IV.] THE AFRICAN NEGRO : II. 95 



yama, who came originally from the Mount Mangea district in 

 the north-east, occupied their present homes only about a century 

 ago " upon the withdrawal of the Gallas." The language, which 

 is of a somewhat archaic type, appears to be the chief member of 

 a widespread Bantu group, embracing the Ki-nyika and Ki- 

 pokomo in the extreme north, the Ki-swahili of the 

 Zanzibar coast, and perhaps the Ki-kamba, the 

 Ki-teita, and others of the interior between the 

 coastlands and Lake Victoria. These inland tongues, however, 

 have greatly diverged from the primitive Ki-giryama, which stands 

 in somewhat the same relation to them and to the still more 

 degraded and Arabised Ki-swahili 1 that Latin stands to the 

 Romance languages. 



But the chief interest presented by the Wagiryama is centred 

 in their religious ideas, which are mainly connected with 

 ancestry-worship, and afford an unexpected insight 



into the origin and nature of that perhaps most Primitive 



. . . Ancestry- 



primitive of all forms of belief. There is, of worship. 



course, a vague entity called a "Supreme Being" 

 in ethnographic writings, who, like the Algonquian Manitu, crops 

 up under various names (here Mulungit] all over east Bantuland, 

 but on analysis generally resolves itself into some dim notion 

 growing out of ancestry-worship, a great or aged person, epony- 

 mous hero or the like, later deified in diverse ways as the 

 Preserver, the Disposer, and especially the Creator. These 

 Wagiryama suppose that from his union with the 

 Earth all things have sprung, and that human Muiungu 



and the 



beings are Mulungu's hens and chickens. But there shades, 

 is also an idea that he may be the manes of their 

 fathers, and thus everything becomes merged in a kind of 

 apotheosis of the departed. They think " the disembodied 

 spirit is powerful for good and evil. Individuals worship the 



1 Having become the chief medium of intercourse throughout the southern 

 Bantu regions, Ki-swahili has been diligently cultivated, especially by the 

 English missionaries, who have wisely discarded the Arab for the Roman 

 characters. There is already an extensive literature, including grammars, 

 dictionaries, translations of the Bible and other works, and even A History of 

 Rome issued by the S. P. C. K. in 1898. 



