Myth, Ritual and Kingship in Buganda - Hardcover

Ray, Benjamin C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195064364 ISBN 13: 9780195064360

Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr, 1991

Synopsis

Buganda was the most prominent of the four traditional Bantu kingdoms of Uganda, which ceased to exist when the country was declared a Republic in 1967. The Kabakaship (kingship), the central institution of Buganda, was saturated with rituals and mythic images. Based on fieldwork and using extensive Luganda-language source material, this book describes and interprets the myths, rituals, shrines, and sacred regalia of the kingship within the changing contexts of the precolonial, colonial, and post-independence eras. Interpreting the Kabakaship as the symbolic center of the precolonial kingdom, this book examines James G. Frazer's theory of divine kingship, Buganda's creation myth, traditions about the origins of the kingship, regicide, royal ancestor shrines, and theories about the connection between Buganda and Ancient Egypt.

About this title

Synopsis

This study offers a new interpretation of the ritual and history of kingship among the Baganda of Uganda. Using data collected in ethnographic fieldwork and interviews at the shrines of dead kings, the book overturns the accepted understanding of the Kabaka (the king) and shows that, despite his power of life and death and the elaborate ritual that separated him from everyone else, the king was not a deity, but rather a man who symbolized the state. The author arrives at this conclusion through an analysis of the kingship in its different aspects and in different domains of tribal life, ranging from the spatial organization of shrines to ideas about death and ontology as manifested in kingship relations and folklore.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195064364
• ISBN 13: 9780195064360
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1