Encyclopedia of the Yoruba , livre ebook

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE
YOR B
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE
YOR B

EDITED BY
T Y N F L L and
AK NT ND AK NY M
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2016 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Falola, Toyin, editor. | Ak ny m , Ak nt nd , editor.
Title: Encyclopedia of the Yoruba / edited by Toyin Falola and Akintunde Akinyemi.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, [2016] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016010695 | ISBN 9780253021335 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253021441 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH : Yoruba (African people)-History-Encyclopedias. | Yoruba (African people)-Civilization-Encyclopedias. | Yoruba (African people)-Social life and customs-Encyclopedias.
Classification: LCC DT 474.6. Y 67 E 53 2016 | DDC 909/ .0496333003-dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016010695
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
Samuel j y Crowther (1809-1891), Samuel Johnson (1846-1901), Henry Carr (1863-1945), and Ad b y Babal l (1926-2008), in memoriam
A k n gb n l , k a t n m a w gb r de;
B ni a k n k n l , k a t n m a fi w k im .
Only the promise of a greater fortune should tempt one to neglect what one already has.
-Yor b proverb
CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
List of Entries
Entries A to Z
List of Contributors
Index
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This single volume of Encyclopedia of the Yor b is the very first to present materials on the Yor b in West Africa and in the African Diaspora, emphasizing the peculiarities, features, and commonalities of the people. An encyclopedia is not a dictionary, but a series of short essays, each concerned with defining a single item of information. Consequently, this encyclopedia is designed to have an integral structure, and the pieces of information are chosen to fit together so as to form a single coherent body of knowledge.
The encyclopedia comprises 285 short articles. Of these, 78 are approximately 1,000 words; 88 of them, 750 words; and 119 of them, 500 words. Many of the entries are designed to cover different aspects of the Yor b , including their history, geography and demography, language and linguistics, philosophy, religion, art, culture, literature, selected historical figures and authors, the Diaspora, among many others. Also, the relevance and impact of contexts such as electronic and print media, urban settings, and contemporary life in general are considered in various entries. Given the limitation of space, the volume is not absolutely comprehensive, but it is representative of the people. For now, we have succeeded in providing valuable information about the Yor b people in a single volume.
We chose the authors from our experience and knowledge of their abilities and promise. This careful selection has been a long and difficult task-indeed, the most difficult of any leading to the publication of the work. Our end result brings together scholars whose expertise goes back several years as well as the best minds of the upcoming generation. We have tried to balance female and male authors wherever possible, as well as authors from Africa, Europe, North America, and the remainder of the world, although their origins are no longer as relevant in today s global world as they used to be.
A major strength of this encyclopedia is the breadth of accomplished contributors. Nearly one-third of the scholars represented in the volume are Yor b , and more than one-half of them currently teach in Africa. Approximately one-half of the contributors teach in the United States, but a fairly large number of contributors also live in Europe and the Americas. In addition to geographical breadth, the volume features scholars from many different disciplines and backgrounds. The diversity in contributors identities and fields of scholarship reflects the fact that Yor b is not an isolated and disregarded subject in scholarship but an integral part of a single world, and that there is but one image of Yor b that today comes from those both within Africa and outside of Africa.
Given the range and scope of the 285 entries in this encyclopedia, several tools have been employed to ensure easy navigation of the volume and access to essential information. These include an alphabetical list of all entries, thematic groupings of a large number of entries, a comprehensive index, an accompanying map highlighting major dialect groups, and extensive use of cross-references at the end of nearly every entry.
Creating an encyclopedia is an exhilarating yet exasperating project that involves many people. First, we acknowledge those colleagues who guided us and those friends who aided us in the current endeavor. In a very real sense, we thank all of our contributors not only for their excellent entries but also for their support and patience as we developed the project. The 118 authors have done so much difficult and taxing work, often at inconvenient times in their own schedules. They have truly been our partners and colleagues. We wish also to thank project staff and others at the publisher s headquarters, especially Dee Mortensen and the immense team of copy editors and researchers, proofreaders, designers, indexers, typesetters, and others working behind the scenes and invisible to us as editors.
T y n F l l and Ak nt nd Ak ny m
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE
YOR B
INTRODUCTION
In the interest of non-Yor b speakers and nonacademic readers of this encyclopedia, we highlight in the following sections some of the contexts that can guide the use of this book.
ORTHOGRAPHY AND PRONUNCIATION
It is important that readers be familiar with the orthographic guide-an English comparison, a mere approximation of the Yor b sounds-that we used in preparing this encyclopedia. Hopefully, this will assist users of the encyclopedia, most especially our non-Yor b readers, in the pronunciation of the cultural nuggets herein.
Consonants
Consonants sounds are approximately similar in pronunciation in both Yor b and English, except the following:
gb
pronounced together with emphasis on the b to produce a sound like a thud-for example, gbogbo and gb gb
p
pronounced as kp together to produce a forceful p sound as in p t p t

pronounced like the sh in the English word should -for example, r
y
pronounced like a y in the English word you -for example, Yor b
The following letters or sounds of the English alphabet, however, are absent in the language: c, q, v, x, z .
Vowels
There are two types of vowels in Yor b : nonnasalized (oral) and nasalized vowels. The nonnasalized (oral) vowels are written as a, e, , i, o, , u .
a
pronounced like the a in apple -for example, and ad
e
pronounced like the a in age -for example, d and ew

pronounced like the e in egg -for example, gb and j
i
pronounced like the e in evening -for example, il and l
o
pronounced like the o in old -for example, od and g

pronounced like the aw in awe or the o in dog -for example, m and d
u
pronounced like the u in full -for example, Yor b and ib d
Nasalized vowels are produced by adding an n to an oral vowel symbol (e.g., an, n, in, n, un ), except where such a symbol is preceded by m or n (e.g., m child, or n path ).
The syllabic structure in Yor b language consists of either a vowel, such as a (we) and i in il (house); a consonant followed by a vowel, such as mu (drink) and yo, r , and b in Yor b ; or a syllabic nasal, such as in l (She [or he] is going). Consequently, any word in Yor b having more than one syllable may be described in terms of the combination of the types of syllable above, for example, r = -r - , a lesser god or deity (vowel, consonant + vowel, consonant + vowel), and = - , culture and/or tradition (vowel, consonant + vowel). Each syllable in Yor b bears one of the three tones in the language: high, acute ( ); low, grave ( ); or mid (usually left unmarked).
The following is a list of style rules that we adopted for Yor b and other non-English words: (1) capital letters but no italics for all proper nouns, including, but not limited to, personal names, names of cities, societies, and associations or organizations, such as Yor b , W l oy nk , Od duw , g n, b d n, gb k y , and gb gb T n; (2) italics and tone marks (but no capital letters) for titles that are not part of proper nouns, such as r , ba l , fin , and ba ; (3) italics and tone marks without quotation marks for shorter samples of Yor b texts embedded in the body of an entry; and (4) Yor b text or data longer than fifty words is italicized, tone marked, and indented.
THE LANGUAGE AND ITS DIALECT GROUPS
The Yor b , numbering more than thirty million, are the second-largest language group in Nigeria (after Hausa) and one of the most populous and be