages. D'après l'auteur, l'Akan est une manifestation artistique commune dans la tribu Ibibio, elle serait originaire d'Ibiaku à quelques milles IP. A. Talbot: Life in Southern Nigeria. London, 1923, p. 72 et s. d'Awa. Un informateur indigène a donné sur elles les explications suivantes: ‘Lorsqu'il y avait eu la guerre entre deux cités, le parti vaincu devait apporter, à la conclusion de la paix, une pièce déterminée et la jouer en présence de ses anciens ennemis. L'année suivante le vainqueur apportait à son tour une autre pièce et la jouait dans la ville conquise. 'Aucune femme ne devait connaître le secret qui faisait mouvoir et parler les poupées. Chaque nuit, durant sept saisons, la pièce était ainsi représentée avant qu'on pût la produire ouvertement. A la fin de la septième, les opérateurs sortaient et avertissaient leurs concitoyens en disant: Nous allons maintenant jouer Akan en plein jour.' Sans discuter pour le moment l'importance probable de cet échange de représentations théâtrales entre vainqueurs et vaincus, on peut remarquer la différence fondamentale existant entre l'Akan, l'exhibition de marionnettes et les pièces soudanaises. En ce qui concerne ces dernières on doit souhaiter la constitution d'un répertoire complet, permettant de rectifier ou de préciser les informations sommaires fournies ici sur un phénomène intéressant et peu connu. HENRI LABOURET. H ANTHROPOLOGY AND CHRISTIAN MISSIONS THEIR MUTUAL BEARING ON THE PROBLEMS OF By R. SUTHERLAND RATTRAY HIS short contribution to the pages of the Journal of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures will later form a part of my main theme in the preface of a volume which has not yet been published. I hope it may be of sufficient interest to readers of this journal to warrant its appearance in advance, in a setting where it is divorced somewhat from its ultimate context. The plea which it contains is of such importance that I gladly welcome any publicity which may be given to it by its publication in a journal having an international circulation. The time when anthropology will cease to be regarded largely as a science whose chief function it is to record the cultures of 'primitive' peoples ere their final disappearance before advancing civilization, or as the collection of data mainly of an academic interest, is, I hope, not far distant. The field worker will experience, I know, a new thrill when he begins to regard his task, not as the mere collection of curious facts from which some new anthropological tome may arise, or the gathering of objects as specimens for ethnological museums, but rather as a searching for an elixir which may yet be used to infuse new life into those peoples who appear to droop and flag or to undergo a change, not wholly for the better, as the result of contact with our civilization. As Mr. Edwin W. Smith puts it so finely, the anthropologist's task should be to discover 'the idiom of the soul' of the people among whom he is working. It is now nearly seven years ago since the Colonial Office seconded me from the political side of the Gold Coast Administration in order that an anthropological survey might be made of the Akan-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, more especially in relation to their consti 1 Ashanti Law and Constitution. (Clarendon Press, Oxford.) tution and laws. A knowledge of Akan law is of paramount importance to the local administration, engaged as it is in framing Native Jurisdiction Ordinances in schemes for the working of Native Tribunals and in plans for indirect rule. I therefore set out to blaze a trail which readers of the Department's published reports1 may have followed thus far. I intended to make strictly legal investigations my first and immediate objective, and I hoped to follow up these researches by enquiries into religious and social problems, and intended finally to examine Ashanti arts and crafts. It will have been observed, however, by those who have done me the honour to follow my work so far, that my programme as originally projected has been almost reversed. The reasons which influenced me and made me change my plans may be set down briefly as follows: I soon found myself, in pursuance of my earlier intentions, constantly confronted with words in the Ashanti language, which, while primarily associated with religion, were nevertheless continuously found in connexion with legal and constitutional procedure. With regard to the exact significance of these terms, moreover, neither previous writings nor local authorities could throw very much light. In consequence I was constantly being held up in my inquiries and compelled, therefore, to endeavour to determine if possible the exact meaning of words, phrases or rites, apparently of religious import, but obviously in some way associated with legal and constitutional formulae. At the outset I came to suspect, what later on I was to discover to be an indisputable fact, namely that Ashanti law and Ashanti religion were intimately associated. It became advisable, therefore, to try to understand and explain the latter first, in order that the former could be described with a better prospect of making a contribution of value to this difficult subject. Hence the excursions in my first two reports into matters which at first sight may seem to have had little bearing upon the ultimate goal of these researches. The Supreme God (Nyame); the lesser deities (abosom); fetishes (suman); ancestral spirits (samanfo); fairies and forest monsters (moatia, sasabonsam); the patrilineal exogamous divisions of the ntoro; religious rites and beliefs; the significance of certain apparently material objects, 1 Ashanti, and Religion and Art in Ashanti. (Clarendon Press, Oxford.) such as stools; birth, puberty, marriage, death, and a future life; the religion that still lingers in arts and crafts; the rhythm and ritual of the drums; all these and many other aspects of Ashanti religion have an intimate bearing on African customary law, which, without a knowledge of these subjects, cannot properly be understood. To state, as I have not any hesitation in doing, that the law and constitution of these people were evolved from, and finally based upon, the indigenous religious beliefs, is to suggest something that goes deeper than the exposition of an interesting academic theory. It is to state a fact of considerable significance in the field of practical West African politics to-day. Upon the correct application of this knowledge must, I believe, depend our satisfactory tutelage of this people, and ultimately their own success in self-government. It is necessary here for me to make a brief digression before I elaborate this point. There are, at the present time, two schools of thought as to the lines on which the progress of the West African should be directed. The older school would relegate all that curious spiritual past which it has been my endeavour to set forth, if not to the African's own kitchen middens (suminaso), at least to the shelves and glass cases which have become accepted as the mausolea of dead or dying cultures, where—if I may draw another analogy which my Ashanti friends will understand-the souls of the peoples whom our civilization has robbed of these heritages, now seek a lonely and unhonoured refuge. This school, working by what seems to me a standard of purely material and economic prosperity, argues that because the African's beliefs appear to have served him but indifferently well in the past as stepping-stones to real progress, his culture has been tried and found wanting. For these beliefs this school would therefore substitute European civilization and thought. There is much, of course, to be said for the supporters of such logic and of methods which are frank and clear cut; they would prefer a tabula rasa on which to start afresh; they are free from sentimentalism; and are purely materialistic. This school offers to the African, all ready made, the experience and fruits which our race has gathered through centuries with labour, bloodshed, and suffering. It is our racial best that it |