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and expressing the essence of the given society, communal by character ties and relations dominated. Essential inner homogeneity, a certain continuity, both “vertical”, merely social and correlated with it “horizontal”, of forms of spatial organization of the Benin socium, rural and urban were based just on it.

As the society itself in the Bini’s picture of the world, the community had similar structures, two of higher and one of lower levels. The organ- ism-system of four concentric circles existed in the social world of the Bini, too. And the second circle, i.e. the community also turned out the basic one in this case. The narrowest circle was represented by the extended family (egbe), the union and system of which communities were in the main part of cases, both rural and urban. Just the extended family was the self-enough organism on the lowest level of the socium’s existence.

On the basic, practically entirely naturally-and-historically created substratum level of the Benin socium, i.e. the communal one “conditionally egalitarian” relations dominated absolutely. It was stipulated by the dominance of labor division by sex and age, non-territorial intergroup and interpersonal relations, gerontocratic principle of governing. All the families forming this or that community and their members were co-holders both of natural conditions of production and each other. The dominance of ideas of similarity, principal equality (except some cases) of everybody to everybody in merely personal characteristics should be added to this.

But the Bini’s existence has not already been limited to the communal level from the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD The most important brink in the society was that between the second and the third circles which separated communal, substratum circles proper and above-communal ones, grown out of them but not entirely naturally-and-historically, in a great measure as a result of conscious activities of people for realizing personal

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interests. Their appearance and evolution were connected with the formation of institutions of authority of typologically the pre state character.

So, in Beninocentric views of the country’s inhabitants the world was principally equal to the society (visualized broader than by modern Europeans) but at the same moment it was structured in a complicated manner being divided first of all into penetrating each other worlds of ancestors and deities, on the one hand and people, on the other; irrational and rational from our point of view. But it was still a single world and it was fastened by the authority, its bearers, each on their level. Just for the sake of unification of the world they existed for the Bini and that is why the authority was ringed by sacral halo. In accurate functioning of the governing system on all the levels, above-communal especially they saw the main guarantee of the preservation of the Universal balance, well-being and prosperity of all the lawful inhabitants of the Beninocentric Universe without exceptions.

The process of formation of above-communal institutions and corresponding late-potestal structures was on both “from below” and “from above”. The first way was more ancient, less non-natural-and-historical and essentially, especially at the beginning, all in all primary towards the second one. Two above-communal, abovesubstratum levels of the precolonial Benin socium have formed: that of the chiefdom which stayed the only one in the 10th-12th centuries, and that of the society on the whole as it became by the beginning of the 13th century according to oral tradition.

Benin, both the city and the society grew out of the unification of not separate communities only but chiefdoms first of all. But, at first, a great part of communities stayed autonomous; at second, not all the communities were parts of chiefdoms. At second, if the chiefdom never mind the way of its formation can be considered organized by territory it in any case preserved a great number of important features of the kin communal organiza-

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tion. And, at third, the Benin society on the whole if we look at it as at an organism-system of autonomous communities and chiefdoms was even further from the territorial principle of organization because the community still stayed its basis, more precisely communal by their essence social institutions, the governing system, social-and-cultural values and on the brink of chiefdoms with each other and separate communities in the period of their peaceful co-existence reciprocal relations also characteristic of societies organized not by territory prevailed.

Thus late-potestal institutions of the supreme authority grow out of communal but may have the chiefdom with its institutions as an intermediate stage of formation or also as a link in the realization of authoritative functions. And the supreme ruler of such a society the head of the chiefdom which especially strengthened during the preceding period becomes while forming it communities’ heads constitute the first category of supreme (titled) chiefs. But both they and the higher ruler especially under the conditions when not an individual but a collective was the basic unit of the society on any level came to power as representatives of their lineages first of all. Further more, it depended in great, not rearly decisive measure upon the lineage members if a climant’s for this or that title career take shape. These lineages and families not only preserved their traditional structure but on the whole functioned according to the rules conditioned by it what becomes especially evident if one examines the kin collective of the supreme ruler. Kin relations penetrated the whole governing subsystem of the Benin socium stipulating key mechanisms and forms of its functioning. Corresponding institutions were perceived in categories of kinship, too.

The main function of the supreme ruler (the Oba) no doubt was the sacral one. For the sake of its realization, i.e. the setting and maintaining of relations between people and ancestors, deities on the highest level for the

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benefit of subjects (reaching rational via irrational) the very institution of the supreme ruler just existed in the first place in the Bini’s outlook. This institution, the oba’s dynasty, lineage were a part of the Bini’s system of values because it corresponded to the idea of the necessity of maintaining the Universe’s stability and the ways of reaching it. To the Oba’s dynasty that came to power on the brink of the 12th and the 13th centuries the world-arranging role was attributed: just due to its activities after the epoch of social chaos (struggle of multiple chiefdoms and proto-city centers with each other) social being was brought to conformity with due by setting effective all-Benin not above-communal only but abovechiefdom authority. The merit in setting as well as the responsibility for the maintenance of balance in the society and hence in the Universe was finally entrusted to the Oba though the latter depended upon behavior of every Bini.

On the idea of the Oba’s sacredness his power rested, its real volume was determined by it in the decisive measure, too. The degree of sacralisation of the supreme ruler increased and correspondingly his “rational” power’s volume including military diminished until the Oba turned into the honorable prisoner of the palace by the end of the 16th century. Nevertheless not only in people’s consciousness but objectively too he continued to play an especially important role of a symbol of above-communal unity of the Bini, the bearer of the people’s cultural tradition in the subjects’ outlook, the observer of fundamentals of being of the people as a specific identity what created preconditions for transition to state organization of the society. Just in it the real socially significant contents of the sacral function of the supreme ruler, irrational in its essence (from our point of view), historical progressiveness of the given phenomenon consists because “irrational” power in the context of the Bini’s society and culture was not less real.

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Many functions, specific features of position of a community (and a chiefdom) head one can see in those of the supreme ruler but on a higher, interand to some extend above-communal (and abovechiefdom) level. Certainly, changes are not merely quantitative here. But the main essential distinction of the supreme ruler from a community chief is that when the latter by his activities, the vary fact of existence was urged to favor strengthening of kin ties, the higher ruler on the contrary objectively favored overcoming their dominance. At the same moment the Oba has not left the communal organization yet. In support of him including material the“communal spirit” became apparent and the supreme ruler was perceived by population not as an outer towards the community power at all . And just the fact that his power was considered ( and genetically and in great degree essentially really was) like continuation and strengthening of legal authority of communal chiefs gave the society social-and-potestal steadiness while the community gave it social-and-economic stability.

Not only the Oba but tiled chiefs too stayed the people’s representatives being a connecting link between the communal and above-communal levels of its being and hence one of the guarantees of stability of the socium and (in the Bini’s outlook) of the whole Universe. Non-separateness of the authority from the people besides all the rest undermines formation of institutions of the authority, recruiting of people for them and their realization of authoritative functions not apart from but in accordance with autochtonous communal-and-kin traditions and customs using mechanisms stipulated by them. Factors of maintaining social peace and order in the community found their continuation and development on the above-communal level.

So, what a general characteristic can be attributed to the Benin socium? It can be determined as a “megacommunity”. As for the structure of the megacommunity, it can be represented like four concentric circles form-

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ing an upset cone, bearing in mind that possibilities for a socium’s division by circles are not infinite: a more fractional structurization of a socium could lead to its disintegration, break-up. The circles are as follows: the extended family, the community (sometimes consisting of one extended family only), the chiefdom grown “from below” and/or spread by the higher authority by presenting brothers and junior children of the Oba, titled chiefs with groups of communities (which was appearing, in Benin at any rate not in strict succession with other and have never embraced absolute majority of communities), and finally the broadest circle which included all the three narrower, i.e. megacommunity as such. The Benin socium in which megacommunal structures and institutions were not alien at all. It was not a complex chiefdom or a state but a hierarchical communal by its essence society. The megacommunity’s unity was ensured basically by the same as that of the community and the very existence and prosperity of its inhabitants was “guaranteed” by the presence of the sacralized supreme ruler. And just in his sacral functions both the megacommunal character of the society as a whole and the Oba’s essence as the megachief reflected especially clearly.

At the same time not only struggle between the community and above-communal structures for dominance in social development but also mutual necessity, supplementness towards one another, favoring formation of the latter at the expense of the former and simultaneous additional consolidation, though a definite transformation too of the community thanks to above-communal institutions grown out just of it existed in the megacommunal frameworks.

It is not difficult to notice that such a four circles structure of the socium reproduced the system of the Universe in the Bini’s outlook being on the whole its most important second circle. All its circles turned out minicircles of the Universe. And as we know the first circle of the Universe, the

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human sole was also considered consisting of four mini-circles. From this point of view, if the terrestrial part of the society as a whole turned out the most important part of the Universe being its second circle, and the second circle of the social world of the Bini, the community was in turn the most important for it, one ought to come to the conclusion that just the community rested not only the center, focus of the society in Benin but also the core of the whole the Bini’s Universe. Just in the community preservation and transmission of culture and traditions in the broadest meaning of these notions was carried out. Only a communal by its structure socium could be similar to the structure of the Bini’s Macrospace, i.e. to be a system of circles but not social segments. From the aforesaid the community’s role in the mental, social-and-economic, governing-potestal subsystems of the sociummegacommunity, correlations among changes in them in the process of state formation resulted. The clue to many real and already pseudo-, quasicommunal features and characteristics of the Benin socium which members, bearers of predominantly mythological consciousness were inclined to substitute causal-and-effectual relations for outward resemblance of events and objects in all the spheres of their being is concealed here, too.

Real and irreal, rational and irrational, social and mythological, so closely interwoven in the Africans’ outlook were tightly correlated in reality as well as the members of the triad “man - society - authority”. The megacommunity turned out both a model of the Universe (a system of circles) and the most important part of it at the same moment. The boundaries among these circles no doubt existed on the one hand but on the other hand they were very conditional for the Bini. At any rate, the whole (the Universe and the megacommunity) has always turned out more important than the particular (any separate circle) for them. And the main aim of people’s activi-

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ties permanent maintenance of the Universal, naturally including social “status quo” as dynamic equilibrium was considered.

Like in the circles of the Universe as a whole, in its main circle each mini-circle (from the point of view of the Macrospace perception) is similar but not identical with the previous, narrower ones by the structure, “functions” reproducing them on a higher level; so changes from one circle to another had been of not only quantitative but qualitative character too as it was mentioned above.

To what extend was the megacommunity as it was perceived by the Bini an outcome of their consciousness only and in what measure was it such indeed? From the moment of its origin on the brink of the 12th and the 13th centuries and till the formation of the empire and the Europeans’ coming (the second half of the 15th century) reality and perceptions of it basically coinsided. But then the tendency towards the transformation of not the second, communal, substratum but never mind its some genetic “detrimentness” the third, above-substratum, quasiterritorial circle into the basic appeared. I.e. towards a possible (but not realized by the moment of Benin’s occupation by the English in 1897) break up of the megacommunity itself at the next stage, real split of the society into the upper and the lower stratas, casts, estates, the gap of continuity in all its subsystems. In short, perhaps towards transformation of the megacommunity into the state because transformation of the third circle into the basic one due to final victory of titled chiefs over the supreme ruler in their struggle for “rational” power by the end of the 16th century at the same time meant gradual solution of boundaries among the circles forming the megacommunity, transition via quasiterritorial to the territorial, state organization of the society.

And just in the megacommunity balance as dynamic equlibrium between the man and the society, among social structures and institutions,

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among the man, the society on the one hand and the nature on the other as the basic principle of Benin and the Bini’s existence could have been reached and maintained in the most proper way. And in its frameworks in the social- and-economic and potestal-political spheres it could have also been leisurely violated in favor of definite kin groups. It is not out of the question that the megacommunity was that very form in which slowly, unwittingly for the Bini a new contents of the society could found. But till the end of the epoch of its independent existence Benin despite different degree of proximity of its subsystems to the state type and level never transformed into a state socium. And to the question “what was realizing by means of the megacommunity?”: a variant of the pre-state structure of the socium or an alternative to the state “historical project”, the Benin material of not “pre-European” only but of the whole period of its independent existence, by the end of the 19th century thus seems not to give a synonymous answer.

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