THE TALLENSI 263
for both economic and cultural exchange. Such a bzyar is the core of the Harvest Festival of its congregation, which consists of a group of maximal lineages generally of different clans, each having the prerogative of one ritual office connected with the cult. This grouping cuts across the grouping in terms of ritual collaboration in the Earth cult. A boy or is the seat of its congregation's ancestors, the opposite pole to the Earth in the religious scheme. Thus ritual sanctions and interlaced loyalties are counterbalanced to maintain the social equilibrium. Among the Hill Talis, the boyar has the same mystical value and function as no?am in the wider community, and its principal officers are referred to as 'chiefs' among themselves, though they are tendaanas in relation to the Chief of Tongo.
The most conspicuous mechanism through which the ritual interdependence and joint responsibility for the common good of chiefs and tzndaanas is maintained is the cycle of the Great Festivals.1 Its centre is the Tongo area, but it embraces all the Tale settlements as well as several neighbouring non-Tale settlements each entering the cycle in its proper sequence. These festivals are periods of ritually sanctioned truce, when all conflicts and disputes must be abandoned for the sake of ceremonial co-operation. In each phase of a festival, every corporate unit involved has its specific ceremonial role, vested in its head and indispensable for the propitious outcome of the whole set of ceremonies; and in each the crucial act is the meeting of chief and tendaanas, or their deputies, jointly to perform ritual for the blessing of the community. The chief on whom the most important ceremonial duties devolve is the Toyraana; but the rites and celebrations show that he represents all the chiefs whose common heritage is na'am derived from the Chief of Mampurugu and whose rights and responsibilities are interlinked through this fountain-head. Similarly, the principal tendaanas concerned represent all tzndaanas.
In this festival cycle, therefore, the widest Tale community emerges; but it is so loosely articulated that for the members of any particular clan it forms merely a remote frame of social reference. It is not a fixed political entity but a functional synthesis. It brings out the common allegiance and ideological fraternity of all chiefs,
1 See my paper on 'Ritual Festivals and Social Cohesion in the Hinterland of the Gold Coast', Amer. Anthropologist, 38, 4, 1936-