Bondarenko Dmitri M. Homoarchy

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odionwere in people’s minds reflected in the principles of his appointment,
defined the ritual function of supreme mediator between the living and the
ancestors as the most important among the odionwere’s duties. Besides this,
the worship of deities and ancestors on behalf of the populace strengthened
further the position of this dignitary. The odionwere received gifts from those
governed by him but those gifts were actually completely of the prestigious and
ritual sort (Talbot 1926: III, 914): economically he depended on his own family
whose plot was not bigger than that of any other family. As any of all the
eligible community’s male members was to take the odionwere office, he could
represent easily not the family of his predecessor: there were no privileged
families in the primordial Bini community – all the families were reputed to be
founded by first-settlers on the community’s land were treated as equal to each
other.
The oral tradition offers its own version of the odionwere title’s
appearance. According to it, in the predynastic time “… the Government of the
country was directed by different leaders in each quarter by turns or
rotationally” (Egharevba 1965: 12). Among them there as if were Odion and
Owere who united their authority under the common title of odionwere.
Each of the two leaders Odion and Owere lived for many
years and attained a great age. Their times and
administration were very good and peaceful and
successful throughout.
They were equally loved, admired, honoured and
respected by all to the end of their days. Thus the names
Odion and Owere became the hereditary official rank
Odion-Owere or Odionwere “head” in our Land ever
since to the present day. Hence the Odionwere was being
made by old age in every quarter of the City and villages
in the Benin Division in those days (Ibid.; see also Idem
1952: 26).
It seems that the oral tradition’s relation reflects the collectivistic nature of the
Bini ancient system of government but by no means the real, historical, course
of events. It cannot reflect it already because there was no Benin as an
integrated socio-political unit in those days at all: local communities were
independent of each other and each of them was in fact a separate society. In
reality the authority and the very title of odionwere definitely grew out of the
age-grade institution (for detail see Bondarenko and Roese 1998: 369;
Bondarenko 2001: 51–55).
The community council met on the initiative of either the head of the
community or the council of an extended family (Sidahome 1964: 114) and
took a real and active part in the management, discussing and solving the whole
range of community’s typical problems: those connected with land distribution
and use, legal proceedings and so on and so forth (Egharevba 1949: 11;