Bi Nka Bi: A Proverb Against The First Bite

Bi Nka Bi, no one should bite another, states its proverb almost as directly as its design permits, most often rendered as two curved, tooth-like or crescent forms set facing one another, evoking the act of biting the proverb warns against. Willis records the saying's specific association in Akan oral history with the memory of civil conflict, the biting cruelty a community inflicts on itself during internal war, rather than functioning only as a general statement about interpersonal courtesy; the proverb's logic runs on reciprocity, that injury given tends eventually to be returned, so avoiding the first bite is presented as self-interested prudence as much as as a moral obligation to the other party. Willis records that the two facing crescent forms are sometimes elaborated with small tooth-like serrations along their inner edge in more detailed carvings, a decorative intensification of the biting imagery the plain crescent form only implies, though he treats the simpler unadorned version as at least as common across the sources he surveyed. Willis records both the plain and the serrated forms circulating without either being treated as more authoritative than the other. A small but genuine addition, not a repeat of the point already made.