Bondarenko Dmitri M. Homoarchy

52
the well-being of his subjects seemed impossible (see Bondarenko 1994a: 6–
9; 1995a: 182–183, 203–231). Quite naturally in the view of the aforesaid, the
main shrines of the majority of all-Benin cults, many of which introduced by
Obas Ewedo and Ewuare (see Melzian 1937: 57, 172; Meyerowitz 1940: 131;
Ajisafe 1945: 43; Egharevba 1951b: 45; 1960: 11, 17, 20; 1969: 37; 1974: 10;
Tong 1958: 108; Ayeni 1975: 42; Ben-Amos 1980: 20; Eweka, E. B. 1989: 21;
1992: 162–164; Curnow 1997: 47; Millar 1997: 23–26, 37), were situated in the
eguae courtyard (see Roese and Bondarenko 2003: 23–32). The rites
performed there were aimed directly at destination of that supergoal. 34 The
explanation to why such cults must not but be observed given by a courtier of
the sovereign of Dahomey to a European in the early 18 th century, is completely
applicable to Benin political culture: “Our kings cannot but make sacrifices to
deities… Otherwise they would have been threatened by different calamities.
The deities grant them victories for exact performance of the sacred… rite”
(Prйvost 1783: 82–83).
In fact, the Oba himself was a “common property” of his subjects sui
generis; he “belonged” to them as much as they “belonged” to him. Like the
palace “situated” neither on the Earth nor in the heaven but on the critical spot
of the universe’s spheres’ contiguity, 35 the sovereign, an offspring of a deity
and an earthly woman, integrated human and superhuman in his person.
Though people were sure that Obas could turn into, for example, a bird or a
leopard (Talbot 1926: II, 234; Rowlands 1993: 295–296), and the most
outstanding of them were believed to be magicians (Talbot 1926: I, 154, II, 93,
96, 268, III, 962; Egharevba 1960: 14, 18, 32 et al.; Ben-Amos 1980: 23;
Novikov 1990: 127; Owles 1991: 34; Akenzua, C. A. 1994–1997: I, 20–21;
Eweka, I. 1998: 65–77), the sovereign was not a deity for the Binis but was
seen by them as at one time “for and against, right and left, a human being and
a deity; he integrates oppositions in himself, he exists for their integration”
(Palau Marti 1964: 218). In the Oba, or to be sure, in his image, the Binis
pacified the opposite sides of typical of archaic consciousness binary
oppositions still detectable in their minds even in the mid-20 th century, “… such
as ‘day’ and ‘night’, ‘bush’ and ‘village’, ‘growth’ and ‘control’, under which a
wider range of human experience can be ordered” (Bradbury 1973: 250; see
also Bondarenko 1995a: 74–76).
The noted above recognition of both the sovereign’s omnipotence and
his obligation to share power with chiefs was a manifestation just of this feature
in the political sphere. The Bini political culture rejected true autocracy at any
level of socio-political hierarchy including the uppermost one. Keeping the
balance of power in the political system was a categorical imperative for the
precolonial African complex societies (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1987/1940b:
11–14; Diagne 1981: 40–55; Kochakova 1991b: 59–62). In Benin,
notwithstanding the total recognition of the Oba’s omnipotence, the idea of
principal political powers’ balance was expressed in the formula as follows: