ZULU MEDICINE AND MEDICINE-MEN. 5 



(3) Origin of the Zulu Name i-nyanga — Medicine-man. 



The Kafirs call their medicine man, in Zulu, an i-nyanga, 

 and in Xosa, an i-nyangi (although in the latter language a 

 totally different term, viz. i-gqira, is in more common use 

 nowadays, probably derived from the Hottentot : c f . Nama- 

 Hot. gqeira, pertaining to Avitchery, from gqei-di, bewitch, 

 from gqei, belch. Note here the universal habit among witch- 

 doctors, Zulu included, of inaugurating their spiritualistic 

 seances with an inevitable prelude of belching). 



Whether or not there may be any kinship between the 

 Kafir roots indicated above and the constantly recurring 

 element, ag, ga, or gi in the Aryan languages, e. g. Skr. gir, 

 speech; Pers. mag, priest; Gr, magos, wizard; L. angnr, 

 soothsaj^er ; gar-rire, chatter ; Eng. mag, chatter, and the 

 like, I leave to the philologists to decide. Certainly a 

 remarkably similar element, viz. anga, in the sense of "wizard" 

 or " medicine-man " is very prevalent in the present-day 

 vocabulary of the nasalising Bantu tribes of Africa, and was 

 no doubt equally so in the archaic speech of pre-Egyptian 

 times. 



Thus we find m-ganga (doctor) in the Swahili opposite 

 Zanzibar, and the same in Kaguru of Sagaraland. The 

 Nyamnyam, of the Nuba-Fula group, have n-zanga (doctor) 

 and icu-ivanga (medicine).^ Passing' to the Hausa, of the 

 Negro group, between Lake Tshad and the Niger, we have 

 magani (medicine) and maimagani (doctor). In the Dualla 

 of the Cameroons, Inv-anga means " medicine '' ; and in the 

 Pongwe or Gaboon language u-ganga appears as " doctor." 

 Moving southward along the western coast, we meet with 

 n-ganga (doctor) both in the Congo and Angola speech. 

 Still southward of these, at the south-western extremity of 

 the Bantu field, the Herero has on-ganga (doctor). Keturn- 

 ing across the continent, we find n-gal-a (doctor) among the 



' In regard to some of the examples here given, the wi-itei' is not 

 prepared to vouch for the absolute acciu-acy of the division, as here 

 indicated, of the prefixes from their roots. 



