Using Oral Sources: Vansina and Beyond || THE LITERALIST FALLACY AND THE PROBLEM OF ORAL TRADITION

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THE LITERALIST FALLACY AND THE PROBLEM OF ORAL TRADITIONAuthor(s): Roy WillisSource: Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, No. 4, UsingOral Sources: Vansina and Beyond (SEPTEMBER 1980), pp. 28-37Published by: Berghahn BooksStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23160309 .

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SOCIAL ANALYSIS No. 4, September 980

THE LITERALIST FALLACY AND THE PROBLEM OF ORAL TRADITION

Roy Willis

I. Theory

For a long time the question of the possible historicity of oral-traditional narrative has been largely a matter of opinion. However there have recently been

signs that the grounds of the dogmatic debate may be shifting from those of mere assertion and counter-assertion to a more fruitful area which could admit scientific criteria of testability and falsifiability.

Extreme positions have been typical during the debate's lengthy pre-scientific

phase, marking limits of pendulum-like swings of scholarly sentiment between fideistic attitudes towards oral-traditional texts and outright scepticism. As the British folklorist Sidney Hartland, himself a sceptic in this sense, noted in 1914:

Half a century ago or less the worthlessness of oral tradition as historical

evidence was accepted as an axiom that needed no demonstration. A long line of sceptical critics, including among them the illustrious name of Sir Isaac Newton, had dissolved the credulity of educated men... of late years,

however, in this as in many other matters there has been a reaction. With

hardly any formal challenge of critical principles the attitude at least of ethnological inquirers has been somewhat changed. In many directions there has been a tendency to accept traditions not merely as giving a

general indication of the direction in which the solution of problems may be sought, but as accurate in detail (Hartland 1914:428).

Hartland's position was shortly afterwards endorsed by a renowned father of

American anthropology, Robert H. Lowie, with the uncompromising statement

that "I cannot attach to oral traditions any historical value whatsoever under any conditions whatsoever" (Lowie 1915:598). Two years later he reiterated his

sceptical opinion, while adding a qualification that made his position similar to that of some latter-day structuralists:

. . . in denying to oral traditions of primitive tribes their face value, we are

not denying to them all value whatsoever. On the contrary, it is clear that

even the wildest and manifestly impossible tales may be of the utmost

importance as revelations of the cultural status of the people who cherish

them (Lowie 1917:161). A more moderate view was put forward about the same time by Lowie's

illustrious colleague and compatriot, A. A. Goldenweiser, who thought that "some

traditions are wholly untrue, others are partly true, while still others may be wholly true". Conceding that oral traditions were "poor evidence", in opposition to Lowie

Goldenweiser nevertheless considered that

the extent to which such evidence can be trusted is determined by the

probability of its being true evidence, which again may be estimated from

the frequency of agreement between such evidence and evidence of an

intrinsically higher merit (Goldenweiser 1915:763) . The Goldenweiser-Lowie dispute soon faded from scholarly attention with the

virtual triumph in the 1920's of Malinowskian functionalism, with its doctrine that oral traditions purporting to explain the past were to be understood primarily as

"charters" for present social orders (cf. Malinowski 1954:166). But later

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anthropologists ot the lunctionalist school rediscovered historical significance in

oral-traditional narratives. This falling away from the pure gospel of functionalist

synchronism occurred in the implicit fashion that Hartland had earlier discerned,

without any "formal challenge of critical principles". Ironically, this theoretical backsliding seems to have been particularly marked among anthropologists trained

in Britain, the citadel of functionalism. As the American anthropologist G.P. Murdock complained in 1959,

britisft social anthropologists, as in the volumes ot the Ethnographic

Survey of Africa, invariably give serious consideration to native historical traditions, the one type of historical information that is virtually valueless

(Murdock 1959:43). A leading exponent ot this unavowed heresy was E.E. Evans-Pritchard, a

student of both Malinowski and of Radcliffe-Brown,the latter of whom had laid it down that "in the primitive societies studied by social anthropology there are no

historical records" (Radcliffe-Brown 1952:3). Writing of the historical traditions of the Zande people of the southern Sudan in Africa, Evans-Pritchard observed that

For the earliest periods of Zande history we have to rely on native

traditions . . . What historical value is to be credited to the native

traditions? .. . where the literary records are not silent they confirm Zande

statements. Since this is so, we may lend greater credence to traditions

about earlier periods of their history . . . (Evans-Pritchard 1958:3). Airica, tne locus ol tvans-Pritchard's now classical researches, is probably the

continent most richly endowed with orally-transmitted historical narratives. And it

was appropriate that it was a scholar working in this continent, the Belgian historian and ethnographer Jan Vansina, who in 1961 produced the first treatise

purporting to deal with both the theoretical and practical problems of collecting historical information in non-literate societies. Although De la tradition orale clearly aimed at general and universal significance, the material discussed was

nearly all drawn from three African societies of the 'state-like' category — the Kuba

of Zaire, Ruanda and Burundi. One critical review indeed complained that "cet ouvrage n'est pas une mise en perspective des problemes de l'histoire tels qu'ils se

posent a propos des peuples sans ecriture, mais plutot un manuel" (Deluz-Chiva

1962:130). It is true that most of Tradition consists of a detailed typology of oral traditional forms, but it also possesses a considerable, if largely implicit, theoretical content. This can perhaps best be described as 'literalist' and stands in radical

opposition to some of the key tenets of social anthropology. Possibly because of the

density of Vansina's descriptive material and his low-keyed, unpolemical literary style, this fact seems to have eluded the notice of anthropologists for some while. One who did eventually take notice was T. O. Beidelman, and in 1970 he delivered a strong counter-attack on behalf of social anthropology:

. . . interpretation ol traditional oral material is exceedingly difficult and

requires that historians bent on such analysis first master the rudiments of social anthropology . . . Vansina makes no sophisticated attempt to show how he could determine when the items of oral tradition are simply reflections of these social and cosmological values (Beidelman 1970:74,95).

Beidelman may have argued his case a little too strongly (a number of gross mis-statements are itemised in Pender-Cudlip 1972), but the substance of it was valid: Vansina possessed no theoretical method of sorting symbolic from factual material in his oral-traditional narratives. Another American anthropologist, Wyatt MacGaffey, argued in milder tones but in essentially the same vein in 1974:

The modern willingness to employ indigenous texts and concepts for historiographic purposes is not enough unless the cosmologies that generate them can first be understood. Real history .. . cannot be inferred

29



from tradition in any simple way. To accept as historical even such

portions of tradition as look real to the foreign eye is to submit unawares to

the authority of indigenous cosmology as much as though one had also

accepted the magical portions as historically real (MacGaffey 1974:417,421).

Vansina responded to his anthropological critics by modifying the key concept in De la tradition orale, the notion of an "archetypal" testimony which the oral historian could recover by reconstructing its "chain of transmission" (Vansina 1961:137 et passim). In an article in the journal (Daedalus in 1971 he noted:

It is not always possible to reconstruct the original tradition from variants.

When the wording is frozen, textual analysis can lead to the construction

of an archetype. If the tradition has a rigid form but the wording is free, as in the case of an epic, only part of an archetype can be reconstructed because the wording does not belong completely to the tradition. In the

case of a narrative, there is no archetype at all (Vansina 1971:448). This modification badly damaged the logical coherence of Vansina's argument

in Tradition, the implicit parallel with what J.C. Miller was later to call "the

documentary analogy" (Miller 1978:75). But Vansina showed no awareness of this fact beyond observing that "the historian must be an anthropologist", while

reasserting that "oral traditions have been used intensively and are being used more

and more in reconstructing Africa's history" (1971:448). In a further contribution to the discussion in 1974 Vansina appeared to

concede the substance of the anthropologists' case in saying that "every statement,

written or not, is structured and carries the imprint of the unconscious and

conscious Weltanschauung of its author" (Vansina 1974:320). But he added, defiantly,

And yet historians have been able to use them (oral-traditional narratives) ... To deny all validity to such traditions, in principle because they are an

sxpression of cognitive systems is as naive as to assume in principle that

they are only mythical charters in the functional sense and should not be sources for the historian (Vansina 1974:320,322).

Vansina was in effect arguing for both sides of the long-continuing debate between fideists and sceptics about the historical value of oral-traditional narratives. What is of course missing from Vansina's modified theoretical stance is any indication of how mythical or symbolic meaning is to be distinguished from historical fact in narrative data. Moreover, these theoretical self-criticisms in the wake of scholarly reaction to Tradition are only one side of Vansina's still developing work, the product of his left hand, as it were. With hes right hand Vansina continues to produce relentlessly literalist accounts of African

sthnography. Kingdoms of the Savanna (1966) made a central historical figure out of the name Kongolo (or Nkongolo), a name which Luc de Heusch (the cosmically drunken king of Africanist structuralism) has shown to represent the natural

phenomenon of the rainbow which is itself an element in a widely shared system of

:osmological symbols among the savanna states of central Africa.1 Kinguri, mother important historical figure in Vansina's account, has been shown by J.C.

Miller to be the title of a political office inherited under the common central African

system of perpetual or positional succession.2 Since 1961 Vansina has also

published historical studies of the Rwanda, Rundi and Kuba states. In Tradition these were announced as "complementary" to the 1961 text and therefore require

special consideration as exemplifications of Vansina's theoretical stance.

L' evolution du royaume Rwanda des origines a 1900 1962) is the least interesting of these "complementary" tests. Ruanda oral traditions present a dual picture of

progressive outward expansion of state power from a central territory, combined

with increasing complexification of administrative structures. In this case, as in the

parallel case of the Ganda state, there is every reason to believe that what the

30



traditions purport to say corresponds broadly with the tacts. Vansinas essay endorses this view. He also proposes a chronology which plausibly corrects Kagame's over-exuberant interpretation of the indigenous sources (Vansina

1962:95). 1 he neighbouring and ethnically related society ot the Kundi present a very

different and evidently intractable problem for Vansina's methodology. La legende du passe: traditions orales du Burundindi (1972) gives us a picture of a society which, in complete contrast to history-conscious Ruanda, appears to deny

history altogether. For the Rundi, configurations of social conditions succeed one

another in a predestined and cyclical order. There is not concept of historical

causality and therefore no 'history' in the conventional sense:

si 1 histoire est predestinee et cyclique, eile est aussi statique. Le temps en

fait est aboli. Le passe, c'est une serie d'images d'Epinal, de tableaux non

relies les uns aux autres. C'est une juxtaposition, non un deroulement. Les

:hoses surviennent sans causes et passent sans effets (Vansina 1972:10). vansina s encounter with tfie Kundi traditions is highly instructive. Here is a

complex state system and a wealth of narratives about the past. Yet Vansina admits

that, in face of the ahistorical ideology of the Rundi, he is unable to extract any iiistorical information from the indigenous material:

Les sources oraies pour l'tiistoire du Burundi sont un scandale, du moins,

pour rhistorien. Elles ne sont pas serieuses du tout et elles sont

ndispensables. C'est un veritable defi (Vansina 1972:219). ine L.nuaren oj woot: A History oj the Kuba Peoples (1978) is the third3 and

by far the most substantial of the three "complementary" volumes to the Tradition. It is a mine of ethnographic reportage. Seemingly, it offers a grand view of Kuba history of a scope and magnitude rarely encountered in Africanist historiography. Yet Woot also exhibits vast defects. Although Vansina begins by telling us that "my own perceptions about history have altered" and "all narrative material is structured by the mind so it can be remembered and that memory either streamlines Dr tends to symbolize" (1978:10,27), there is almost no attempt to identify, let alone interpret, symbolic material. Vansina has leaned to handle origin myths rather more circumspectly, although even here he shows reluctance to abandon literalism

mtirely: . . pernaps tne Kuoa actually came trom downstream. That would explain

vhy they stress this in their cosmology, their perception and organization )f space, and the like (1978:45).

Dui in principle ne is inclined to deny historical significance to patently mythical' narrative:

in presenting Kuba genesis, only the raw material has been given in order :o show what the historian can use and why most of the data are

mtological speculation divorced from real events and processes in a real )ast. An adequate analysis of these data would require a separate nonograph (1978:227-228).

ironicauy, it is ratner what the historian can not use that is indicated by Vansina's 'altered perceptions' about history. What he has learned from

inthropological criticism of Tradition is to fence off patently 'mythical' data as autside the scope of the historian. Notwithstanding Vansina's post-Tradition icceptance of the pervasive influence of Wellanschauungen in purportedly listorical material,' Woot is innocent of even the most rudimentary attempt at tructural analysis, the only theoretical tool capable of extracting objective ignificance from the veiled language of cosmological symbolism.

moreover, wnen it comes to dealing with apparently non-empirical items in he corpus of Kuba traditions dealing with their history since the mythical origins, /'ansina shows himself no further advanced than the primitive literalism of rradition.

31



Kot aNce was also a great magician who cut a river in two with his sword

(the Red Sea motif), cut off his own head to delouse it, and silenced the weaver birds who were twittering away during a council meeting. More personable is the tale that he invented a tall, pointed hat because he was

short and wanted to be more impressive ... his successor improved the

design of the razor blade. These tales seem to have little if any bearing on the concept of kingship (1978:228-229).

Possibly not. Yet a structuralist would hardly fail to notice that the story of

Kot aNce's cutting off his own head (which Vansina presumably discounts as non historical) is the complementary opposite ("negation of head") of the "personable" (i.e. historical?) tall hat story ("exaggeration of head"). Obviously, a deeper analysis of this set of stories would require consideration of the symbolic resonances of the

concept "head" in Kuba symbology. Unfortunately, and to the best of my

knowledge, we lack information on this particular topic. Is there a way out ot the literalist impasse, a way 01 avoiding Vansina s Fallacy

which can also provide a method of extracting historical information from orally transmitted texts?

A positive answer to this pressing question emerges from the work of Joseph C. Miller, an Africanist historian who is a former student of Vansina. The basic misconception underlying Tradition is identified by Miller as "the documentary inalogy" — thought, with a delicate filial piety which must compel respect, Miller refrains from making this connection explicit:

1 he basic assumption invalidated by acknowledged changes in how oral

historians describe past events might be termed the "documentary analogy". Literate historians, reasoning by analogy with established methods of inferring history from written sources, have concentrated on a

single dimension of oral historical performances: their words. They have faithfully transcribed these words and treated them as direct witness to the

past very much as they would analyze any other historical document

surviving unchanged from remote times into the historian's present... all of these implications of the documentary analogy were captured in the

prevalent designation of the oral sourc as a "tradition"... At the very least, a transmuted version of it could be restored to an original form through analysis of the "chain of transmission". The documentary analogy was

clear, and it implied that no significant change had taken place in the way events were described between some imputed original eyewitness account and the last performance in the chain of transmissions (Miller, in Bernardi, Poni, and Triulzi (eds.), 1978:75-76).

It is clear, however, that radical changes in the way events are described do occur in the process of transmission. Miller and his colleagues4 contend that these changes can be formally described and analysed so as to produce historical data. The techniques required to perform these'operations are those developed within the schools of cognitive and structuralist anthropology (Miller 1978:98). This is a road which some historically-minded anthropologists have also followed. A notable recent example is Feierman's combined structural and historical analysis of the

sovereignty myth of the Shambaa people of Tanzania (Feierman 1974). Here we

see, as Miller also notes, a most promising convergence between the disciplines of

history and anthropology. For this group of scholars the key insight has been that

'mythical' and 'magical' motifs in oral-traditional history can be 'decoded' and

understood as indigenous representations or models of sociological processes (cf. Miller 1978; Willis 1976). We can now see the possibility, through this conjunction of historical scholarhsip and formal analysis, of an objective science of oral narrative. It is a prospect foreshadowed as long ago as 1916 by the American

anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir:

32



. . . one of the characteristic traits of history is its emphasis on the

individual and personal. While the importance of individual events and

personalities for the progress of human affairs is not to be underestimated,

the historical reconstructions of the cultural anthropologist can only deal, with comparatively few exceptions, with generalized events and

individualities (Mandelbaum, ed., 1949:393).

II Practice

In 1962-64, 1966 and 1977 I collected field data on the Fipa of south-west

Tanzania.5 The Fipa resemble the Kuba, Ruanda and Rundi studied by Vansina insofar as they had a state-like pre-colonial society and belong to the great Bntu

insofar as they had a state-like pre-colonial society and belong to the great Bantu

sub-family of the Niger-Congo linguistic division. Also like Vansina's three societies, the Fipa possess a wealth of oral

transmitted narratives purporting to bear on their past. Analysis and interpretation of these narratives has indeed proved, in Beidelman's words, "exceedingly difficult" (elaboration of the summary that follows can be found in Willis n.d.) But eventually a clear and internally consistent picture has appeared of an African society which underwent radical changes and emerged in late pre-colonial times with a complex and, in certain respects, unusual form of social organisation.

I he narratives, taken as a whole, describe both the historical evolution of Fipa

society and the essential features of late pre-colonial social organisation, including

highly specific (that is, deductively improbable) institutions. These structures and processes are not, however, described in literal terms. The historical message is

smbedded in a symbolic code comprised of elements from Fipa cosmology or

Weltanschauung.

However, there is no single code operative through the whole corpus of

purportedly historical narratives. Fipa indigenous history consists of three distinct sets or 'strata' of narratives, each of which requires different analytical and

interpretative procedures. The primary set comprises the myths describing the

constitution of Fipa society. The most important and structurally most complex jof these symbolic narratives I have called the 'key myth', since its 'decoding' has unlocked the door to the hitherto obscure pre-colonial past of the Fipa. Through

application of analytic techniques derived from the semiological school founded by de Sanssure, this Fipa myth is revealed as a combination of a blueprint for the late

application of analytic techniques derived from the semiological school founded by de Saussure, this Fipa myth is revealed as a combination of a blueprint for the late

pre-colonial social order and a description of a profound social revolution by which

this complex order was constructed from the components of an earlier and simpler form of society.

lhe most common version of the myth tells how three women came into Fipa

:ountry and succeeded in taking symbolic possession of the kingdom during the

king's temporary absence from the royal village. Subsequently, there was a

redistribution of sovereign powers between the priest-king and the leader of the

strange women, in a compact which was seen to be to their mutual advantage. The myth evokes the basic values of the Fipa world, values which are

represented as paired opposites, each hierarchically related to its complement: male

is thus superior to and opposed to female; centrality to externality; authority to

sower, or force; village to wilderness; and so on. Every statement in the myth is

■eplete with such 'cosmological' references. Thus the opening sentence asserts:

I here were three women who came from afar in search or a place to stay... The significant references here are contained in the number "three" (symbolising

many as opposed to few), the noun "women" {female opposed to male), the verb

'came" (opposing incoming strangers to established settlers), and the phrase "place

33



to stay (another reference to the settler/stranger opposition, a crucial dualism in

Fipa cosmology). The leader of the strange women takes the royal stool of office from the king's

wife and sits on it with the words, "This is my country". Next day the king goes with the women to the summit of the sacred mountain Itweelele (opposition of height, associated with seniority, maleness, centrality and authority, against lowness, associated with juniority, femaleness, externality and force).

Then, the king, having grown hair (= animality, inferiority) under his arms,

upon reaching the summit was ashamed to reveal this hair. So he shortened

his arm, saying "My country ends with the mountain!" Then the leader of

the women stood forth erect saying "My country extends to the far

distance!" This cosmological aspect ol the myth is itself complemented by a dynamic or

'action' aspect inherent in the structure of the narrative, the myth story. Orthodox

Levi-Straussian analysis typically ignores this aspect, or collapses it into the cosmological aspect, as in my initial analysis of the Fipa myth (Willis 1967). What happens is that the myth begins with a particular and relatively simple complex of symbolic values and, through a series of actions and interactions between the

principal dramatis personae of the myth, ends with a different and more complex

arrangement of these values. Authority is divided between central and external

domains, control of sexuality being assigned to the latter. The principle of

hierarchy is reaffirmed, and associated with a continuing exchange between parties af unequal status.

ihe argument is then developed that the myth story reflects a historical

revolution in Fipa society by which a relatively simple social order based on the authority of a central king or chief ruling through dependant and inferior branches of his line was superseded by a more complex system which, while retaining the nominal overlordship of the aboriginal kingship, vested all real power in a juridically subordinate category of rulers. The political and social system associated with this latter category was one which maximised economic exchange and trade, both internal and external. Evidence from archaeology (such as it is), ethnography, documentation from the pre-colonial and early colonial periods, and first-hand field data are adduced in support of this argument.

lne ripa myths, including the central text, have thus both cosmological and historical significance.

I tie second or intermediate set or stratum of narratives consists, like the first

stratum, of symbolic statements, but the symbolism is of a different and lower order. Instead of grand, global statements constructed of Fipa cosmological symbols, the symbolic motifs of the second set of narratives refer to particularities, A few examples must suffice to illustrate the characteristic form of the narrative material from this middle period of Fipa indigenous history:

Source A

When Nandi the Younger saw the might of Nandi the Elder's army he decided it was vain to fight with him. Accordingly, he mustered all the Twa (people of the royal line supposedly descended from the strange women of the key myth) in the royal palace, set fire to it and all inside were burned to death, including Nandi the Younger himself. Thereupon Nandi the Elder became king over the country.

Source B

When Nandi saw that he was being beaten he took a whole lot of the young men and women and put them in a house to which he set fire, killing them

34



all . .. When Nandi came down he found the waters of Lake Rukwa in his

way ... he took his staff and struck the waters, which parted and allowed

him to cross with his army.

Source C

On his way back he (a Twa royal called Ndaasi) found that Lake Rukwa had risen and flooded a large stretch of country to the north, thus blocking his path ... he struck upon the waters which immediately parted . . . Seeing that the fight was going against him he (Msili, a Twa royal) called for a short truce before a surrender. The attack was stayed and Msili took advantage of this to collect his family within his house whereupon he set fire to it, burning himself and them to death.

A small number (five) of the particularistic motifs exemplified in the foregoing excerpts are symbolic of repetitive social processes which were operative through a whole historical epoch — the period of transformation from a lineage-based to a complex 'state' organisation. In other words, the symbolic motifs, which may include 'magical' elements, describe the means by which the global changes referred to in the key myth were realised.

Vansina does indeed identify such motifs, for example, the "Red Sea motif" evoked in the third quotation from The Children of fVoot, but only to excluded them from historical treatment. For Miller, however, these "cliches" (as he calls them)

. . . resemble what western social scientist call'models'. Cliches, like models, are abstractions indicating the general significance of 4 class of events which are not themselves individually described (Miller 1978:87).

In the Fipa case the "models" represented by the symbolic images of the intermediate set of narratives evoke the processes of segmentary fission and fusion, immigration and regional trade. These processes, continually operative through the long historical epoch covered by the narratives, resulted eventually in the formation of a centralised, hierarchic 'state' organisation on a new economic base.

The third set or stratum of narratives coincides with the period of indigenous 'state' history in Ufipa. The narratives of this epoch, which lead up to the present, are different in kind from those of the two earlier strata, being neither cosmological nor dominated by symbolic images of social process. Instead they correspond to singular events and individual historical actors.That is, the narratives of this third historical epoch, which begins in the later eighteenth century, are similar in kind to those of literate, documentary history. Their analysis and interpretations calls for similar critical and evaluative techniques to those employed by orthodox historians.

Again a few examples must suffice to illustrate the characteristic style of these 'modern' narratives.

Ex. 1

The king of Nkansi attacked Sangu at his capital of Uli... Sangu fled ... The Akansi (people of the Twa kingdom of Nkansi, in northern Ufipa)... discovered Sangu and killed him . . . Nguwa Wapiingila succeeded to the kingship of Lyangalile (the Twa kingdom of southern Ufipa).

Ex. 2

... after Kinga Kilengwi had died at Cikumsimya the village was attacked by Nguwa . . . The next king of Nkansi was Ntinda Kwasinganwa who

35



made his headquarters at Kisella. He was succeeded by Sumba Kalonga, who made his headquarters at Msanzi and then at Kaengesa. During his

reign the Ngoni invaded Ufipa.

tx. J

... the king or Nkansi, who was called Nchingaand had his headquarters at

Sungangala, attacked the king of Lyangalile who was called Sumba and

whose royal village was Ilembo . . . Nchinga was succeeded as king of

Nkansi by Msile, his brother, and Msile was succeeded by Ntinda

Kwansinganwa. During his reign the Ngoni invaded Ufipa.

I he development ot the new indigenous social order during the nineteenth

century saw the emergence of a 'big man' system of local-level kinship organisation similar to those described for Melanesia; and of a bifurcated 'state' organisation in which coercive fiscal administration was carried on by an all-female staff. Both these ethnographically peculiar institutions, and their relation to the social order as a whole, are prescribed in the key myth of Fipa society, a myth which also describes, in terms of relations between cosmological symbols, the radical social transformation through which these institutions came into being.

1 ne Mpa case shows that it is possible, indeed necessary, to include 'mythical' and 'symbolic' narrative materials in the operations of analysis and interpretation of oral traditional history; and that the techniques required call for the combined skills of anthropology and conventional history. Literalism, in the Vansina mode, simply will not do.

NOTES

1. Cf. these comments on Le roi ivre by C.C. Wrigley: "It would not be easy to guess from Vansina's matter-of-fact narrative that Nkongolo is in fact the Rainbow. This, it must be made clear, is not a speculative etymology. It is the dictionary meaning of the word, and the identification is made by the Luba themselves, who speak of the deity of this name sometimes as the spirit of an ancient king but more often as a cosmic serpent, a terrible and undying power" (Wrigley 1974:131). 2. ". . . apparent figures such as Kinguri represent permanent named political positions rather than individuals. The Imbangala, like the Lunda, practice positional succession and perpetual kinship with the result that all genealogies, for example, describe networks or perpetual titles related to each other by fictional ties rather than biological families. The "kings" mentioned in the traditions thus represent dynasties in a named office" (Miller 1972:551). 3. In between the Rundi and Kuba studies there appeared The Tio Kingdom of the Middle Congo 1880-1892 (O.U.P. 1973). Being largely a reconstruction of this African kingdom in the late nineteenth century, based on a combination of documentary and oral-traditional sources, this work falls outside the scope of the present essay. For contrastingly adverse and favourable opinions of it, see Vidal (1976) and Chretien (1977). 4. llieir work is brought together in a forthcoming collection of essays edited and introduced by Joseph C. Miller and entitled The African Past Speaks. 5. Research was funded at various times by generous grants from the Emslie Horniman Anthropological Scholarship Fund, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the Centre of African Studies of the University of Edinburgh. I express my gratitude to all these bodies for their moral support and material assistance. 6. The Fipa data briefly summarised here is set out in A Stale in the Making: Myth. History and Social Transformation in Pre-Colonial Ufipa (in press).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beidelman, Thomas O.

1970 "Myth, Legend and Oral History: A Kaguru Traditional Text," Anthropos,65:lA-91. Bernardi, B., C. Poni and A. Triulzi (eds.) 1978 Fonti Orali, Milano: Franco Angeli.

Chretien, Jean-Pierre

1977 "Vansina mis sur orbite ethnologique", Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, XVII, 2-3: 373-377.

Deluz-Chiva, Ariane

1962 Review of De la tradition orale, L'Homme, 2,3:129-130.

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Using Oral Sources: Vansina and Beyond || THE LITERALIST FALLACY AND THE PROBLEM OF ORAL TRADITION

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