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Useful Anachronisms: The Rwandan Esoteric Code of Kingship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Jan Vansina
Jan Vansina*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison
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Any mention in a text to something demonstrably more recent than its attributed date of composition is an anachronism. The presence of an anachronism is absolute proof that the purported date given for the redaction of the final the text is wrong and that the real date occurred later than the date implied by the anachronism. In rare cases an anachronism can also occur in reverse, namely, when it can be shown that the anachronism implies the presence of something (an archaism, a practice) which had been replaced or had disappeared by the purported date for the manuscript. Anachronisms can be very useful both to date a document and in some cases to show us something about the dynamics involved in the creation of a text. The detection of anachronisms is common with regard to written documents, but they can also be used for the study of oral documents which have been memorized word by word, especially when only one version of such documents has survived. That is the case for the Rwandan esoteric code of kingship, which yields an excellent example of how a systematic search for anachronisms throws light on such a document and allows a historian to use its contents with much greater confidence than was the case otherwise.

Ubwiiru is the name given in Rwanda to a set of eighteen pieces in prose, called “roads” or “ways,” which vary in length between 74 and 1252 lines and were learned by heart since “immemorial times” by specialists called abiiru.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 27 , January 2000 , pp. 415 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2000

References

1 Kagame, A., “Le code ésotérique de la dynastie du Rwanda,” Zaire 1(1947), 363–86.Google Scholar

2 d'Hertefelt, Marcel and Coupez, A., La royauté sacrée de l'ancien Rwanda (Tervuren, 1964).Google Scholar

3 d'Hertefelt, Marcel, Coupez, A., and Kagame, A., “A propos du code ésotérique de l'ancien Rwanda,” Africa-Tervuren 14/4(1968), 117, 119Google Scholar; Laroche, F. GasarabweLe geste rwanda (Paris, 1978), 445.Google Scholar

4 Hertefelt, /Coupez, , Royauté, 1Google Scholar

5 Ibid., 1-7.

6 Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985), 14, 16, 42.Google Scholar

7 But see Vansina, , L'évolution du royaume rwanda des origines á 1900 (Brussels, 1962), 27–31.Google Scholar

8 We only know these by the mentions made in the oeuvre of Kagame, who clearly sees these as the most trusthworty of all sources. See his Abrégé de l'ethno-histoire du Rwanda (Butare, 1972), 11et passim.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., 111-13. The chronology of the Rwandan kings adopted here is explained in the “supplément 1999” added to Vansina, , Evolution (2d. ed.: Brussels, 2000).Google Scholar No firm dates at all should be attributed to kings before Ynhi Mazimpaka, who ruled in the earlier eighteenth century.

10 Hertefelt, /Coupez, , Royauté, 14.Google Scholar

11 See Kagame, , Abrégé, 105–28 for this king.Google Scholar

12 The “anthropological index” in Hertefelt/Coupez, Rayauté, lists not just persons, but all the proper names listed in the text, including those that do not refer to persons but, e.g., to of drums, armies, cattle herds, etc., including what other information is known among them. Hence it is not necessary here to annotate each proper name discussed separately.

13 Historique et chronologie du Rwanda ([Kabgayi, 1956]), 157–58.Google Scholar

14 Hertefelt, /Coupez, , Royauté: 280Google Scholar; Vansina, Jan, La légende du passé (Tervuren, 1972), 133.Google Scholar The fire is linked to this drought.

15 Kagame, , Abrégé 1972, 188Google Scholar, for a major drought in Gisaka around mid-century, once again associated with the arrival of a new king. Historique, 12, mentions that several severe droughts occurred during Rwabugiri's reign and dates one to 1890 and the worst one to 1895, the year when the king died and Rutarindwa succeeded.

16 Hertefelt, /Coupez, , Royauté, 454.Google Scholar

17 See Forges, Alison Des, “Defeat is the Only Bad News: Rwanda Under Musiinga, 1896-1931” (PhD., Yale University, 1972), 29et passim.Google Scholar

18 In contrast, for instance, to the politically highly-charged official account of royal successions. Cf. Nkurikyimfura, J-N, “La révision d'une chronologie: le cas du royaume du Rwanda” in Perrot, C-H., ed., Sources orales de l'histoire de l'Afrique (Paris, 1989), 149–80.Google Scholar This author shows extensive manipulation of the supposed ancestry of certain queen mothers. In addition, I have grave doubts about the reliability of the whole list before Yuhi Mazimpaka.