We have already seen that _Mulungu_ is a name applied to the spirits of the dead—the _amadhlozi_ or _amatongo_ of the Zulus (we shall come back to these presently), and as local deities seem to be in many instances (perhaps in all, if we could trace them) identical with deceased chiefs, it looks as if the religion of the Bantu consisted, in the main, of ancestor-worship. However, other ideas, though dim and vague, seem to attach to the word _Mulungu_. Originally, perhaps, it meant no more than ‘the great ancestor’—the Zulu _Unkulunkulu_. This name, literally ‘the Great, Great One,’ seems to have been used by the Zulus as if conveying the notion of a supreme being and creator; but some of them, on being questioned, stated that he was the first man, the common ancestor, at any rate, of themselves and those tribes whom they acknowledged as akin to them. No special worship, however, was offered to him, as he had lived so long ago that no family could now trace its descent to him; and worship is (as with the ancient Romans) a family, or at most a tribal matter. The word _um-lungu_, in Zulu, means ‘a European’; it is used in no other sense, but seems originally to have been bestowed under the idea that white men were supernatural beings of some sort. One might feel inclined to doubt the above etymology, which is Bleek’s, since, in some languages, as in Nyanja, the word _Mulungu_ and the adjective _-kulu_ (‘great’) exist side by side. But against this we may set the possibility of the former being borrowed from other tribes. Mr. Rowley, writing of the time when the Yaos were only beginning to settle in the Shiré Highlands, says expressly that they used the name _Mulungu_ where the Anyanja spoke of _Mpambe_. Speaking from my own observation, I should say that the former had quite displaced the latter throughout the Blantyre and Upper Shiré districts. Now in Yao, precisely, the word for ‘great’ is not _-kulu_, but _-kulungwa_. However that may be, some Yaos, at any rate, think of _Mulungu_ as ‘the great spirit of all men, a spirit formed by adding all the departed spirits together.’ This might almost seem too abstract a conception to be a genuine native view, but it was clearly stated to Mr. Macdonald, and is confirmed by Dr. Hetherwick, who has had many years’ experience of the Yaos. This writer also states the view (which Mr. Macdonald hesitated to accept), that the form of the word, or rather its plural (which shows it to belong, not to the first, or ‘personal’ class, but to the second, including things without a separate life of their own, such as parts of the body, trees, etc.), points to _Mulungu_ not being regarded as a person. Dr. Hetherwick was once trying to convey to an old head-man the idea of the personality of God. The old man, as soon as he began to grasp what was meant, talked of _Che Mulungu_, ‘Mr. God!’