THE KINGDOM OF THE ZULU 31
praised against the ancestors of other kings. The king was in charge of, and responsible for, all national magic. Shaka expelled all rainmakers from his kingdom, saying only he could control the heavens. The king possessed important therapeutic medicines with which he would treat all his ailing important people. All skilled leeches had to teach the king their cures. Finally, when people died and a person was accused of killing them by sorceryr no sentence was supposed to be executed unless the king's witchdoctors confirmed the verdict. These religious and magical duties of the king, in performing which he was assisted by special, hereditary magicians, were vested in the office of kingship; though a king might be killed, his successor took over these duties, and the spirits of tyrants were even supposed to become a source of good to the people who had slain them.
The ritual of these national ceremonies was similar to that of tribal ceremonies of pre-Shaka times, but Shaka militarized them and the men paraded for them in regiments. The ceremonies were chiefly designed to strengthen the Zulu at the expense of other people, who were symbolically attacked in them. It was this military orientation of Zulu culture under the king which largely unified his people. A man was called isihlangu senkosi (war-shield of the king). The dominant values of Zulu life were those of the warrior, and they were satisfied in service at the king *s barracks and in 'his wars. To-day old men talking of the kings get excited and joyful, chanting the king's songs and dances, and all Zulu tend, in conversation, to slip into tales of the king's wars and affairs at his court.
The regiments belonged to the king alone. They lived in barracks concentrated about the capital; the chiefs had no control over the regiments and assembled their own people in territorial, not age, divisions. This organization probably persisted from the period before Shaka1 began to form 'age regiments'. In those times the chief of a tribe seems to have assembled his army in divisions which he constituted by attaching the men of certain areas to certain of his important homesteads. The tribes within the Zulu nation were (and to-day still are) organized for fighting and hunting on this basis. The king alone could summon the age regiments. The nation also was divided for military purposes in the same way as a tribe was divided. For the king attached
1 The idea of age regiments was originally developed on the basis of old age-grades by a chief, Dingiswayo, who was Shaka's patron.