Ewe THE USE OF PLANTS IN YORUBA SOCIETY
PIERRE FATUMBI VERGER
ODEBRECHT
A few days ago somebody asked me, quite seriously, whether Pierre Verger actually existed or if he was yet another folk tale from Bahia. Who knows, but maybe an attempt is being made to explain the syncretism of our culture, not by a god, but by a human being. Born in France into — I've been told — a noble lineage, citizen of the world, photographer of faraway places from Beijing to La Habana, young adventurer exploring pathways of knowledge and emotion, and then a Doctor of science at France's Centre de Recherches Scientif iques alongside Roger Bastide, a man of great wisdom. In Africa those who want to find him will have to ask for Fatumbi, a title given him by Yoruba sacred men and women which he has incorporated into his name, prompting the professor and researcher, the University man and the man of books, to become even richer is his humanity, to become a man equal to, and an integral part of the sacred circles and initiations of the Yoruba. In Africa he taught and learned not only the complete routes of the slave ships, but also the ways of mystery. He became a sorcerer: Pierre Fatumbi Verger. At the Axe Op6 Afonja holy circle, Mae Senhora, she who is so unforgettable, proclaimed from her queen's throne that he was Ojuoba, the eyes of Sango, the one who sees and knows all. At the houses of saints he became a well-known figure, master of us all, equal to us in the vibration and warmth of the drums. Professor, researcher, photographer, writer; in Bahia he is Pierre Fatumbi Verger Ojuoba.
Here in Bahia, his life's experience and knowledge have become forever syncretized. The mixture of the Frenchman from rue Cardinal Lemoine, Paris, with the African from Dakar, Porto Novo, Oyo, has resulted in the definitive and yet unique man from Bahia, so extraordinary he seems an invention. And yet he is not an invention because he lives, works, writes and tarvels the world. A sorcerer for sure. It is not possible to hide, to deny. Mae Senhora used to tell my wife Zelia, with a friendly smile: "Be careful with Verger, he is a sorcerer, he has powers." He has powers, he knows things. Jorge Amado
INDEX
Editor's note................................................................................................. 9 Acknowledgements...................................................................................... 11 Introduction.................................................................................................. 13
THE ACTION OF PLANTS AND THE ACTIVATING WORDS OF INCANTATIONS Chapter 1 - The efficacy of the word ........................................................... 23 Yoruba system of plant classification ..................................................... 23 The activating words in the ofo (incantations).......................................... 29 The signs odu of I f a and the verbal links ............................................. 42 The many meanings of the words ........................................................... 50 Links between names .............................. ............................................ 53 Magical and medicinal names ........................... .................................... 60
Chapter 2 - Oppositions ............................................................................... 65 Beneficent and evil works ..................................................................... 65 Stimulants and tranquilizers ................................................................... 74
Chapter 3 - Works most asked for ............................................................... 83 Opulence ............................................................................................. 83 Power...................................... ........................................................... 87
Afose ................................................................................................. 91
MEDICINAL AND MAGICAL FORMULAE Oogun, remedies for healing the body ...................................................... Ibimo, remedies relating to pregnancy and birth ....................................... Orisa, works to worship yoruba deities...................................................... Awure, beneficent works ........................................................................... Abilu, evil works ....................................................................................... Idaabobo, antidotes to "evil works" or "protective works" ........................
96 266 286 320 394 424
ANNEXES Illustrations......................................... ...................................................... Glossary of plants: Yoruba — scientific names ........................................ Glossary of plants: scientific names — Yoruba ........................................ Notes.......................................................................................................... Index of Formulae ..................................................................................... Table of Illustrations ................................................................................. Bibliography..............................................................................................
459 501 615 721 729 741 743
EDITOR'S NOTE
It has been a pleasure to be involved with the production of this most important work and we are extremely grateful for the assistance received from Editora Schwarcz Ltda of Sao Paulo, Brazil which has enabled us to bring our side of the work to completion on behalf of the Pierre Verger Foundation. It has been my pleasure to have known Professor Fatumbi Pierre Verger since 1956 when I was curator of the museum at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. I have been associated with Professor Verger's work from time to time ever since. Fatumbi Pierre Verger has been absorbing the data now published in this book over a period of some forty years and this has meant that changes in style have probably occurred. It is important for those coming to the Yoruba culture for the first time to realise how essential to it is the "play-on-words" well described by the author in the text. This factor and the plentiful use of metaphor allows the reader, who also becomes an interpreter, a lot of scope for the imaginative understanding of the ultimate meaning of the message. I am sure this publication will give rise to further investigation and research particularly in the area of Black Studies, now a feature of many Universities. The transcription from field notes and other texts collected over a long time span was done with the help of the following persons: Louise Perks, Linda Reynolds, Jane Fallows, Anna Clark, Femi Johnson and Alan Senior. I am specially grateful to our Yoruba team: Dr. Gbenga Fagborun and Dr Akin Oyetade, both of whom are profes-
sional linguists and who spent many long hours correcting the Yoruba and translating some of the more metaphysical texts received form the babalawo, onisegun and others within the Yoruba culture. I am also indebted to the director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Dr. G.Prance, for his encouragement, to Dr. Burkhill, Research Fellow at the same establishment, Miss M. Ward, the librarian at Kew and Dr. Joyce Lowe, Reader in the Botany Department at the University of Ibadan, all of whom have given their help most generously. Dr. Karen Barbour of the Africa Department, University of Birmingham and Dr. John Picton, of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London have been very supportive.
The documents used for this book were mainly recordings made in Nigeria, which were transcribed and later translated into English. Over two thousand remedies and practices are described in some detail, consisting of plant-parts used (leaves, roots, barks etc.), their preparation (pounded, boiled, burnt to ashes etc.), their use externally and/or internally, the words of the incantations which generate the necessary power for their effectiveness and the I f a divination sign ( o d u ) on which the remedy depends and which also provides a basis for their Yoruba classification. This work is completed by two glossaries. The first consists of 3,529 Yoruba plant names and their corresponding scientific names and the second of 1,086 scientific names and their corresponding Yoruba names. Doig Simmonds
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As a great number of people have helped me in the publishing of the present work, I will mention here only those I may in this short page: the botanical services from the Ibadan Reforestation Department and the French Institute of Black Africa (IFAN), Dakar, who have made the first plant identifications; professor Portere from the Paris Museum, who has confirmed them; doctor Burkill and all the staff from the Botanic Gardens of Kew, London, for the plant identification and for the illustrations kindly provided to us; Ulli Beier, for having published my first book on Yoruba plants in Nigeria, introduced by professor Akinjogbin; Theodore Monod, who invited me to research in Africa; friends Carybe and Jorge Amado; the late and remembered Maria Bibiana do Espirito Santo, Mae Senhora, iyalorisa from the holy circle He Axe Opo Afonja in Salvador; Balbino Daniel de Paulo, babalorisa of the He Axe Opo Aganju; the late professor Alexandre Leal Costa; Araba from Ife, supreme master of the Orunmila cult in Africa; Oluwe Ojo Awo, my master; babalawo Iroko, my serifa; the babalawo Babalola, Aworinde and Adesokan, who have told me many stories of If a ; Adefolalu Adeyanju, who has helped me collect the first field data and transcribe it; Fabio Araujo, who has checked the scientific names of the plants; Eliana Miranda, for the many readings of my text; Ayodele Fasoyin, for the Yoruba proof-reading; Dione Araujo; Olga Regis do Alaketo; Jose Flavio Pessoa de Barros; Jean Marc Bonneau; doctor
Decanio and Isabel for the cure performed on me with Brazilian ewe; professor Leticia Scarolino Scott Faria and professor Luciano Paganucci Queiroz, who helped me name the plants.
SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT To the Odebrecht Organization, who sponsored the publishing of this book.
INTRODUCTION
My interest in Yoruba botany was awakened as a consequence of my initiation as babalawo (father-of-secrets) in 1953 in Ketu, Republic of Benin. Because of that honour, I had to learn the secret utilization of plants for traditional medicinal preparations and practices. I learned that during their preparation, the names of the plants and ingredients are always associated with short incantations called ofo, which express their qualities in poetical terms. At the beginning of my research, it was the literary aspect of these o f o which attracted my attention. By 1967, I had already collected thousands of these formulas and thanks to Ulli Beier and Professor Akinjogbin's initiative, eighty of these o f o were published by the I f e University in a pamphlet called "Awon ewe Osanyin" (Yoruba medicinal leaves). The research was undertaken in West Africa, in a cultural universe established through oral traditions, where the values are different to those of a civilization based on written documents. In the first case, memory plays a fundamental role. The recipes were collected among the babalawo who, in the Yoruba community, perform divinations using a system called I f a . This is based on 256 signs called odu under which traditional medical practices are classified. These 256 odu I f a are double signs derived from sixteen single 1 ones and paired, either with themselves to form sixteen primary odu,2 or with one of the fifteen other single signs to form the 240 secondary ones 3 .
The first of these secondary odu results from the association of the two first single signs, ogbe and oyeku, and is called ogbe alamuulu, ogbe-owner-of-the-variety or ogbe-owner-of-diversity. During the preparation of a plant medicine, the babalawo establishes a link between it and the corresponding I f a sign, which he draws on the I f a divination board with the powder iyerosun4.
During my studies I observed the existence of verbal links between the name of the plant, the name of its expected medicinal and magical action and the odu, or sign of I f a under which it is classified by the babalawo. These verbal links are essential to help them memorize the knowledge transmitted by the oral traditions, believed to be the vehicle of ase (power). This means that they consider the written word to be entirely ineffective; in order to have an effect and in order to act, words have to be spoken.
Thus knowledge, verbally transmitted, is an essentially creative force, not just at the intellectual level but at the dynamic level of behavior. It is based more on reflexes than on reasoning, reflexes which originate from impulses that come from the cultural background of the Yoruba society. This knowledge is transmitted by babalawo to omo awo (from master to disciple) through short sentences based on the rhythm of breathing". Being constantly repeated, they become verbal stereotypes which, in turn, become easily accepted definitions. This method has been used in many other traditions, including those of the ancient Greeks, whose rules for composing poetry, according to Jean-Pierre Vernant 6 , required knowledge of diction techniques which were composed of pre-established rhymes. Similarly, ancient Chinese (Marcel Granet 7 ) literature was based on popular sayings, used when even the most original artists wanted to prove and explain, narrate or describe anything. This did not mean that they were thinking in a communal fashion, rather that the best way to express an idea was to insert it into an established formula borrowed from a well tested influential force. Later we shall see the importance of melody in the magical usage of the Yoruba language, where assonance and alliteration play a vital role.
CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM It was also important to learn the scientific names of the plants used, so I collected 3,529 specimens which were submitted to the Botanical Department of the Institut Francais d'Afrique Noire (IFAN) of Dakar, the Forestry Department of the Ibadan University,
Nigeria, Professor Portere from the Ethno-botanical Laboratory of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris and finally to Professor H.M. Burkhill of the Royal Botanical Gardens of Kew, in London. These 3,529 Yoruba names correspond to 1,086 scientific names, the reason for this difference being the fact that the Yoruba classificatory system is different to that used by western botanical institutes and Carl Von Linnaeus. But knowing the scientific names of these plants is not enough. A study must be made of the medicinal properties of these plants, which I am sure will give us very useful information about the value and virtues of the different plants used by the babalawo and herbalists of Yoruba land. The aim of this book, is to show what types of plants are used in Yoruba pharmacology and for what types of medicinal or magical formulae they are used. The medicinal virtues and values of a plant are not easy to find out, because rarely is a plant used on its own. In general, formulae are made up of three to six different plants. A plant may be compared to a letter of a word. On its own it is insignificant, but when joined with other letters it contributes to the meaning of the word. I have collected several thousand recipes, or formulae, which I have classified under six categories: 1. 237 formulae for medicinal remedies (oogun) which tally, to some extent, with similar ideas in western medicine. 2. 31 formulae for remedies relating to pregnancy and birth, (ibimo). 3. 33 formulae for "magical works" relating to the worshipping of Yoruba deities (orisa). 4. 91 formulae for "beneficent works" (awure). 5. 32 formulae for "evil works" (abilu). 6. 41 formulae for "protective works" (idaabobo).
It is not easy to classify these formulae under categories. If I take the example of an aforan, "to make people forget a case in court", I will find it is an awure (beneficent work) for one of the parties but an abilu (evil work) for the other. In this example, a certain leaf is required to "kill" the voice inside a witness and another leaf may be used to "open the mouth but not allow it to speak". This seems clearly an evil work (abilu), but if one realizes that this remedy is required by a person who needs to win a case in court and must neutralize the false testimony of an enemy, it may be classified among beneficent works (awure) or among those which render protection against evil works (idaabobo). It is also difficult to trace a line of demarcation between scientific knowledge and magic. This stems from the importance, in a traditional oral culture such as that of the Yoruba, given to the notion of an incantation (ofo) spoken during the preparation or application of the medicinal formulae (oogun). If western medicine prioritizes a plant's scientific name and its pharmacological characteristcs, then traditional societies prioritize the knowledge of ofo. Countless remedies from around the world were originally extracted from plants and later replaced by chemically reconstituted drugs, which had the same curative effects on the human body. But in traditional societies, it is the knowledge of the ofo (incantation) which is essential, as it contains the "power-to-alter" the formula's pharmacological effect. In those ofo transmitted orally, we find a definition of the action expected from each of the plants used in the formula. I have not personally made experiments to ascertain the efficacy of the action of these plants, as this work can be more properly undertaken by a specialists in pharmacology. There exist several plants which at first glance seem merely symbolic but which actually have therapeutic value. This is the case with two aquatic plants, oju oro (PISTIA STRATIOTES, Araceae) and
osibata (NYMPHEA LOTUS, Nymphaceae) which evoke in their ofo the idea of superiority and domination in the following sentences: Oju oro ni i leke omi, Oju. Oro is above the water Osi bata ni i leke odo. Osi bata is above the river This is followed by the pleasant mention: Fila ni i leke ori. The cap is above the head And a more flattering one: Ti Oba ni i leke ori. The King is above all of them. I believed for a long time that PISTIA STRATIOTES and NYMPHEA LOTUS were only used in those preparations for the symbolic reasons already alluded to, but I have recently found an article written by Professor Jean-Marie Pelt mentioning the sedative elements found in NYMPHEA LOTUS. At first glance, it is difficult to decide which parts of the recipes have ase, or power, and which parts can be tested experimentally. We must keep in mind that in the Yoruba language there is often a direct relationship between the name of the plant and the plant's qualities, and it would be important to know if the plants received their names because of their virtues or if it is because of their names that certain characteristics were attributed to them, like a kind of play-on-words, or ofo.
These play-on-words, or incantations, have an enormous importance in those civilizations with a strong oral tradition, where they are spoken in a solemn traditional manner. I believe that they can also be considered as definitions. The incantations are often based on a particular reasoning being used for a particular situation or remedy. They also serve as evidence of the continuity in the traditional archive of data transmitted from one generation of babalawo to the next. This ancient tradition expresses the philosophy of Yoruba culture and is part of the "common sense" of Yoruba people. It is obviously important to know if the interpretation corresponds to the reality, and if the qualities ascribed to these herbs are based on their "true" virtues, but I have to leave much of this study to other specialists. My part has been restricted to the cataloguing of the leaves used by the babalawo and herbalist doctors, and the description of the preparation of the various ingredients, together with the texts of the incantations spoken during their preparation. In those incantations the names of the plants are accompanied by two or three stanzas describing their specific qualities. It is vital to realize that a plant can acquire a variety of attributes dependent upon its relationship with another plant. Thus, a plant ascribed a virtue with one set, will be ascribed a completely different one with another set. It will all depend on the final preparation and the circumstances surrounding its use, not forgetting the relevant incantation. I have to stress the importance of a new attitude to pharmacology here. In the western tradition it is often presumed that there has to be one identifiable chemical to produce a given effect. Little thought has been given to the possible effects arising from the complex chemistry that results from the combination of different chemicals. In spite of the many different qualities ascribed to plants, there is sometimes an
underlying structure in their symbolism, as is shown in the four plants called awon ako ewe merin, considered to have masculine attributes due to their power: ewe ina (U RERA MANII , Urticaceaej, ewe aaragba (B RIDELIA ATROVIRIDI , Euphorbiaceae), ewe esisi funfun (T RAGIA BEN THAMII , Euphorbiaceae), ewe oloyin (S TRIGA ASIATICA , Scrophulariaceae). There are four other plants which have feminine attributes, called ewe ero due to their soothing qualities: ewe odundun (K ALANCHOE CRENATA , Crassulaceae), ewe tete (A MARANTHUS HYBRIDUS subsp. INCURVATUS , Amaranthaceae), ewe rinrin (P EPEROMIA PELLUCI DA , Piperaceae), ewe ikupero (D ICHROCEPHALA INTEGRIFOLIA , Compositae).
