Yoruba & Diaspora · English · 1910
Nigerian Studies, or The Religious and Political System of the Yoruba
R. E. Dennett
The fullest of the three early English accounts, and the only one giving Eshu and Orunmila chapters of their own rather than paragraphs. Dennett records the making of the body by Obatala and the breathing of life into it by Olodumare as two separate acts by two separate powers, which is the distinction that keeps Olodumare from being read as a craftsman god. He worked from the ground and reports what he was told at Ife, including where his informants contradicted each other.
Read Nigerian Studies, or The Religious and Political System of the Yoruba in full at the linked edition →What this text attests · 7
| Name here | Rank given | # | Powers described |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | Given a chapter to himself, which none of the other early English accounts do. | |
| — | — | The maker of the body — the fingers, the eyes, the mouth, the ears — praised by his worshippers as the Oba who makes the eyes, mouth, ears, nose and skull to be, twenty-one. | |
| — | — | Given a chapter with Oshowsi and the hunter, which is where Dennett places him — an occupation before a pantheon. | |
| — | — | The one who breathes into the body Obatala has finished, so that it becomes a living being. Two powers and two acts, kept apart: the modelling is not the animating, and the corpus files them separately because Dennett's informants did. | |
| — | — | Named under his own name rather than as Ifa, and attached to the stone pillars at Ife — where Dennett records that his guides and the Oni disagreed about which pillar was whose, the Oni calling the standing one the Opa Oranyan. An informant contradicting the ethnographer, left in. | |
| — | — | Named through the chapters on Aganju and Yemoja and their offspring. | |
| — | — | Carried throughout, and treated alongside Jakuta and the four winds rather than as a king made god. |
