Il6 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Of Munkuhinkulu the primitive idea is clear enough from its 

 best preserved form, the Zulu Unkulunkulu^ which is a repetitive 

 of the root inkulu^ great, old, hence a deification of the great 

 departed, a direct outcome of the ancestry-worship so universal 

 amongst Negro and Bantu peoples 1 . Thus Unkulunkulu becomes 

 the direct progenitor of the Zulu-Xosas : Unkulunkulu ukobu wetu. 

 But the fundamental meaning of Nzambi is unknown. The root 

 does not occur in Kishi-Kongo, and Mr Bentley rightly rejects 

 Kolbe's far-fetched explanation from the Herero, adding that "the 

 knowledge of God is most vague, scarcely more than nominal. 

 There is no worship paid to God 2 ." 



More probable seems Mr \V. H. Tooke's suggestion that 

 Nzambi is "a Nature spirit like Zeus or Indra," and that, while 

 the eastern Bantus are ancestor-worshippers, " the western ad- 

 herents of Nzambi are more or less Nature-worshippers. In this 

 respect they appear to approach the Negroes of the Gold, Slave, 

 and Oil Coasts 3 ." No doubt the cult of the dead prevails also 

 in this region, but here it is combined with naturalistic forms of 

 belief, as on the Gold Coast, where Bobowissi^ chief god of all the 

 southern tribes, is the "Blower of Clouds," the "Rain-maker," 

 and on the Slave Coast, where the Dahoman Mawu and the 

 Yoruba Olorun are the Sky or Rain, and the "Owner of the Sky ' : 

 (the deified Firmament), respectively 4 . 



It would therefore seem probable that the Munkulunkulu 

 peoples from the north-east gradually spread by the indicated 

 routes over the whole of Bantuland, everywhere imposing their 

 speech, general culture, and ancestor-worship on the pre-Bantu 



1 So also in Minahassa, Celebes, Empiing, "Grandfather/' is the generic 

 name of the gods. "The fundamental ideas of primitive man are the same 

 all the world over. Just as the little black baby of the Negro, the brown 

 baby of the Malay, the yellow baby of the Chinaman are in face and form, in 

 gestures and habits, as well as in the first articulate sounds they mutter, very 

 much alike, so the mind of man, whether he be Aryan or Malay, Mongolian 

 or Negrito, has in the course of its evolution passed through stages which are 

 practically identical." (Sydney J. Hickson, A Naturalist in North Celebes, 

 1889, p. 240.) 

 ' Op. cit. p. 96. 



3 The God of the Ethiopians, in Nature, May 26, 1892. 



4 E. B. Ellis, 7V/ /, p. 23; Ewe, p. 31 ; Yoniba, p. 36. 



