Dreaming the Future Closer

Lucas points out a division in the stories surrounding Oduduwa, those that characterize Oduduwa as a her and those that characterize Odudawa as a him.  He posits the female Oduduwa (as partner of Obatala) as the primary and original figure, with the male version being a later imposition on the original figure.

Which makes Flora Edouwaye S. Kaplan’s article in Orisa Devotion as World Religion really intriguing.  She, working primarily with an oba from Benin, posits an alternative interpretation of Yoruban myth, one situating the origin of the Yoruba proper in the exile of a prince of Benin to Yorubaland.  Her informant equates that exile with the heroic (male) Odudawa in Yoruban myth.

Kaplan makes the point that Yoruban accounts have been privileged in the historiography, suggesting the Benin account as a useful corrective.  However, the political dynamics going on may be still more complicated than Kaplan details.  Benin and Oyo were long rivals in a contested and dynamic power relations.

It’s likely, if Lucas is correct in Odudawa as female being historically first, that the figure of male Odudawa bears the traces of the political conflict between the two African kingdoms.  I don’t have enough details at my disposal to map it out, but I have one speculative hypthesis:

The male figure may emerge from a period in which the Benin traditions were more highly esteemed in the region, either because of Benin’s political ascendancy or because of a more subtle literary ascendancy.  He is super-imposed over the founding female figure in order to enhance the prestige of the Oyo people through association with Benin’s people.

That lays the groundwork for a very dynamic counter-movement to reclaim the male figure as ‘purely’ Yoruban, trying to lay claim to the borrowed prestige as being first and foremost their own prestige.  That leads to the sorts of claims on the part of Benin’s oba to claim the Benin origin of Odudawa, ironically for similar reasons the Yorubans had for borrowing him in the first place: to lay claim to some of the prestige now ascribed to Yoruban culture and history.