ABSTRACT
To outsiders village solidarity is always insisted upon and a Manyang away from his own village but still within Banyang country is most likely to be identified as a person of such-and-such a village, mu Takwa , mu Besoyabag , mu Ebeagwa , etc. It is that the diffuseness of the Banyang political community in both concept and operation lies. The ‘sovereign authority’ which should be associated with the political community, the ‘polis’, is, as it were, refracted in the different orders of community grouping: the ‘government’ of Banyang society is a combination of’community’ actions made at all levels of grouping. Banyang have no separate terms for ‘village group’, ‘village’, or hamlet’. One of the most tantalizing problems concerning the pre-Colonial organization of Banyang communities is the exact nature and composition of the nineteenth-century settlements. Some settlements scattered throughout Banyang country still retain this traditional but much extended form.
