Bia vs Tano

The obosom of the Bia River, which flows from western Ghana into Côte d'Ivoire; in the story of Nyame's inheritance he is Tano's brother, who loses the fertile land to him.

Bia is known chiefly through the story he shares with Tano. Both are sons of the sky god Nyame, who divides the land between them. In the Asante telling Bia is the son Nyame meant to favour, but Tano, helped by the goat who served their father, reaches Nyame first and is given the fertile country; Bia receives the drier, poorer lands to the west. The Agni (Anyi) of Côte d'Ivoire tell it the other way round, with Bia gaining the better share. Both versions tie the two brothers to the rivers that bear their names, and both treat the division as the origin of a lasting rivalry.

The great river obosom of the Akan, identified with the Tano River of western Ghana and regarded in Asante as the foremost of the abosom; tellings make him a son of Nyame who tricked his brother Bia out of the fertile land.

The abosom are powers associated with rivers, lakes, and other features of the land, who act through their priests and shrines. Rattray, writing in 1923, called Tano (Ta Kora) 'the greatest of the Ashanti gods upon earth' and described his shrines, where the power of the god was lodged in a brass pan holding material taken from the river. The river rises near Techiman in the Bono region, and the Tano shrines at Tanoboase in that area are among the oldest sacred sites of the Bono and Asante; many other abosom are described as his children.