Bondarenko Dmitri M. Homoarchy

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Bradbury 1957: 33–34; 1973: 171–172, 179–180, 243; Sidahome 1964: 127;
Uwechue 1970: 145). The intracommunity relations were similar to intrafamily
ones but were realized on a higher level. Particularly, analogous extendedfamily
councils operated at the lower level of complexity (Egharevba 1949: 11;
Sidahome 1964: 100, 158, 164; see below).
As for the people’s assembly, it had already no doubt lost any
significance and degraded as an institution at least by the time of the first
contacts between the Binis and the Europeans in late 15 th – 16 th centuries, if not
much earlier – by the first Oba’s time (Bondarenko 1995a: 170; Bondarenko
and Roese 1998: 369). Some reminiscences of its former existence might be
seen in the council members’ right to apply to wide circles of communalists for
consultations and maybe in rare “deaf” hints of the oral tradition (Egharevba
1965: 15). The existence of the public assembly is ethnographically fixed
among socio-politically less developed ethnic groups of Southern Nigeria
including some Bini and kindred to them (Talbot 1926: III, 565), what can also
be considered as an indirect proof of its presence in early Benin.
Although the primordial Bini community did not know inequality
among its constituent families in access to power, though the same person –
odionwere was responsible for the performance of both profane and ritual
duties at the community level, and these features have remained characteristic
of many local communities up to now, communities of another type, with
privileged families and two heads, have existed either from the mid-1 st
millennium AD, i.e., from the predynastic time (Bondarenko 2001: 56–60).
Under the Benin conditions, privileges of a family could consist only in the
right to nominate its member to the office of the community head every time it
was vacant (in particular, such a family was not distinguished significantly out
of common families by its living standard [Bradbury 1973: 177–178] 41 ). Thus,
the problem of intracommunity relations along the line “individual (the
community head) – collectivity (the community)” turned out identical to the
“collectivity (the privileged extended family) – collectivity (the other families
of the community)” line. By no means did the onogie and his family lose touch
with their community fellows: “The common interest and sympathy expected
of all members of the community in respect of the misfortune of one of its
members finds its fullest expression in their attitude to the onogie” (Ibid.: 183).
Every Bini village had an odionwere but far from all of them had
another head titled onogie (Idem. 1957: 33; 1973: 176). When separation of
powers in a community between the two heads was the case, the odionwere
acted predominantly as the sacral “master of land”, the performer of rituals of
the ancestor cult while almost all the profane duties rested with the onogie. The
definition of the odionwere and the onogie offices as ritual and profane
respectively is to some extend conditional for the former could preserve some
non-ritual duties. However, such duties could not be the most important,
essential for him, contrary to the onogie who was concentrated primarily on