Struktura rytuałów pogrzebowych u ludu Konkomba z północnej Ghany

Abstract

Robert Hertz created a term “double funeral”, which comprises both burial rituals and the rituals of the secondary funeral among the nonliterate peoples. Another French ethnologist Arnold van Gennep distinguished three phases in the rituals of passage (the phase of separation, the marginal phase and the phase of incorporation). The rituals of the first and secondary funerals among the Konkomba belong to the most extended of all rituals of passage. The article analysed burial rituals of elderly men and women. These rituals differ in the richness of rites and their social significance from the simpler burial rituals of adult people, children and infants. The costly ritual of the secondary funeral, which requires big financial expenditures on food and beer, takes place in each village every few years and it is performed for all the people who have died since the last secondary funeral. It is only after the secondary funeral that a dead old man (or an old woman) reaches the dignity of an ancestor and his property (land, wifes, sacred objects and power) is inherited and taken over through the mediation of the oldest member of the lineage by the dead person’s relatives who are his lineal descendants, that is brothers and sons, according to the principle of primogeniture. From that time on, the Konkomba recall the dead person in the full meaning of this word, together with other ancestors in the rituals that have home, lineage, clan and supraclan character performed in different life situations. Through their prayers and sacrifices they try to get the support and favour of ancestors, who ‒ as mediators between god Uwumbor and the living ‒ take an active part in the life of the community and influence the fate of the living. The performance of complex funeral rituals consisting of many parts emphasizes that the dead person and the community change their roles and functions. The dead person is transformed from somebody who threatens the community to its guardian as a member of the invisible community of the dead. Double funeral rituals emphasize the value of life, which is of the highest worth for all the Africans: they lead the community through the hard time of sorrow, threat and crisis caused by the death of one of its important members; they mean changing the status and help an individual accept the new state as well as they integrate the family, lineage, clan and supraclan groups. Finally, these rituals ‒ through the proper symbols ‒ express the spiritual, transcendent reality, in which the Africans deeply believe and which has a decisive influence on the individual and social life. It is only elderly people (both men and women) ‒ due to their age, social status and offspring ‒ can reach the dignity of ancestors after death. The necessary condition for the change of their status is the performance of the rituals of the first and secondary funerals.