Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Religious System of the Amazulu: Izinyanga Zokubula; Or, Divination, as Existing Among the Amazulu, in Their Own Words, With a Translation Into English, and Notes
Umahhaule and Unjan from the Abambo, the large tribe of Usingela; or as the Americans from the English-is spoken of as an ukuda-buka. So if a village has become large, and the eldest son leaves the paternal kraal, and commences a new centre, that too is an ukuda-buka. So the different kind of cattle, English, Dutch, and Zulu, are said respectively to have sprung from (dabuka) the English, Dutch, or Zulu. It is also said of trees. So of the Reformation it would be said that the Reformed Churches sprang from (dabuka) that of Rome; and Dissenting Churches from that of England. Or what is perhaps more to the point, the mode in which Minerva was produced from Jupiter's head was an ukudabuka. As we shall see below, according to the Hindu mythology, primitive man was produced by a division (ukudabuka) of the substance of Brahma. The use of the word necessarily implies the pre-existence of something from which the division took place. When it is said therefore that Unku-lunkulu broke off in the beginning, we must understand either that he broke off from an eternal or at least pre-existent spiritual being, or from an eternal or at least pre-existent material being. When it is said, tea dabuka eluhlangeni (he broke off from uthlanga), we may have the intimation of an eternal spiritual being, a belief in whom formed a part of the creed of the ancestors of the Amazulu; and when it is said, wa dabuka emh.labe.ni (he broke off from the earth), it cannot be doubted that we are to understand it as intimating a belief in the eternity-at least in the pre-existence-of the world.
4 IJkukqaleni. In the beginning. There is the same obscurity in the Zulu use of this phrase as in our own. We must understand it here as meaning, in the beginning of the present order of things, and not, from all eternity.
5 But, as it Avill be presently seen, a first woman is by many associated with the first man, that is, Unkulunkulu is said to have had a wife.
6 Dabida.-My native interpreter maintains that although above it is said that Unkulunkulu is not known to have had a wife, yet that this phrase implies it. But this is scarcely borne out by the fact that in other accounts he is said to break off cattle, &c., from Uthlanga. It seems rather that we are to understand that at first Unkulunkulu broke off, and having broken off, became the means of breaking off all other things.
7 Ohlangeni.- Uthlanga is a reed, strictly speaking, one which is capable of " stooling," throwing out offsets.
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