2i4 AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
on face and body of the initiate. In the case of infants and small children, e.g. at the naming ceremony, the place of the commandments is taken by the uttering of words of well-wishing over the child (okugasidzd). (e) In connexion with the exchange of gifts or the common feast the goodwill of the ancestors is invoked by the offering of meat and blood to the spirits and the utterance of a prayer in which they are asked to come and partake of the food that has been offered to them.
We see from this survey of initiation rites that the task of transmitting tribal law and custom from generation to generation is not performed by distinct institutions, controlled by a central authority, but that the different social groups and relationship patterns continue themselves by handing down their own systems of values and standards of conduct through the formal initiation of new individuals into them. The different groups and relationships, however, do not exist side by side, detached from one another, but they overlap in various respects. In the first place, as they are based partly on kinship, partly on marriage, partly on age, and partly on common family status, every individual belongs to several groupings. A person is not only a member of his lineage and clan, but at the same time of his age-grade; he entertains well-defined relationships with his maternal kin as well as with his wife's kin and that of his brothers' wives and his sisters* husbands, and he shares the common status of a married man or a father with many other members of the tribe, irrespective of clan or marriage bonds. This overlapping of the different groups and relationships, as regards their personnel, clearly acts as a force that maintains and promotes the feeling of tribal unity and the homogeneity of law and custom and that counteracts the tendency towards rivalry and competition between clans.
In the second place, effective kinship bonds and membership of various groups increase in number and importance as the individual gets older. Each successive phase in life means, therefore, a rise in status, i.e. an increase in rights and privileges, but also, of course, in duties and obligations. This fact, along with the principle of seniority as observed in the family relationships with regard to the holding and transferring of property, likewise tends to integrate the relations between the groups, as it places the greatest authority into the hands of the old men who, by virtue of the wide net of kinship bonds and group affiliations in which