Bohannan, Paul. “Concepts of Time among the Tiv of Nigeria.” Myth And Cosmos: Readings In Mythology And Symbolism. Ed. John Middleton. American Museum Sourcebooks In Anthropology. Garden City, NY: Natural History P (1967) 315-329.

(excerpted by Clifford Stetner)

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I

There are at least three nouns (shighen, dzum, icin) [n2 I have used the regular orthography, devised by the Dutch Reform Church Mission, used by literate Tiv. The consonant written gh is a velar fricative, voiced in all except the final position; c is English ch; other con­sonants have approximately their English value; ó is the open o, British "hot" or American "taught"; all other vowels have approximately Italian values.] which mean "occasion." However, slight differences are apparent in their contexts of usage: only icin can be counted: one time, two times, etc., are icin i mom, acin a har, etc. Only shighen can be used in the sense of "Now is the time" (shighen kuma er). Although dzum applies to longer intervals from the referent action than the other two, all three of these words are used for "at that time."

All are used primarily in clauses which would be, in English, "when" clauses: "When he came" (dzum u a ve . . .) etc. It should be stressed that these "when" words remain nouns in such contexts. I believe that the adverbial notion "when" is missing in Tiv (though its place is adequately catered for by the "occasion" words). It is the "occasion" words which introduce an event with which another event is to be correlated.

II

Time Indication by Natural Phenomena

When it is necessary to place an incident in time, as it often is, Tiv do so by referring it to a natural or a social activity or con­dition, using solar, lunar, seasonal, agricultural, meteorological or other events. Tiv ritual is not associated with a calendar, and, for this reason ritual events are not usable as time indicators as they are in many societies.

Among Tiv, time is indicated by a direct association of two events. "He came the day I left" is an association of two events to indicate time; "I was married in the year we were fighting the “so-and-so" is another; "We will leave when the sun is there" (pointing to a position in the sky) is yet another.

Tiv use the same word for sun (iyange) and for the period between sunrise and sunrise. Though there are other words to describe other aspects of the sun—ou, for example, means "the sun" when one is discussing the heat of the sun—there is no other word for the period of a day and a succeeding night. Thus, a day is a "sun."

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The most common method of time indication during the day is to point to the position in the sky which the sun will occupy at the time under consideration. There are, however, several parts of the day which have names, which may be used with or without the pointing gesture. There are words for dawn [n3 Sev, usually used in the full idea "dawn is breaking" (sev mbu aven), which also means, in narrative, "the next day."] and for early morning [n4 Pepe. If the word is repeated pepepepe (sometimes accompanied by a gesture with the fingers indicating smallness) it means "very early in the morning" and includes dawn. The more times the word is repeated, the earlier the time referred to.] and for late morning [n5 Nomyange—male sun. This is occasionally divided into "little male sun" and "big male sun"—centering about 9 o'clock and 11 o'clock respectively. “Mtan”—“the shining" may also be used with "big" and "small" to indi­cate the same times.]. There is a word (tetan) for indicating the heat of the day, when the sun is more or less directly overhead. This word, as antonym to night (tugh), also means "daylight" and by extension, "not connected with witchcraft," because witches operate at night. Ikiye is the period from about 4:30 to sunset.

Tiv are much less specific about time during the night. The time between dusk and about 10 o'clock is—called "sitting together" (teman imongo). After that follows "the middle of the night" (helato tugh), which overlaps with the "time of the first sleep" (icin i mnya mom); "the time of the second sleep" (acin a mnya ahar) is about 3 AM or a bit later. The pre-dawn breeze (kiishi) gives its name to the period just before dawn.

Months can be counted and referred to by the Tiv word uwer which applies both to the moon and to the period between one new moon and the next. "The moon comes out" (uwel u due) means both the time between the new moon and full moon, and also the new moon itself. However, if Tiv point to the sky with the words, "When the moon comes out here" (uwel u duwe hen), they are referring to the date of the lunar month when the moon will be in that position at dusk. "The dark of the moon" (uwel u ime) is a time of quiet nights; people are most likely to catch cold or to be bewitched at this time of month, Tiv say.

Though administrators, missionaries, and literate Tiv translate the English word "month" by the Tiv word "moon" (uwer), and use transliterations of the English month names, Tiv themselves have no lunar month names.

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Moons are sometimes counted by pregnant women to deter­mine their stage of pregnancy. According to them, the period of human gestation for a male child is nine moons and for a female child eight moons. Some women make marks on their hut walls to indicate the passage of the moons. The marks seldom tally with the event: that they do not do so is put down to human er­ror—either the woman made two marks one month, or forgot one or more months. The discrepancy does not affect the belief.

Tiv refer to years by counting "dry seasons" (inyom). There are two distinct seasons in Tivland: the dry season lasting from November to April, and the wet season extending from May to October. The wet season as a whole is called jam, which is also the more specific name for two periods within it, but wet seasons are not counted for the purpose of enumerating years.

Both the wet and dry seasons are subdivided for purposes of reference. In April, during the cyclones which precede the re­turn of the rains, there is a period of varying length which Tiv call "stripes of dry and wet season" (karegh u nyom, karegh u jam). The comparable period which precedes the dry season is called the same thing, with the order reversed (stripes of wet and dry season). These seasons also have other names: that before the wet season is sometimes called "the heat of the body" (icen iyologh) while that before the dry season is sometimes called "the approach (lit. enlightening) of the dry season" (wanger nyom).

The wet season (jam) is itself divided into five "seasons": "new rain" (wulahe) in May, "planting (guinea com)" (tswagher) [n6 Both the operation and the time of year are called kpilin ivor in northwestern Tivland.] in June and early July, the jam itself in July, some­times running into early August. At this time of year there is often a break in the rains called the "little dry" by the British­. Tiv call it "mid-jam" (atoato jam), after which the "jam returns" (jam hide) during September and the first part of October (the wettest time of the year).

319

The dry season is divided by different harmattans, the dust­ bearing northerly wind from the desert. The first appearance of the harmattan haze and wind, about the first of December, is called "the harmattan which dries the okra" (hil u kelen atur): The next is the "harmattan of the broken calabash” (hir u abebejondugh) and the third and longest, from early February stretching well into March, is the "grand harmattan" (hil u vesen). Since the harmattan winds and dust do come and go, but are not divided neatly into three every year; There is always disagreement about the "correct" term for the current harmattan. Furthermore, the order of names varies in different areas and some people will list by name as many as five or six various harmattans.

Though seasons are not sharply defined, each does have its climatological peculiarity. Tswagher, for example, is a time of cloudy and turbulent skies, but there is little rain. So long as this sort of weather is to be found, and the millet is not yet ripe, it is said to be tswagher. As soon as the millet is harvested, and the cloudy weather has given way to rains, it is jam. If one of these conditions has occurred but not the other, it may be either tswagher or jam. It does not really matter to Tiv where one ends and the next begins; no social or ritual events depend upon it.

Tiv make no correlations between these seasons and "moons”—I have asked specifically and exhaustively about this point.

Agricultural activities are used to designate portions of the year; although they are, of course, roughly correlated with 'sea­sons, they are to Tiv more precise than seasons. "The time for clearing fields" means September-October in the south, Decem­ber in the northwest and in the east: the differences are due to ecological conditions. "The time for planting millet" is about April in all areas.

Tiv "seasons" are determined as much by agricultural activities as by climatological changes. Instead of saying, "We cut the guinea com when the first harmattan comes," as we would do in English, Tiv just as often say, "The first harmattan comes when we cut the guinea com." This reversibility is indicative of the fact that neither event is considered primary or basic to the other. Instead of an implied causal relationship, there is mere associa­tion of two events.

Besides agricultural activities, the cycle of crop rotations and fallow periods—covering four or five years—are occasionally used

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as time indicators for slightly longer periods. "That happened just before we cleared the field now in beniseed" indicates a period approximately two and a half years ago (in the south—the time varies, of course, with the different farming practices in different areas).

Time Indication by Social Phenomena

Tiv, particularly those in the central and southern areas, recog­nize a five-day cycle of days, each day of which is named after a market. Europeans in the area call this period a "market week," though Tiv do not have any word for the five-day period except the word "market" (kasóa, from Hausa, kásua).

Most Tiv markets are held every five days [n7 Some few are held every ten days. Protestant missions have established Saturday markets in areas immediately under their influence, and in the northeast, at least, other markets have been put into the seven-day cycle, which runs concurrently with a five-day cycle.]. These markets are named for their founder or for the present-day market master (tor kasoa) or for the name of the lineage in whose territory they are located, or sometimes for streams or hills nearby. Many markets have two, or even three, names. These markets, in turn, give their names to the days on which they are held. Tiv have no names for the days of the five-day cycle other than the names of particular markets [n8 Udam, to the south of Tiv, have day names which are sometimes applied to markets.]. Since each market is held every five days, the day names form a repeating series of five. People generally refer to the days by the names of those markets which are nearest to their homes, and therefore most frequented. This habit gives rise to changes in day names within relatively short distances. A day name will, of course, be understood in many adjacent areas where it is not used. An example will illustrate this point:

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"The day of Iyon market" (iyange Iyon) is used in the area of Iyon itself, and some six miles to the west, in MbaDuku; at no greater distance to the northwest, however, the same day is called "the day of Pev market" although everyone in that area knows that Iyon and Pev markets are held on the same day and has no difficulty if a stranger uses the other term. The same day, at Vande Ikya, is called "the day of Sharwan market" or "Sharwan day." People of this area know both the other nearby markets held on that day, but use their names only when travelling in the area where they are in general use. If one were to continue north another few miles, people would be hazy as to exactly which day Iyon market is held. It is considered polite, when travelling in Tivland, to use the day names in current use in the locality where the traveller finds himself. If he does not know the customary day name, he will use another, often adding that he does not know if that is correct local usage; the local people will then set him right. Several times I have been reprimanded in Iyon for using the day names of the Eastern MbaDuku market cycle; they are perfectly well understood, but people say, "You are here now; you must call the days as we do."

The range within which the name of a market is commonly used as a day name is roughly proportional to the size of the market. Atsar and Adikpo markets are both very large ones, with the result that people from large areas attend them, and days take their names from these markets over a larger area than, say, Angur or Pev markets, both of which are quite small.

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Tiv not only make appointments and time references within the terms of these market cycles, they count them as well. "I have been here three markets" means that the local market has been held three times since the speaker's arrival—from eleven to fifteen days.

All Tiv know that Europeans use a seven-day week. Their translations for day names are "day of beginning work" (iyange i hiin tom) for Monday, "second day of work" (tom yange a har), etc. Saturday is usually Saadi, and weeks are sometimes counted by counting Saturdays. Sunday (Lahadi) is however the more usual day to be counted for "weeks," because it is of somewhat greater importance for most Tiv. Tiv say that in the past they did not have a day of rest, but since the Europeans first showed them the custom, it is widely observed [n9 Tiv had almost undoubtedly heard of a day of rest before European penetration—their southern neighbors, the Udam, have one day of their five-day market week in which they do no work; Hausa observe Friday, the Muslim sabbath, in a rough and ready sort of way.]. Sunday is important nowa­days, having been introduced as the European day of rest, and become associated with beer drinking. The best Tiv beer takes seven days to brew, and though beer may of course be set and drunk on any day, both operations are commonly done on Sunday. In the northwest, where there are very few markets, the days of the seven-day week are often called by the names of processes in the brewing week, the "day for drinking" (iyange i vihin) generally being Sunday. The "day for drinking" may, how­ever, change with every new batch of beer.

Weeks are counted by some Tiv by counting "worships" (adua). This is the Hausa word for Muslim prayer which has been adopted by Christian missionaries for church services. The word is today generally known, and is used to indicate both Christian church services and the week.

There are several points of special importance in the material so far presented. Tiv refer to time by direct association of two events, one of which is likely to be, but need not be, of a mete­orological or social nature, and a part of a cycle or a repeated series. Moreover, Tiv indicate lapse of time either by indicating the span of time commensurate with the period between two natural or social events in a well-known series, or—more com­monly—by counting repetitive natural or social events.

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Suns, moons, and dry seasons—days, months, and years—as well as markets and weeks: in each case reference is to a recur­rent natural or social phenomenon which can be counted. That this is a matter of counting is of special importance.

Although there are various named periods during the day, and various named seasons during the year, there is no word which means a subdivision of a day, and there is no word for "season." There is no notion of periods of the day which can be counted: nothing of which you can say that there are four or five between dawn and dusk. Likewise, it is impossible to say that there are four or five "seasons" or "sub-seasons" during the wet season, for there is no generalized thing in the Tiv idea which can be counted.

For Tiv, time is divided by natural and social events into dif­ferent sorts of periods, but since the events often belong to dif­ferent logical series, there is little attempt to correlate the differ­ent sorts of division of time. Tiv make no attempt to correlate moons with markets or either with agricultural activities, or sea­sons. If one asks how many "moons" there are in a year, the answer varies between ten and eighteen; if one asks the number of markets in a moon, the answer varies between three and eight; if the number of days in a moon, between ten and fifty. Tiv could, of course, observe these matters accurately if they chose to do so. We must assume, on the basis of this evidence, that they have no occasion for doing so.

There are other situations in which, on the surface, Tiv doctrine seems actually to contradict our notions of time. Age-sets (kwagh) are loosely organized when their members are about twenty years old. Tiv tell the investigator that all the members of an age-set were born in the same year. The ordinary European interpretation of this statement (at least, it was mine) is that an age-set is formed every year. However, when by careful study one determines that in point of fact a new age-set is formed about every three years, and points this fact out to Tiv, adding that if a new one were formed every year there would be more of them, most Tiv will say that you are quite right: nevertheless, they were born in the same year as all the other men of their age-set. The statement must be interpreted equivocally, referring to the na­ture of the relationship between age-mates, not as referring di­rectly to time. Tiv do not make a correlation "one age-set: one year" just because everyone in the same age-set was "born in the same year."

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The two statements have reference to different as­pects of the social life. So far as I am aware, Tiv do not use age-­sets for purposes of time correlation or time reference as some societies in East Africa are said to do.

III

Tiv indicate most periods of time which exceed four or five years in length, but which are still contained within the life expectancy of a single man, by reference to the life-cycle of the individual. Again, time is indicated by direct correlation of two events: "That market hadn't yet moved when my eldest son was born, for I bought camwood there to rub on him" is made specific by the fact that one can see the son and so get some idea of the time involved. "The Europeans came after I had been circumcized, but before I married" is a typical expression of time indication over such a longer period of time.

Except in response to an ethnographer's "when" questions, the purpose of such sentences is not to indicate specific time, but to indicate lapse of time and more often to indicate sequence and relative duration by reference to a culturally accepted series of social events or to common human factors such as the rate of growth and maturation of the human being.

Furthermore, the mere fact that two events occurred within the lifetime of a single man is not per se any indication that we can accept his correlation of the two events, in what we would call a time milieu, as accurate. Most people can, I should judge, remem­ber the order of several related events in a single series of events, even though none or not all of them are repetitive. That is, one can remember the series of events leading to one's marriage in the correct order; one can remember the events which led to an election, also in the correct order. The question is: can these two logically unrelated series of events, if they took place simul­taneously, be accurately interdigitated from memory after a lapse of several years, in the absence of a formulated, calibrated time dimension? This is a problem for experimental psychologists—­one of which they are not unaware, but one on which they seem not yet to have worked sufficiently. It lies, of course, at the basis of the ethnologist's problem of historical reconstruction.

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Except for occasional references to dead parents, grandparents or friends, in which time is usually not in any wise important, Tiv refer to periods of time longer than a single life-span, or further removed than a single life-span, in only two contexts: that of genealogy and that of the myths and legends of migration, which include myths of origin of social traits and cultural items. Gene­alogies, intrinsically, bear their own time elements; myths and legends of migration and culture origins are timeless.

From the point of view of Tiv, there is comparatively little to say about such statements. Since, however, there is some likeli­hood that Tiv statements of this sort will be misunderstood by Europeans—since, in fact, some writers on the Tiv have misunder­stood and mistranslated them—it is just as well to look more carefully into their content.

Tiv believe that their genealogies are true (vough). It is im­portant in investigating Tiv time ideas, however, to realize that the operative "true" correlation of genealogical depth lies with Tiv political structure rather than with biologically countable generations of ancestors (L. Bohannan 1952): with social space instead of with time of any sort. That in genealogies the genera­tions are not primarily time notions is demonstrated by the recent addition of a new ancestor—Adam. In the same way that ances­tors such as Ishon and Takuluku were postulated prior to "Tiv," the ancestor (but never in so systematic a way as the descend­ants of "Tiv"), in order to place the neighboring peoples in a genealogical relationship with themselves, so when Tiv encoun­tered Europeans and heard the creation story, they immediately accepted "Adám and Ife" as part of their cosmic doctrine, and thus were enabled to include Europeans, as a lineage, in the over-all lineage brotherhood of the human race. We have on several occasions been asked by ex-soldiers whether the Japa­nese, Burmese, and Indians are subordinate lineages of the Euro­peans, and if not how they fit in.

It is obvious that in recognizing Adam, Tiv have incidentally added a generation to their social time. This is incidental, and I believe irrelevant to them. The reason that the Adam story was accepted so quickly was that it allowed them to account for formerly unknown men and social groups, hence increasing their spatial horizons, in a familiar idiom.

Yet, intrinsically, an increase of time is concomitant with an increase in space. Tiv tell an investigator that they are more numerous today than they were in the past.

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If one challenges the statement that there were fewer people long ago, Tiv cite lineage genealogies to prove that you are wrong. We collected informa­tion which enables us to show how Tiv genealogies "collapse" (L. Bohannan 1952). It is a basic Tiv notion that, unless evil forces are at work, a child generation is larger than its parent generation. That Tiv say they increase with the passage of gen­erations is primarily a cosmographical notion, and its spatial as­pect is of vastly greater importance than its temporal aspect.

Tiv say that since they increase with the passage of time (and since every Tiv has a right to sufficient farmland in the territory of his minimal agnatic segment) the amount of territory which they occupy also increases.

None of these three ideas—increase of area, passage of genera­tions, and population increase—is independent. Each is validated by the other two. A man knows that an event happened long ago because there was a different spatial distribution than is to be found at present and because "we were few." "We were few" ob­viously because of the fact that the different spatial distribution is said to have existed and because it was long ago. A different spatial distribution existed because "we were few" and because it was long ago. This is a circular argument from which there is no escape.

The more important fact, however, is that beyond a generation or two, neither a particular spatial distribution nor a specific event in the myths and legends of migration and cultural origins is commonly connected with a specific ancestor in the lineage genealogies. Though a few Tiv elders may make an occasional connection, there is certainly no general agreement, and the most amazing fact is that the "characters" in the myths and legends are not attached to a specific ancestor at a specific point in the genealogies.

It is difficult to realize why Tiv do not associate genealogies with myths and legends (for genealogies would be their only way of setting the mythical and legendary events in time) until we understand that the events and incidents in the legends and myths are told in explanation of social process, not as "history." The most common incidents all cluster about a standard situation which arises time and again in the dynamic of Tiv social process: particularly fission and fusion of lineage territories, which are the modal points in Tiv political process.

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As one collects more and more versions of the myths and legends in different parts of the country, it becomes evident that there are a relatively few stock incidents which can be applied to any instance of the social proc­ess to be illustrated. It is, of course, as impossible to prove that these incidents did not occur as to prove that they did. It can be stated with confidence, however, that they are applied to many different instances and that they are seldom correlated with spe­cific persons in the genealogies.

The timelessness of the myths and legends is even more ap­parent when one realizes that a lineage name is the plural form of the given name of its apical ancestor. The grammatical num­ber, here, is not so important as it would be in English; Tiv jump back and forth from singular to plural forms in these con­texts with an ease and agility which at first bewilders the Euro­pean mind which is used to precision in these matters. In recount­ing the adventures of a lineage, Tiv do not distinguish between the founder of a lineage and his group of descendants: it is impossible for them to tell an investigator whether a certain inci­dent happened to "Kpar" (the man) or "Kparev" (the lineage made up of his descendants). Most will say, if pushed, that it does not matter—how could they know, since they were not there?

"Time" associations beyond the grandparents of living adults are utterly vague. Instead of referring an incident to a genealogy to pin down its time element, Tiv are content to say that it was "long ago" (ngise)—the same term with which they begin their animal folk tales. Although "long ago" can, in some contexts, mean day before yesterday, or even an hour past, most com­monly it has no specific time referent at all, in the sense that we are accustomed to think of it. Its purpose is not so much to indi­cate that something happened long ago, as to indicate either that it is established and traditional, or else that it is outside the im­mediate purview.

The important point here is that Tiv, by and large, do not even correlate events over a period of time beyond a generation or two. There is only a dim "long ago" (ngise) which can be increased by saying "long long ago" (ngise ngise)—the more times you say the word, the longer ago or further removed it was. "Long ago" was filled with events and with people, but they are—from the standpoint of time reference—of much the same quality as the events which it is assumed will take place in future (sha hemen, literally "in front").

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Tiv have not elicited the time element implicit in their lineage and political structure any more than they have elicited "time" from the course of a human life, the recurrence of the phases of the moon or of five-day markets. Time is implicit in Tiv thought and speech, but it is not a category of it [n10 Evans-Pritchard has pointed out that to Nuer, the notion we call "time" is not a separate idea, but an integral part of social activities and ecological and meteorological phenomena (E. E. Evans-Pritchard 1940: 104-8).].

IV

We in Western Europe have elicited an idea, or a medium, which we call "time"—or better, "chronology—and have calibrated it into a standard gauge against which we associate single events or a series of events. The presence of such a time gauge among our cultural apparatus means that in addition to time indication and time-lapse indication, we measure time.

A minute and a day are qualitatively as well as quantitatively different: the difference is that between measuring and counting. Days are natural events and can be counted without a special apparatus; minutes and hours are artificial events, if they be events at all, and can be counted only with the aid of special apparatus. Those Tiv who are acquainted with the idea of "hours" from Europeans seem to have changed the idea somewhat: Tiv servants and clerks use the word ahwa for "hour." Besides its obvious similarity to the English word, this is a plural form of ihwa, which means "mark" or "tally." One o'clock is "one mark" and six o'clock means "six marks." They are, in fact, counting the marks on a watch, I believe quite unaware that the watch is merely a device for counting standardized symbols for artificial units of time.

Thus, although Tiv indicate time by direct association of two events, and though they count recurrent natural units such as days, markets, moons, and dry seasons, they do not measure time. Because of the fact that they do not, by and large (and certainly not with any consensus) associate legendary incidents with genealogical ancestors

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(which supply the only "system" which has immanent in it some sort of "natural time" to which long-period reference could be made), there is no device for indicating time in the distant past with any greater accuracy than in the future.

PUBLISHED FOR THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY