Tongnaab

Tongnaab, whose name joins the Tong Hills to the word for chief and is often Englished as 'Chief of the Earth', is the paramount god of the Talensi: at once an ancestral 'grandfather' figure and a power of the Earth, embodied in the ba'ar shrine set in the cliffs above the village of Tenzug. Petitioners approach it for children, for the cure of barrenness, and for security, and above all as an oracle that hates evil and exposes witches. Meyer Fortes, who began fieldwork in the Tong Hills in 1934, distinguished the localized ancestral cult from what he called the 'External Boghar', Tongnaab in its role as a trans-regional oracle drawing pilgrims from far beyond Taleland. Although the Namoo hold political chiefship, it is the autochthonous hill Talis who coordinate the great festivals and keep the shrine. Derivative shrines carried out from the hills are called boarbii, 'children of the ba'ar', and it was as such a travelling 'medicine' that the god spread far to the south during the colonial period.

Children

• Nana Tongo

Domains

• divination
• fertility
• witchcraft
• protection

Powers

• speaks as an oracle through its shrine
• exposes and neutralises witches
• grants children and cures barrenness
• sends out franchised child-shrines

Epithets

• Yaanɛ — the shrine-name of the paramount Tongnaab at TenzugInsoll, 'Substance and materiality?' (2011). (secondary)
• External Boghar — Fortes's term for Tongnaab in its role as a trans-regional oracle drawing pilgrims from beyond TalelandMeyer Fortes, 'The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi' (1945). (secondary)

Relations

• parent: Nana TongoNana Tongo, the southern manifestation, is a boarbii or 'child' of the Tong Hills god.Jean Allman and John Parker, 'Tongnaab: The History of a West African God' (2005), ch. 4, on Nana Tongo as the southern manifestation and offshoot of Tongnaab. (secondary)

Sources

• Tongnaab, 'Chief of Tong/Chief of the Earth', is the paramount ancestor-and-earth oracle god of the Tong Hills, associated with fertility, security, and witch-finding, whose shrine (ba'ar) lies in the cliffs above Tenzug.: Jean Allman and John Parker, 'Tongnaab: The History of a West African God' (Indiana University Press, 2005). (secondary)
• Fortes analysed Tongnaab's trans-regional oracular role as the cult of the 'External Boghar'.: Meyer Fortes, 'The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi' (1945). (secondary)