Rwandan Kingship as a Religious Disciplining Process

Abstract What is the historical value of Gakaniisha’s collection of twenty tales that cover four centuries of dynastic wars in Rwanda? A method is proposed to reveal a cultural structure in the narration of successive epochs. A unique political model comes to the fore detailing the components of early Rwandan kingship that comprise changes in spirit reciprocity, divination, ritual, autocracy, ethnicity, and nation building. By combining the structuralist method with diachrony, the institution of kingship appears as a cultural process instead of an invented or imported practice. Challenging Jan Vansina’s materialist view on history, the analysis sheds light on the religious disciplining in precolonial rule. In the Rwandan case the gradual disciplining combined ethnic and ritual ‘simplication’.