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The Nyoro mukama was an absolute ruler. Any absolute ruler ultimately has some limits on his power —he cannot command the sky to turn green or the stars to stop in their orbits, although some rulers have tried. But the mukama’s word was law within the world of Nyoro social relations, and he had the power of life and death over his subjects.
Nyoro society was organized into over a hundred patrilineal clans, as we noted earlier. The clans were exogamous, so no one was allowed to marry a member of the same clan. Villages and even households therefore necessarily included people from several clans. The Bito were one of these clans.
In some respects, being a Bito was just like belonging to any other clan. Although it was true that the mukama could be selected only from the Bito clan, most Bito were ordinary farmers (although not called iru), and lived their lives like anybody else, even though they also believed themselves to be somewhat different because of their being in the “clan of kings.” But for the difference to make a difference, for a Bito to be an actual aristocrat, required not just clan membership, but a close kinship to a mukama, a point we shall return to below.
Because all Bito clan members had mothers from other clans, it would have been possible for the mukama to minimize the difference between Bito and others and simply to claim to be a “father” of all his people, as many traditional African rulers did.
Nyoro instead stressed the difference between natural rulers and natural subjects. A mukama was as different from a subject as possible. He was not his subjects’ “father,” but their sovereign. And other Bito were eager, Beattie observed, to bask in as much of the mukama’s reflected glory as possible.
We have seen how popular stories about Nyoro history provided a justification for the position of the Bito as rulers. But when an old mukama died and a new one needed to be selected, the myths gave no guidance about how to select the particular “descendant of Ka-kama” to rule, except to provide that an eldest brother did not qualify, and women did not qualify.
As Beattie turned his attention to this matter, he learned about a world of rituals that were observed. It was the rituals, correctly performed, that made a normal Bito into a mukama. Modern heads of state are also crowned or inaugurated or installed. Most people do not think of these ceremonies as what is critical to a person’s claim on the position —in the case of presidents that depends on elections. But the ceremonies are often used mark the exact legal moment when the head of state takes office. In the traditional Nyoro kingdom, in contrast, the rituals were absolutely central as qualifying a mukama to hold office.
Furthermore, as Beattie studied them, it was clear that they were not entirely arbitrary. They incorporated symbols of what was expected from the mukama. In a sense, they probably impressed the mukama with the qualities he was to have as leader as much as they impressed others with his right to rule.
For analytical purposes, Beattie divided Nyoro kingly ritual into three categories.
We will follow the same division here. The first two of these categories will make up the rest of this page. The third will be the subject of the next sections on Nyoro royalty and Nyoro chiefs.
The traditional kingdoms of East Africa exhibited something that analysts refer to as “divine kingship.” It is almost certainly related to the ancient Egyptian belief (or polite fiction) that the pharaoh was an actual god, but the term is also applied to peoples whose king ruled with divine approval and assistance, but who was by no means a god.
Between these extremes the Nyoro mukama was not quite a god, but he was also not quite a person. Most importantly, he was considered to be the humanized form of the land of the Nyoro itself. What happened to him would happen to the whole land. What happened to Bunyoro would happen to him. [Note 12]
Beattie writes:
This means that the king must keep physically healthy; if he does not, the country and people as a whole will suffer. Formerly, a person, or even an ox, who was sick had to be removed at once from the royal enclosure, in case the king’s health should be affected. The king had to avoid all contact with death; when I asked why the present Mukama did not attend his mother’s funeral in 1953, I was told that it was because of this rule. In pre-European times, if the Mukama himself fell sick the matter was kept strictly secret. It is said that if his illness were serious, if he suffered any physical incapacity or mutilation, or if he grew too old and feeble to carry out his duties properly, he would either kill himself by taking poison or be killed by one of his wives. This was, of course, because any imperfection or weakness in the king was thought to involve a corresponding danger to the kingdom. We do not know for sure whether any kings ever were killed in this way, but the important thing is that it is thought that they were. (Beattie 1960: 26)
Nyoro author John Nyakatura describes the situation slightly differently, focusing on a chief called Mugema:
Whenever a king became seriously ill, the chiefs who by tradition were in charge of the king’s health used to hide him and keep his illness a secret for fear that his sons might begin fighting for the accession to the throne. It was therefore the duty of Mugema at such a time to go early every morning to the Royal enclosure and perform certain rites which the king normally did. This made the general public think that the king was not very ill, for he was still able to carry out some of his duties. What they did not know was that it was Mugema who had been there. (Nyakatura 1970: 91)
The need to remain both physically healthy and magically powerful forced upon the mukama a wide range of food taboos or other abstinences, as well as time-consuming activities intended to symbolize his nurturance of the land of the Nyoro and its people. He could not eat specified low-status foods.
Ritual restrictions were not placed only upon the mukama. Those who had contact with him were also subjected to various regulations.
It was clear, then, that the mukama spent a great deal of his time involved with magical and religious activities. At first Beattie wondered if it made sense to think of him as a kind of priest. But the term didn’t quite fit. The mukama did not pray to a god or gods on behalf of his people, for example, as a Chinese emperor would.
Such intercession is the work of the spirit mediums, initiates into the possession cult which is Bunyoro’s traditional religion. The Mukama is not a priest, though he has his priests, just as he is not a rain maker, though he has his rain makers —magical experts who are subject to his discipline and control. In some African countries the real importance of chiefs lies in their magical or religious powers, and if they are secular rulers they are so only in a secondary capacity. In Bunyoro it is otherwise. (Beattie 1960:26)
Since the physical person of the mukama was mystically related to the welfare of the realm, obviously the death of a mukama was traditionally seen as very dangerous. The mukama’s courtiers reacted by hushing it up until a new mukama had been selected and the installation ceremonies for him were ready to begin.
The court of a mukama had a great many retainers from a number of non-Bito clans. Not being Bito, they themselves were not candidates for the position of mukama, and they were therefore considered safe protectors of the mukama’s interests. When he died, it was the retainers who supervised everything, secretly managing the kingdom in his name, while preparing his body and trying as well as they could to manage the succession.
The preparation of the old mukama’s corpse required about four months. The body was cleaned and gutted —decay is most immediate and severe in the gut— and the jaw was removed and concealed until after the succession was settled, when it would be enshrined by the new mukama.
Then the body was very slowly desiccated and smoked, with drippings from the decaying corpse (known as “putrescine”) being carefully preserved to be consumed by the new mukama in the course of his installation, thus physically transmitting something of the royal line to each new ruler in a way experienced by no one else.
When all was ready, the death was finally announced. A classificatory sister’s son of the dead mukama climbed to the roof of the royal hut and threw down a pitcher of milk, crying “The milk is spilled! The king has been taken away!” Although he was required to speak these words, doing so was still blasphemy, and for saying such a thing, he was immediately killed, Beattie was told.
Who were possible candidates to replace the dead mukama? In European royal houses the heir to the throne was known from birth. Typically, a European king’s eldest son was to succeed him. In the absence of a son, in some countries a daughter could succeed. In others the selection of a male candidate in a collateral royal line would be preferred. When the heir is known in advance, he or she can be educated to the role of monarch. Further, outside claimants are unlikely to be successful, for the legitimate successor inspires immediate loyalty, even if the individual in question is a person with little intellectual or emotional appeal.
There is of course a disadvantage to knowing in advance who a king’s successor will be: an ambitious successor-designate may secretly seek the death of the king. Or a scheming second-in-line may seek the death of the first-in-line.
The Nyoro solution to this classic quandary was that a category of person rather than a particular individual was to succeed the old mukama (a son of the previous mukama). The mukama, with a large number of wives, had usually fathered many sons, all of whom were possible candidates. When the succession went smoothly, the dying mukama designated one of them and his wishes were followed.
But in fact the succession rarely went smoothly, it seems. Beattie was told that in earlier times the eligible princes fought each other until one had killed all his brothers.
Others told him that not all eligible princes were killed in such conflicts, and that indeed sometimes the succession did go smoothly. Even then, to avoid possible later problems, all of the mukama’s remaining brothers were killed nine years after his installation by being thrown into a “fiery furnace” (Beattie 1971: 113). Unfortunately, no historical information could be found describing actual instances of such succession-related deaths.
Whichever candidate was selected (perhaps by killing all his rivals), the transformation from royal prince to new mukama involved impressive ceremonies. The prince completely abandoned his previous identity, as he was converted into the new living, anthropomorphic icon of the Nyoro polity. Beattie writes:
The accession ceremonies include washing, shaving, and nail-paring rites, anointment with a special oil and smearing with white chalk, ceremonial milk drinking, and animal sacrifice. In pre-European times, it is said, they included the placing on the throne and the subsequent killing of a “mock king,” who would, it was believed, attract to himself the magical dangers which attended the transition to kingship, so protecting the real king.
The king’s accession to political office is equally stressed. He is handed various objects symbolizing political and military power, such as spears, a bow and arrows, a dagger, and a stick, and he is formally admonished and instructed to rule wisely, to kill his enemies, and to protect his people.
His territorial authority is also symbolized in a ceremony in which a man who represents neighboring regions formerly subject to Bunyoro presents him with ivory and some copper bracelets as “tribute.”
Another rite is the ceremonial acting-out of the settlement of a lawsuit in which one man sues another for debt. This is not really a judicial hearing; it is a symbolic way of impressing on both king and people the important part he is to play as lawgiver and judge.
Finally, there is a ceremony in which the king shoots arrows with the bow he has been given toward the four points of the compass, saying as he does so: “Thus I shoot the countries to overcome them.” (Beattie 1960: 28)
Many of these symbolic acts were to be repeated by the mukama annually or even more often throughout his reign, for they served as constant signposts of his status as protector and symbol of his nation.
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