mtambikaji

Swahili

Etymology

From m- +‎ -tambika +‎ -aji.

Noun

mtambikaji (m-wa class, plural watambikaji)

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References

• Broomfield, G. W. (1931) “The Re-Bantuization of the Swahili Language”, in Africa‎^[1], volume 4, number 1, →DOI, page 83 of 77-85:

  'High Priest', in the case of the Jewish high priests and the 'Great High Priest' of the Epistle to the Hebrews, is translated Mtambikaji Mkuu. The word mtambikaji is bound up with animism; it denotes the medicine man who performs such rites as the pouring out of libations of beer at the foot of a sacred tree as a propitiation of the ancestral spirits.

• Bolton, Caitlyn (2016) “Making Africa Legible: Kiswahili Arabic and Orthographiic Romanization in Colonial Zanzibar”, in American Journal of Islam and Society‎^[2], volume 33, number 3, →DOI, page 67 of 61–78:

  Further, the Bantu words that he adopted as more authentic carried pagan “ideas which one is particularly anxious to eradicate.” For example, “High Priest” was translated as Mtambikaji Mkuu, with mtambikaji referencing “animism” and denoting a medicine man who sacrifices to the ancestral spirits, rather than the common Arabic loan word “Kuhani,” which happens to also be a cognate to the original term in Hebrew ('cohen).