Ridhuani is the custodian of Paradise. He opens its seven gates whenever God thus orders him, so that a thousand pleasant smells are spread out over the earth.
Many other angels live in heaven, more than we can know. There is an angel with a thousand heads: each head has a thousand mouths and every mouth proclaims God’s glory in a different language.
There is an angel whose left half is fire, and his right half snow; the snow does not extinguish the fire, nor the fire melt the snow, because God wills it so. At His order two opposing elements can exist side by side; and He can make enemies meet.
There is also a cock in heaven: its feet are on the lowest level of Paradise but its head is above the seventh level. Its function is to crow at the precise moment God has destined for the salat-asububi, the prayer of dawn. Every morning before sunrise it crows jubilantly, flapping its wings, and all the angels of heaven immediately assemble for the morning prayer. Its joyful Kuku-likuu can be heard on earth by all the cocks, on the farms as well as in the bush, and they all repeat it, encouraging each other. This is a sign for men to rise from their couches and prepare themselves for the first prayer of the day.
II When God’s moment had come, He began creating the world of matter. He rolled out the day-sky and night-sky like an immense tent, or like carpets full of mysterious signs and symbols. In the night-sky He placed the fixed stars like lamps with motionless flames. Others move along the sky, each following a path which only He knows. The moon too travels along the night-sky, changing its shape as He wishes. In the radiant blue day-sky He placed the glowing sun and ordered her to rise in the East, travel along the sky and set in the West. He created clouds, and painted them in different colours, to sail like ships along the day-sky; towards evening He makes them glow red. Some are dark and heavy with rain which He will shower over the lands He wishes to bear fruit.
He constructed the Universe in seven heavens, the seventh being the lowest level of Paradise. Each heaven has its own planet, the lowest being the moon. The second heaven is ruled by Mercury, the third by Venus, the fourth by Mars, the fifth by Jupiter, the sixth by Saturn and the seventh by the Sun. The guardians of these heavens are the souls of eight prophets of God. They are Adam in the first heaven, Isa [Jesus] and his cousin Yahya [John the Baptist], together in the second, Yusufu [Joseph] in the third, Idirisi [Enoch] in the fourth, Haruni [Aaron] in the fifth and Musa [Moses] in the sixth. Abraham is the guardian of the seventh heaven; his station is near the wall of the Celestial Mosque where 70,000 angels come to pray every day—and they are never the same ones.
Opposite the high heavens, there are the deep hells, seven layers of them, each one more terrible than the one above it, each one destined for a particular type of sinner. In the deepest Hell, farthest away from their Maker, will dwell the unbelievers, who will be tortured there eternally.
Then God spread out the earth, like a carpet for men to sit on during their meal. For the Earth is full of food for all the creatures of the Lord. And He caused some parts to be barren sands, but wherever He wished made grass sprout for the hooved animals, and trees for the monkeys, and fruit-bearing vegetation with colourful products, a pleasure for the tongue.
He divided the land from the sea, creating the immeasurable ocean on one side, and the high walls of the continents on the other. He heaped up the rocks to be menacing mountains, then told the streams to rush down them in crystal torrents.
He sowed the islands, to be colourful bouquets growing out of the ocean, and a pleasure for the sailing skippers. He commanded quiet pools to reflect the blue skies and the mighty rivers to spread out over the marshes.
He gave a voice to the wind, so that it can whisper as well as roar while it travels over the countries. It pushes the clouds in all directions and it carries the birds on its powerful back. It blows the ships to their destination and it whips up the waves into frenzy.
Then He told the Earth to teem with insects, and lo, a hundred thousand kinds crawled through the sand, and flew up into the air on diaphanous wings. The butterflies flutter and the beetles creep; they all have the symbols of their Maker written on their backs. Then He released swarms of birds who flew joyfully into the air. Some sat down on branches to praise their Maker with songs in unknown languages. Others built their nests, and He alone was their Teacher.
Then He told the ocean to be full of fishes of different forms, and so it happened. Only He knows how many there are—and they all have different colours. Then He told the lizards to exist and they obeyed, basking in His sunshine, and the croaking frogs who praise the Lord in their own language. Only He knows how many there are and how many eggs they must lay.
Then the Merciful Maker called to the heavy animals to come into existence and they did, praising Him by lowing and bleating. He created the flesh-eating beasts with claws, and the howling ones which eat carrion. He designed the quiet giraffe and the irascible buffalo, herds of antelope and striped donkeys, the river-dwelling hippopotamus and the gigantic elephant.
Only He knows how many species there are; He knows the colour of every feather, the sharpness of every tooth. He created the herds of docile cows, their bulging udders full of milk, and the strong-legged camels who travel without thirst. He decided the life-time of the butterfly, and He lit the glowing light of the fire-fly. He decided the law of His creation: that the small fishes will be eaten by the big ones, and they in their turn swallowed by yet bigger fishes. The vultures will descend from the sky to pick the bones of those that die. He makes green leaves for the goats; He makes the dove unaware of the swift swoop of the hawk. He gives the dead bodies to the worms and maggots; then He gives the worms to the chickens and the unsuspecting chicken to the bateleur eagle, who flies up with it into the pillarless sky.
He caused all his creatures to grow and multiply. Fresh green grass stalks sprout after every bush fire; smooth reddish mangoes bulge every year between the dark green leaves of the mother tree.
In every rainy season the white ants swarm out, rustling in their myriads like the first heavy showers. The black ants march along their own roads, hatching their young in their mounds. Which animal is there that does not have children? The baboon-babies cling to their mothers’ breasts, the long-legged giraffe sucks his mother. What is there that He has forgotten? Are all these miracles not signs to you of His infinite wisdom, of His immense power?
III God made the night cover the day, and so their alternation marks the progress of time.
One day, He called together His angels. They all appeared before His Throne, performing the ritual prayer of morning-time. Then the Lord spoke: It has pleased Me to decide that I will create a being—with brains like you, but his substance will be clay. I will mould him out of earth, and on earth he will live. He will rear cattle and till the fields. He will learn to sail the perilous ocean and catch My silver fishes in nets. He will take possession of all My creatures on earth and rule them, following My laws. He will be My servant; his children will spread out over the face of the earth, as numerous as ants, and they will work and worship Me.
The angels are permitted to express their feelings, and the strongest one is apprehension. With their lucid minds they foresee what will happen. They themselves are made out of the substance of pure light. Their transparence makes them honest: they have no solid faces behind which evil can be hid. They are pure, and without sin. Their high intelligence makes them perceive the sufferings of other creatures, and the wishes of their Master. And so they are devoted to worship and service, to helping and relieving others. Their purity also gives them altruism: Their diaphanous brains breed no egoism, they cannot think of anything to wish for; no desire swells up in their sinless souls.
But what will man be like? His body will be lumpy and full of lust like that of dogs and pigs; like them, he will want to procreate and multiply, to fight and to kill. He will not be transparent like sunrays in the morning, he will be foggy like dark rainclouds. Apart from greed and cruelty, there will be stupidity
and dishonesty in him. Brains of clay will be tardy and turgid. His thinking will be sensual rather than sensible, reluctant to accept the necessary, slow to service, prone to pride. He will hide his hate and lust behind a stony skull. Worst of all, he will satisfy his senses rather than sing hymns to praise his Maker.
His involved thinking will not solve problems, but will lead to complications which his lack of honesty will seek to conceal rather than simplify: direct thinking is the fruit of honesty. His greed will cause him to steal fruits and females from his neighbour’s garden, and jealousy will inflame his mind. He will seek glory by conquering portions of God’s earth, and he will take pleasure in killing, like a martin. The intelligent angels could already see black clouds of smoke hanging over the earth: the fierce fire of war.
But their Lord reassured them: do not fear, I will what I will, I know what I know. I have a purpose which I will fulfill after thousands of years. Then you will see the reason for the creation of man.
The angels said no more but intoned hymns to praise His wisdom.
Then God took some fat clay, grey and solid, and kneaded it in the shape of a man. Adam [“earth”] was ready; he lacked only one thing: Life. God pronounced the word, and it came to Adam. Life spread through his body, entering through his mouth. Life throbbed through Adam’s veins, adding colour to his skin. Blood travelled to his hands and feet and made them ready for movement. Warmth rippled through his muscles and the first sparks of thought lit up in his dark brain. Adam shuddered; his eyelids trembled and then opened, like the lid on a coffer full of jewels. The angels held their breath as they saw this handsome lad open his crystal eyes to admit the sunlight. Adam opened his mouth, drew breath, his tongue moved, and his voice rang out, proclaiming the greatness of his Maker: “Al-Hamdu Lillahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim!”
The angels were greatly astonished to see this clay creature speak intelligently and devoutly. They admired this beautiful new creation, and all obeyed their Lord when He commanded them to prostrate themselves before Adam and worship him. Except one.
—Jan Knappert. Myths and Legends of the Swahili. Nairobi: Heinemann Educational Press, 1970, pp. 14–24.
BUSHONGO
Bumba Vomits the World
The Bushongo or Bakuba, a Bantu people of the Congo River region in Zaire, describe creation in generative terms. Along in the dark and watery chaos, without a mate, Bumba vomited forth the powers of the world. The structural similarities between this and more common birth metaphors (mouth-womb; vomit-baby; pain of delivery in both cases) are clear and serve to underscore Bumba’s extraordinary fertility.
Bumba first vomited the sun, whose heat caused the primordial waters to recede and land to form. Next he vomited forth nine prototypical creatures each of which made others of his own kind. Only lightning proved obstreperous and had to be banished from earth. Lastly, Bumba created men, one of which was white like himself (signifying light or purity? the influence of Christianity and European domination?) and in the role of culture hero taught them to make fire.
Awe before the power and beauty of nature, often obscured in the pessimistic overtones of African myths more concerned with man’s sins, is stated here simply in Bumba’s benediction: “Behold these wonders. They belong to you.”
The Bushongo kingdom was the oldest and most advanced of the Bantu realms in the Congo area. Its oral tradition traces some 120 rulers since its founding in the fifth century A.D.
IN THE BEGINNING, in the dark, there was nothing but water. And Bumba was alone.
One day Bumba was in terrible pain. He retched and strained and vomited up the sun. After that light spread over everything. The heat of the sun dried up the water until the black edges of the world began to show. Black sandbanks and reefs could be seen. But there were no living things.
Bumba vomited up the moon and then the stars, and after that the night had its own light also.
Still Bumba was in pain. He strained again and nine living creatures came forth: the leopard named Koy Bumba, and Pongo Bumba the crested eagle, the crocodile, Ganda Bumba, and one little fish named Yo; next, old Kono Bumba, the tortoise, and Tsetse, the lightning, swift, deadly, beautiful like the leopard, then the white heron, Nyanyi Bumba, also one beetle, and the goat named Budi.
Last of all came forth men. There were many men, but only one was white like Bumba. His name was Loko Yima.
The creatures themselves then created all the creatures. The heron created all the birds of the air except the kite. He did not make the kite. The crocodile made serpents and the iguana. The goat produced every beast with horns. Yo, the small fish, brought forth all the fish of all the seas and waters. The beetle created insects.
Then the serpents in their turn made grasshoppers, and the iguana made the creatures without horns.
Then the three sons of Bumba said they would finish the world. The first, Nyonye Ngana, made the white ants; but he was not equal to the task, and died of it. The ants, however, thankful for life and being, went searching for black earth in the depths of the world and covered the barren sands to bury and honor their creator.
Chonganda, the second son, brought forth a marvelous living plant from which all the trees and grasses and flowers and plants in the world have sprung. The third son, Chedi Bumba, wanted something different, but for all his trying made only the bird called the kite.
Of all the creatures, Tsetse, lightning, was the only troublemaker. She stirred up so much trouble that Bumba chased her into the sky. Then mankind was without fire until Bumba showed the people how to draw fire out of trees. “There is fire in every tree,” he told them, and showed them how to make the firedrill and liberate it. Sometimes today Tsetse still leaps down and strikes the earth and causes damage.
When at last the work of creation was finished, Bumba walked through the peaceful villages and said to the people, “Behold these wonders. They belong to you.” Thus from Bumba, the Creator, the First Ancestor, came forth all the wonders that we see and hold and use, and all the brotherhood of beasts and man.
—Maria Leach. The Beginning. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1956, pp. 145–147.—Translated and adapted from material in E. Torday and T. A. Joyce. Les Boshongo, Annales du Musee de Congo Beige, Ethnographie Anthropologie, Serie 4, t. 2. Brussels, 1910, pp. 20ff.
BULU
How Zambe Created Man, the Chimpanzee, and the Gorilla
The effects of oppression and colonialism are evident in this myth from the Bulu people of the Cameroons. Given a good god, the only explanation for such suffering as they experienced was human error. Therefore, when Zambe, the son the supreme god Mebe’e (“the One who bears the world”), made men, chimpanzees and gorillas, all but the white man denied his sacred gifts and were punished accordingly. In another version told by the Fan people, the black man catches the white’s malaria and in the end lies dying on the coast of Africa, longing for his former relation to God.
When this myth was collected in 1912, the Cameroons were under German control. Occupied by the French and British during World War I, they eventually became mandates and trust territories. By 1961, moves for independence were completed when the British region was joined to the French to become the Federal Republic of Cameroons.
SOME PEOPLE have believed that Zambe, the son of Mebe’e, created the man Zambe, the chimpanzee Zambe, the gorilla Zambe, and the elephant Zambe. One man was black, the other one white. He gave unto them, moreover, fire and cutlasses and hoes and axes and water. After this they stirred up the fire; and when the white man came and sat by the fire, when he looked into the fire, the smoke came into his eyes, so that the tears came. Therefore he arose and went away from the fire. The only thing which the white man treasured was the book which he held in his hand.
The chimpanzee saw a cluster of mvut-fruit ripening on a tree standing in the unplanted border of a clearing; so he threw away all he had, and went and ate the fruit of the mvut-tree. He and the gorilla Zambe did in this manner.
The black man stirred up
the fire around the standing stump of an adumtree, but he neglected the book.
The elephant also had enough things, but he did not remember one of them.
When Zambe, the son of Mebe’e, came, he called them together and asked them, “All the things which I left in your possession, where are they?” The Chimpanzee made answer, and said, “My things I left where I ate the fruit of the mvut-tree.” So he said to him, “Go and fetch them!” When, however, the chimpanzee came to the place where he had left them, he found not a single one of them there. Therefore Zambe, the son of Mebe’e, became angry with him, and said to him, “You are a fool.” And he dipped his hands into a pool of water, and sprinkled hair all over the body of the chimpanzee; he gave him also large teeth in his mouth, and said to him, moreover, “You will always live in the forests.” The same he said to the gorilla: “You and the chimpanzee will be alike.”
After this he also asked the black man, “Where is your book?” and he replied, “I threw it away.” Zambe therefore said to him, “You will be left without knowledge, because you threw away the book.” Moreover, Zambe, the son of Mebe’e, said to him, “You will go to a man and ask of him a wife in return for goods, you will also work for him.” He also said again to the black man, “You will be always tending the fire, for it is the one thing you especially looked after.” Thereupon said Zambe to the white man. “In all the days to come you will never put away the book, because you did look after the book which I gave you; therefore you will be a man of understanding, because you cared for a real thing.” He said to him also, “You will always live without fire, for you cared but little for the fire.”
Thus it is that the chimpanzees and gorillas and elephants went to the forest to live; and they alway cry and howl, because Zambe, the son of Mebe’e, gave them a curse because they did not keep the things he had given them to keep.
Primal Myths Page 8