10 The Hatchet's Fall Odieng appears in the world not only as a source of moral rules and affliction , but also as a hatchet which falls from the sky . Odieng Iri , “ hatchet of the sky , " plummets to the earth , Ehing say , as a ...
Author: Marc R. Schloss
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816513643
Category: Social Science
Page: 178
View: 449
The ritual complexes of the Ehing, a farming people of southern Senegal, embody an elaborate set of prohibitions on social behavior and prescribe the general rules of Ehing social organization. Power is distributed and maintained in Ehing culture by the concept of Odieng ("hatchet"), which as a spirit acts upon human beings much as an ax does upon a tree, falling from above to punish its victims for transgression. Marc Schloss's ethnography of the Ehing is a study of the meaning of Odieng's power, explaining why its rules are so essential to the Ehing way of life.