USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: [WoleSoyinkaSociety] ''Aiku Pari Iwa'' : Deathlessness Consummates Existence : The Broken Calabash and the Ife Philosopher's Paradoxical Quest for Immortality

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From: Tunde Awosanmi atundah@gmail.com [WoleSoyinkaSociety] <WoleSoyinkaSociety@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2020 at 06:29

 

Dear Toyin,

Please share as usual whenever you come across the source of the information. It is worth digging into.

I experimented with this thought in a stage performance a few years back. It'll be great to return to it and further the thought.

Thanks.

'Tunde Awosanmi.

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Sat, Nov 28, 2020 at 6:41 PM Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju toyin.adepoju@gmail.com [WoleSoyinkaSociety] <WoleSoyinkaSociety@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

                                               ''Aiku Pari Iwa'' : Deathlessness Consummates Existence 

                                The Broken Calabash and the Ife Philosopher's Paradoxical Quest for Immortality

                                                              Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

The Yoruba expression

''Aiku pari iwa'' 

May be translated as

''Deathlessness consummates existence''

''Immortality completes existence''

''Immortality consummates essence''

''Immortality completes being''

It is attributed to Osuntokun, a philosopher who lived in the city of Ife in what would now be known as 300 BC.

Records of this figure were deciphered from correlative interpretations of Ese Ifa and Nsibidi texts excavated by the Ogunlayan team at the Opa Oranyan site at Ife in 2015 and recently translated by a combined team of experts in these expressive forms.

Piecing together fragments of evidence in years of painstaking work, the archaeologists concluded that this thinker held death was the door into deathlessness.

''The calabash undergoes shattering to be made whole,'' '' the broken sphere prefigures the complete circle,'' are expressions described by the researchers to be representative of his thought.

What could these mean?

It is speculated that he believed death and rebirth represent opportunities for increasing growth of understanding, until the mind of the individual passes without interruption between these states, ultimately deciding where and how the transitions take place.

A friend tried to find the original archaeological report from the Journal of the African Archaeological Institute where I learnt the information came from but could not find it.

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Posted by: Tunde Awosanmi <atundah@gmail.com>

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