du Chaillu,
chap, xxvi.) is called by the Mpongwe "Soke," and serves only,
like that of the Dahomans and the Ashantis (Bowdich, 364) for
dancing and merriment. The South American Maraca was the sole
object of worship known to the Tupi or Brazilian "Indians."
[FN#13]
The beliefs and superstitions popularly attributed to the Mpongwe
are these. They are not without that which we call a First Cause,
and they name it Anyambia, which missionary philologists consider
a contraction of Aninla, spirit (?), and Mbia, good. M. du
Chaillu everywhere confounds Anyambia, or, as he writes the word,
"Aniambie," with Inyemba, a witch, to bewitch being "punga
inyemba." Mr. W. Winwood Reade seems to make Anyambia a
mysterious word, as was Jehovah after the date of the Moabite
stone. Like the Brahm of the Hindus, the god of Epicurus and
Confucius, and the Akarana-Zaman or Endless Time of the Guebres,
Anyambia is a vague being, a vox et praeterea nihil, without
personality, too high and too remote for interference in human
affairs, therefore not addressed in prayer, never represented by
the human form, never lodged in temples.
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