Imana

Imana is the supreme creator and High God of the Banyarwanda of Rwanda and the Barundi of Burundi, the maker and sustainer of the cosmos and the wellspring of all good fortune. Per Maquet (1961) 'Imana, the maker, created Kazikamuntu, the common ancestor of all humans,' and per the dynastic cosmology he is the principal agent behind the celestial origin of the royal line ('it is Imana who engenders'). Imagined with very long arms and figured as the Potter who fashions humans and grants children to the childless (the tale 'Imana and the Childless Couple'), he is benevolent but remote, receiving no direct organized cult and mediating with humanity through the ancestral abazimu and the imandwa spirits (whose king is Babinga and whose cult-hero is Ryangombe). The proverb 'Imana yirirwa ahandi igataha i Rwanda' — 'Imana spends the day elsewhere but comes home to Rwanda to sleep' — expresses the Banyarwanda sense of him as 'Imana yacu,' our own High God. With Christian missionization the name was retained for the Christian God across the Great Lakes.

Domains

• creation
• supreme high god
• fertility giver of children

Powers

• Bestow good fortune, fertility and children as Habyarimana

Epithets

• Rurema Kinyarwanda · Rurema · cultthe CreatorMaquet, The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda (secondary)
• Rugaba Kinyarwanda · Rugaba · cultthe Generous ProviderMaquet, The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda (secondary)
• Habyarimana Kinyarwanda · Habyarimana · cultthe sole giver of childrenMaquet, The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda (secondary)
• Iyakare Kinyarwanda · Iyakare · cultthe One at the OriginMaquet, The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda (secondary)

Relations

• creator of: GihangaImana is the creator and ultimate origin of the dynastic line that issues in Gihanga; he is the principal agent behind its celestial descent ('it is Imana who engenders'), not its genealogical father.Maquet (1961) — 'Imana the maker created Kazikamuntu, the common ancestor of all humans'; Kagame, Inganji Karinga (the line of Gihanga descends from the celestial origin Imana engenders) (secondary)
• creator of: NkubaThe transcendent High God stands above and is the creator of the celestial order, of which Nkuba (the king of the sky) is the apex; the supremacy of Imana over the sky-king is the cosmological frame of the dynastic origin myth.Kagame, La philosophie bantu-rwandaise de l'Etre (1956); d'Hertefelt & Coupez (1964) — Imana as the transcendent Creator over the celestial order of which Nkuba is the king of the sky (secondary)

Sources

• existence: Alexis Kagame, Inganji Karinga (1943/1959) and La philosophie bantu-rwandaise de l'Etre (1956); Marcel d'Hertefelt & A. Coupez, La royauté sacrée de l'ancien Rwanda (1964); Jacques J. Maquet, The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda (1961); Pierre Smith, Le recit populaire au Rwanda (1975) (secondary)
• supreme-creator-of-rwanda-and-burundi: Maquet (1961); d'Hertefelt & Coupez (1964) (secondary)