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Oral Tradition and Chronology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

David P. Henige
David P. Henige
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Extract

Perhaps the weakest aspect of oral tradition is its inability to establish and maintain an accurate assessment of the length of the past it purports to relate. As time passes, societies without calendrical systems tend to become either very vague about this time depth or to relate it to present, changing circumstances. The most common method of measuring the past in many societies is in terms of king lists or genealogies. A comparison of orally transmitted king lists and genealogies in various places and times, for example, the early Mediterranean world and the Ancient Near East, the native states of India, Africa and Oceania, indicates that certain patterns of chronological distortion seem to emerge, sometimes telescoping but more often lengthening the past.

The former may occur through omission of usurpers, however defined, periods of chaos or foreign domination, or by the personification of an entire epoch by a founding folk-hero. If the reasons for artificial lengthening are obvious, the mechanisms are less so. In this respect a survey of both welldocumented cases and of orally transmitted lists can be instructive. Lengthening is often the result of euhemerism; more often subtler themes emerge. These include longer reigns in the earlier, less known period, the arranging of contemporary rulers as successive ones and, most importantly, extended father/son succession throughout the list or genealogy. This last is of direct and profound chronological importance, and its occurrence is widespread enough to be termed stereotypical. Yet it is not often recognized as aberrant, even though its documented occurrence is exceedingly rare. The consequent equation of reigns with generations will almost always result in an exaggerated conception of the antiquity of the beginning of the genealogy. Other weaknesses of orally transmitted king lists include lack of multiple reigns and dynastic changes, and suspiciously perfect rotational succession systems.

Within its scope this article only attempts to hint at the origin, shape and effects of these distortions. Its main thesis is that much light can be cast on African cases of this nature through a comparative analysis drawing from a whole range of societies and sources.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , July 1971 , pp. 371 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

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49 Of course, in this regard it is unclear how the traditions may have handled any usurpations. They may have omitted them, or they may have retroactively clothed any usurpers with the raiment of lineal legitimacy.

50 Raymond, Firth, ‘Succession to Chieftainship in Tikopia’, Oceania, XXX (1960), 168. Significantly, most of these successions fall within the historical period.Google Scholar

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69 James, Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthān (2 vols. in I: London, 1950),Google Scholar and Harold, Wilberforce-Bell, The History of Kathiawad from the earliest times (London, 1916), passim, esp. genealogical tables at end.Google Scholar

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72 The Salum kinglist, based on rainy seasons, is supported in every instance where European records are available. Jean, Boulègue, ‘Contribution a la chronologie du royaume de Saloum’, BIFAN, XXVIII (1966), 657–62.Google Scholar The Mandan Indians of North America counted by winters and made drawings on buffalo hides each year for mnemonic purposes. A forty-three-year sample of their recorded history has shown this method to be basically accurate. Howard, J. H., ‘Butterfly's Mandan Winter Count, 1833–1876’, Ethnohistory, VII (1960), 28–43;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSmith, M. W., ‘Mandan “history” as reflected in Butterfly's winter count’, idem. 199–205.Google Scholar

73 See above, pp. 312–3.

74 Katate, A. G., Abagabe wa Ankole (Abagabe of Ankole), tr. by John, Rowe, in typescript at Midwest Center for Research Libraries, Chicago, p. 80, with emphasis added.Google Scholar

75 See Richard, Gray, ‘Eclipse Maps’, J. Afr. Hist., VI (1965), 251–62;Google Scholaridem, . ‘Annular Eclipse Maps’, J. Aft. Hist., IX (1968), 547–57.Google Scholar

76 For references to the ‘Budomel’, that is, the Damel of Kayor, between 1455 and 1529, well before the traditional date for the creation of the title, see Alvise, Ca da Mosto, Viagens (Lisbon, 1950), 34–9,Google Scholar and Jean, Boulègue and Benjamin, Pinto-Bull, ‘Les relations de Cayor avec la Portugal dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle d' après deux documents nouveaux’, BIFAN, XXVII (1966), 663–4.Google Scholar Compare with Félix, Brigaud, Histoire traditio, mejle du Sénégal (Saint-Louis, 1962), 85, 93 n.Google Scholar For Muslim references to the dissolution of the Wolof empire, see cAbd-al-Rahmān, aṣ-ṣacdi (tr. Ch., Houdas), Tarikh es-Soudan (Paris, 1964), 127.Google Scholar

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78 For the Kongo, Jan, Vansina, Kingdoms of the Savanna (Madison, 1966);Google Scholar for Ankole, , Oberg, K., ‘The Kingdom of Ankole in Uganda’ in Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (eds.), African Political Systems (London, 1940), 47.Google Scholar

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80 Quoted in James, Murdoch, A History of Japan (3 vols. London, 1903–1926), 11,56.Google Scholar

81 For examples see Donald, Ferguson (ed.), ‘The History of Ceylon from the earliest times to A.D. 1600 as related by João de Barros and Diogo do Couto’, J. Roy. Asiatic Soc. Ceylon Branch, XX (1908), 24, 29, 38, 43.Google Scholar

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