Chapter three: The first encounters of the Merina with the Bible
4- The Merina sense that 'the Bible has power'
(1969:75). They found the translation of Leviticus very difficult; the words were not familiar and the terms complicated. They had to work on it closely with the twelve youths. What remained was the edition of the Bible, translated into Malagasy language.
cut a small branch of the holy tree called fanory. The Merina believed that if anyone cut a branch of that tree, he would die in the course of few days. The children seeing what they did cried and were very frightened (Larson 1997:976). Within a few days, when nothing happened to Griffiths and Jones, the people said that they were unharmed and alive because they had the Bible. They attributed the safety of the missionaries from the attack of the vazimba 's spirit to the power of the Bible. The vazimba could not do anything to them because they were protected by the Bible. The acts and deeds of these early missionaries showed that the Bible had superior power to the holy things of the traditional religion.
The students of the missionaries were also protected by the Bible's power. These students would step on the vazimba graves or played with the stones on them and they stayed unharmed. A normal villager could not dare to do the same because of the fear of being harmed or even killed. For example, in Griffiths' journal in 1823, the missionaries challenged an elderly man at Miakotso, a village at the west of Antananarivo, only to touch a stone and piece of wood vandalised from the vazimba grave. He refused to do so because he believed it would make him sick and as a consequence he would die. The missionaries explained to him that that superstition was false; he would not die because of vandalising vazimba's tomb. He further explained to him that the students did it and they were unharmed. The man replied that he was not like the children who learn the book (Larson 1997:991). It implied that learning or possessing the book endorsed power just as West says 'Both the open Bible (as text) and the unopened Bible (as sacred object and icon) are powerful in much of Africa' (2000:48).
In the Early Encounters with the Bible among the Batlhaping, the same issue was raised by West. He says that the 'ngaka (an indigenous doctor/diviner/healer) assumes that the missionaries' book(s) are their equivalent of his bola (a prognosticating dice)' (2004:22). In Madagascar there was a high risk of considering the Bible as the Christians' sampy (idols or talismans) or ody (charms). The Malagasy Christians who were stripped of their sampy used the Bible as an alternative. As a result the Malagasy embraced alternative understandings of Christianity as an extension and refinement of
the existing practices of idolatry. So the understanding of Christianity by the Malagasy was different from that of the foreign missionaries. They assigned local meanings for Christianity; because once they had the Bible the missionaries could no longer control them just as Larson says:
This serves to illustrate the genius of the Malagasy to evince their susceptibility of Christian instruction, and quick talent in applying that instruction to the capacities and modes of thinking of their countrymen, rather than representing a change from idolatry altogether as the missionaries put it, Malagasy conversion to Christianity entailed assimilation of mission religion to cultural logic of Malagasy sacred practices, a process also known as syncretism (1997:978).
The Merina, then, understood Christian practices as a change from one culture to another, and becoming a Christian meant abandoning the charms and embracing the Bible. As a result the Bible was considered as an alternative to the charms that they used to have. The risk of syncretism was high during the early encounters with the Bible among the Malagasy; especially to the adults who did not attend schools. By syncretism I mean the fusion of local beliefs and rituals with Christianity. If it was well integrated it promoted inculturation, if not Christianity became a varnish which affected the indigenous people superficially.
There is a typical example illustrating this use of the Bible as a charm in Larson's article. It was about a Christian officer in Radama's army who used the Bible as a protective object while the others were carrying their charms and idols, carried in their bosoms for this purpose. He reports:
These places abound with crocodiles and the people carry about them numerous charms & idols to protect them against their powerful adversaries; he (the officer) carried none but it was frequently observed by his comrades that before entering into the water, to approach his object, he used to take from his mantle a little book, and after reading attentively for a few seconds, plunge boldly in. He was often jeered on his subject by his comrades, & his reply was, 'you have your charms to which you trust for safety, and I have my safeguard, the book is mine' (Larson 1997:991).
For this practice, he did not select what to read. He just opened his Bible and started reading any passage in front of him.