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A Further Note on Funeral Friendship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Mary Tew
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Extract

A Detailed description of a kind of joking relationship among the Ambo is welcome for several reasons. The institution of funeral friendship is found in the cultures of a far wider region than that indicated by the writer. Not only do the tribes of the Bemba and Nyanja groups associate partnership in funeral obligations with freedom of mutual abuse, but this is also culturally accepted widely in Tanganyika and Portuguese East Africa. It seems that from the Zambezi in the south to Lake Tanganyika, and from the east coast to the Luangwa river, are to be found the main elements of the institution described for the Ambo. Hitherto they have been known by their vernacular names: banungwe for the Bemba, uzukuru for the Nyanja, Tumbuka and Lake Shore Tonga, mwilo for the Yao, utani for the Ngoni and neighbouring tribes of Tanganyika. In every case funeral obligations mutually accepted are made the basis of an alliance between persons belonging to different clans, or even to different tribes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , April 1951 , pp. 122 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1951

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References

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page 124 note 1 Wilson, G., ‘Nyakyusa conventions of Burial’, Bantu Studies, 1939Google Scholar. This account does not mention funeral friendships, but we learn that they do exist among the Nyakyusa from Moreau, op. cit.