2IO AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
distributions of meat between the members of one age-class take place on the occasion of their sons' circumcision only. The beef is not eaten jointly, but the boy's father kills an ox or two and sends meat to all those of his age-mates (vagogi) whom he knows personally, while others may come or send their wives to ask for a share of meat on the strength of the fact that they were circumcised in the same year as he. As circumcision takes place every few years and as all the members of one age-class have to slaughter an animal after each son's circumcision, the occasion of stressing the age-grade relationship by the distribution of meat recurs frequently and for each age-class extends over a large number of years. Circumcision also provides the occasion for feasts on a tribal scale. Among the majority of the Bantu Kavir-ondo tribes, both the performance of the operation and the various feasts that terminate the convalescence and seclusion of the initiates are the occasion for the gathering of thousands of people comprising many different clans. Although the entire tribe does not actually assemble at one place, the various sub-groups celebrate the different phases of the feast on the same days and in the same manner.
Other feasts on a tribal or at least on an inter-clan scale were wrestling matches (now almost entirely replaced by football games) in which the best wrestlers of one clan fought against those of another, the procedure being hedged round with rules very much like those connected with European sporting events.
Religious observances that involve the assembly of people on a tribal scale I have been able to record from the Logoli only. In a cave on the slope of a wooded hill they perform a semi-annual sacrifice to an ancestral spirit (Mung'oma) and to an apparently vaguely conceived tribal deity (Asai). The purpose of the sacrifice is to evoke an ancestral and divine blessing for the quick ripening of the crops or, on other occasions,to pray for help when a calamity, such as a drought, an epidemic, or a series of ill-fated raids, endanger the whole tribal society. The ceremonial rules on these occasions, such as refraining from any kind of garden work, apply to all tribesmen, and members of all clans join in the common singing of ceremonial songs (kukelemana) at the bottom of the hill, while the sacrificers, together with their ritual assistants, perform the sacrificial ceremonies in the cave, to which only they have access.