Tangena

The tradition & historical record

Tangena was a form of trial by ordeal practiced in Madagascar to determine the guilt or innocence of an accused party. The trial utilized seeds of the tree species Cerbera manghas (family Apocynaceae), which produces seeds that contain highly toxic cardiac glycosides including cerberin and tanghinin. Tangena dates back to at least the 16th century in Imerina. It has been estimated that the poison may have been responsible for the deaths of as much as 2% of the population of the central province of Madagascar each year on average. Mortality peaked during the reign of Queen Ranavalona I (1828–1861), when the tangena ordeal was used extensively. The belief in the genuineness and accuracy of tangena was so strongly held among all that innocent people suspected of an offence did not hesitate to subject themselves to it; some even showed eagerness to be tested. The use of ritual poison in Madagascar was abolished in 1863 by King Radama II, but its use persisted for at least several decades after being officially banned. ¹

Tangena - designating both the plant and the ordeal in which it was used - is derived from a word in the official (highland) dialect of the Malagasy language, tangaina, meaning "swearing" or "oath taking". ¹

The precise dates and origins of the tangena ordeal on Madagascar are unknown. The 19th century transcription of Merina oral history, Tantara ny Andriana eto Madagasikara, references the use of tangena by the Merina king Andrianjaka (1612–1630), describing a change in its practice: rather than administering tangena poison to an accused person's rooster to determine their innocence by the creature's survival, the poison would instead be ingested by the accused himself. By Andrianjaka's time, the ordeal was already a well-established and respected form of traditional justice, suggesting the practice must have originated no later than the 16th century. In the early 19th century, tangena constituted one of the chief measures by which Queen Ranavalona maintained order within her realm. A poison was extracted from the nut of the native tangena tree and ingested, with the outcome determining innocence or guilt. Although many versions of the ordeal were practiced, the basic procedure involved feeding the accused three pieces of chicken skin, followed by a mixture of the poison and leaves or juice from banana or the cardamom plant. If all three pieces of skin were vomited up then innocence was declared, but death or a failure to regurgitate all three pieces of skin indicated guilt. If nobles (andriana) or freemen (hova) were compelled to undergo the ordeal, the poison was typically administered to the accused only after dog and rooster stand-ins had already died from the poison's effects, while among members of the slave class (andevo), the ordeal required them to immediately ingest the poison themselves. ¹

Cerbera manghas has been determined to contain various cardiac glycosides, which principally consisted of tanghinin, deactyltanghinin, neriifolin, and cerberin. These molecules can cause bradycardia and eventually cardiac arrest by affecting sodium-potassium pumps in cardiac muscle cells. Although all parts of the Cerbera manghas plant are poisonous, the most toxic parts of the plant, the nuts, were used during the tangena ordeals. It was widely believed among the Malagasy that the various foods and drinks consumed during the ritual could alter the toxicity of the nuts, and so only a certain group of "witch doctors" were allowed to carry out the trial. Cardiac glycosides from the Cerbera manghas plant are known to be able to induce nausea and vomiting, although these symptoms can take over an hour to manifest. As such, people undertaking the trial were often found guilty and killed before the poison could fully take effect. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Tangena”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Tangena is ritual to determine innocence or guilt in old Madagascar, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. ²