PANGOLIN ORACLES 3. Music is an important part of the divination technique. Consulting the oracle means interpreting the movements of the pangolin; however, it quite often rolls itself up and makes no movement at all. Kingdon mentions that although the pangolin has a poor sense of hearing, it reacts quickly to vibrations and sound “and will start or roll up at any sudden noise” (1971: 372). 4. Baumann (1950: 195) unfortunately calls the pangolin by the name of the anteater native to South America. 5. According to Baumann, the belief that certain wild animals have a “power of revenge,” which must be feared when they are killed, is widespread in Africa, and he uses the Bantu word nyama to refer to it. This word has both the material meaning of meat and the spiritual meaning of a kind of “body soul” (1950: 195 ff, 204). 6. Protection from lions through the wearing of a pangolin scale or through its smoke is also mentioned in respect to the Matengo (personal communication Marbod Kinunda 2007), Mwera (Ammann 1955: 46), Acholi (Kingdon 1971: 368) and Karamajong (Watson 1948: 207). 7. Matengo (personal communication Marbod Kinunda 2007). 8. Also recorded among the Bembe, south of the Lega (Gossiaux 2000: 192). 9. Von Luschan (1919: 165) speaks erroneously of a shirt of feathers. 10. The mention of scales shows that thakadu does not mean the “antbear” as Eiselen translates but the pangolin. 11. There are two brass stools, which resemble each other, in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin (von Luschan 1919 I. 479ff; Plankensteiner 2007: 444; Tunis 1981: 1ff, fi gs. 4, 18). Most scholars are of the opinion that the richly decorated object was made in Portugal or England in the eighteenth century as a copy of a sixteenth-century African model. 12. The ground pangolin can easily be caught with a snare trap (Mohr 1961: 69). The zoologist Lang (1956: 225−230) observed a pangolin being pulled out of a burrow in the ground by means of a rope around its leg. REFERENCES Ammann, Joachim, OSB, 1933 (1955 edition): “Sitten und Gebräuche der Wamwera.” Manuscript, Ndanda, Tanzania. Published in: Maria Kecskési (ed.) 2012: 54f, Die Mwera in Südost-Tansania: Ihre Lebensweise und Kultur um 1920 nach Joachim Ammann OSB und Meinulf Küsters OSB mit Fotografi en von Nikolaus von Holzen OSB. Munich. Baumann, Hermann, 1950: “Nyama, die Rachemacht. Über einige mana-artige Vorstellungen in Afrika.” In: Paideuma 4: 190−230. Wiesbaden. Ben-Amos, Paula, 1976: “Men and Animals in Benin Art.” In: Man vol. 11 (2), 243−252. London. 103 FIG. 26 (left): Crest mask, sogoni kun. Bamana, Bamako region, Mali. Before 1931. Collected during the Dakar-Djibouti Expedition, 1931. Wood, pigment. H: 45 cm. Musée du Quai Branly, inv. 71.1931.74.936. FIG. 27 (right): Drawing of animal elements as seen in fi g. 26 with antelope horns, a pangolin, and an aardvark. Analysis after Zahan 1980.
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