Old Ubebe said to Umpengula: 'Do you not understand that we said
Unkulunkulu made all things that we see or touch.' And Unkulunkulu, he
added, was a man, and now a dead man; then he considered, and added:
'It is evident that all things were not made by a man who is dead;
they were made by one who now is.' He began with the creator vouched
for by the other old people; he relapsed into the confusion of him
with the first man, and either reverted to the original idea, or to
a natural reflection of his own. Dr. Callaway found Ubebe declaring
that tradition averred the maker to have been a man, but that the
missionaries averred the Creator to be 'the heavenly Lord.' 'The old
men said that Unkulunkulu was an ancestor and nothing more, an ancient
man who begat men, and gave origin to all things.'[15] In fact the
primal being of lower savages, Andamanese and Australians, _is_ a
man, without human limitations, and creative. My hypothesis, like
Dr. Callaway's, is that Ubebe and the rest wandered between three
faiths: a faith analogous to that of the Andamanese and Australians;
that faith modified by ancestor-worship carried to a great pitch--the
creator being identified with the first man, and the doctrine of the
missionaries. It is no wonder that these ancients are confused, but
perhaps my hypothesis, which is Dr. Callaway's, so far, helps to
explain their contradictions. 'They talk of Providence, but I reckon
there is One above he,' said the British agriculturist, quite as
confused as Ubebe.
Dr. Callaway interrogated another very old man, Ulangeni. He denied
that Utikxo, his name for God, was a Hottentot word, introduced by
missionaries, misled by what Dr. Callaway thinks their erroneous idea
that the Hottentot Utikxo represented a lofty and refined theistic
belief. Ulangeni utterly rejected with extreme contempt the idea that
his tribe borrowed Utikxo from a people broken and contaminated by the
Dutch.[16] 'We have learnt nothing of them.' In Ulangeni's opinion,
Utikxo created Unkulunkulu, but, being invisible, was disregarded
in favour of his visible deputy, as Mungan-ngaur might come to be
disregarded in favour of Tundun. 'And so they said Unkulunkulu was
God.' I am grateful to Ulangeni for again anticipating my humble
theory. He gave a humorous account of the arrival of the first
missionary, Unyegana (Gardiner?), of his 'jabbering,' of his promise
to give news of Utikxo, and of the controversies of Zulu theologians.
A native convert won the day and composed a hymn: all this is recorded
by Umpengula. With all respect for Ulangeni, he appears to have been in
the wrong about Utikxo. Kolb (1729) gives Gounja Ticquoa (Utikxo) as
the Hottentot word for a supreme deity; but, if Dr. Callaway is right,
Kolb was in error.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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