The Ila-Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia Volume 2

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ...pass here" literally; i.e. come and get food: there is plenty. iChisangule--the time of change, i.e. the rains are '. lessening. Chibuantimba--the time of little rain. Inkombolabulezhi--the breaking of the Pleiades. Ikonaula masanga--breaking of the long grass. Kazhalakonze--when the hartebeeste calves. I Kaabanino--change in the season, beginning to get (warm. Kapukupuku--the time of much wind. Katente kashonto--the time of the first veld fires. Kasangabimbe--when the bimbe bird appears.. Katii--the shooting of the first leaves. Several of the "moons" have more than one name. But none of these names is constant. With us January is always January, and June, June: but, as the Ba-ila name the moons according as to what is done at the time, if the season is retarded, or hastened, the name varies accordingly. 2. Ideas About The World The creation of all things is, as we have seen, ascribed to Leza. The blue arch of heaven they call Izeulu; some speak of it as a solid thing, others confess they do not know what it is. The earth they think of as flat, and somewhere on the far horizon is where earth and sky meet. Somewhere in the east, on that bordering line, they say, is the home of the Bashikampinukila--a race of dwarfs of whom their forefathers told them: men about two feet high, living in holes in the earth. When you visit them and inquire about your sleeping-place they point to crevices in the rocks, or say, "vhungulula ibolo diako, uone mo" (" loosen out your scrotum and sleep in its shade"). But nobody has seen them: their existence is only a tradition. The sun is called izuba. It is to some extent personalised by the name Chisowa (" Mr. Disperser "), whose rising is the signal for men and...