Kalinga Royal Drum
The Kalinga was the most sacred drum of the Rwandan court, the principal of the four royal drums that together stood for the kingship of the mwami. Kept in a sacred house where a fire burned day and night, the drum was never allowed to touch the ground and was rubbed with bull's blood and herbs to renew its power. According to oral tradition the Kalinga reached the court with the seventeenth-century king Ruganzu II Ndori, and it travelled with the king on campaign, acquiring personal names as if it were a living ruler. The Kalinga stood for the male principle and the king, its companion drum f