River of Blood: The Genesis of a Martyr Cult in Southern Malawi, C. A.D. 1600Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1992 - 325 pages The culmination of years of fieldwork in southern Malawi, River of Blood reconstructs the beginnings of the Mbona martyr cult, follows its history to the present day, and reveals the fascinating intersections of an indigenous belief system with European Christianity. Beyond reconstructing the cult's genesis, Schoffeleers traces its recent history, particularly in political context. He provides texts of seven cult myths from different historical periods in both Chimang'anja and English. His analysis presents the Mbona myth as a continuous social construction and deconstruction. Emphasizing the impact of political and spiritual oppression on the cult, he distinguishes between the differing versions of the myth preserved by the aristocracy and by the commonalty and demonstrates how these disparate views unite to preserve historical information. In so doing, he shows that cults serve as valuable repositories for historical information. |
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Contents
The Shire Valley and Its Population 17 | 17 |
The Ritual Cycle of the Mbona Cult | 49 |
The Principals and the Medium | 71 |
The Quest for a Spirit Wife and the Struggle | 92 |
The Lundu State in the Late Sixteenth and Early | 117 |
Oral Traditions and the Retrieval of the Distant Past | 140 |
Ideological Confrontation in Oral Tradition | 160 |
General Introduction | 175 |