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Some Notions of Witchcraft among the Dinka1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Godfrey Lienhardt
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Extract

This paper is concerned with an examination of the usage of a Dinka word, apeth which may be translated either as ‘witch’ or as ‘witchcraft’. These English words, however, only roughly set the limits of its meaning, which are here more precisely indicated by a consideration of the contexts in which the Dinka use it.

Résumé

DE QUELQUES IDÉES DINKA SUR LA SORCELLERIE

Cet article traite de différentes significations du mot apeth dont se servent les Dinka pour signifier la mauvaise intention qui, dirigée contre un être humain, accable la victime de malheurs. On aurait pu traduire apeth par ‘sorcellerie’ mais il n'implique pas nécessairement l'usage des sortilèges. Les Dinka parlent de la sorcellerie en général sans manifester aucune gêne mais ils eprouvent une forte aversion à associer le nom d'une personne spécifiée avec ces pratiques. Les Dinka n'imputent pas aux sorciers des intentions spécifiquement criminelles. L'idée d'apeth implique plutôt l'envie, la frustration ou la malveillance dirigée contre la communauté ou contre certains de ses membres.

Tous les attributs malins de la sorcellerie se rencontrent sous une forme exagérée et fantasque chez le ‘sorcier de nuit’, personnage exerçant des activités secrètes et solitaires à contre-pied de la vie normale de la communauté. Le ‘sorcier de nuit’ est souvent conçu comme un être inachevé ou physiquement défectueux et de par cela incapable de prendre part au jeu normal de la vie sociale.

Il est parfois suggéré que le lien qui unit le sorcier à sa victime est un lien ambivalent, car une personne portée à soupçonner la haine et l'envie chez autrui est tout aussi capable d'entretenir ces sentiments en son for intérieur.

L'auteur suggère que les idées Dinka sur la sorcellerie sont un moyen de conceptualiser les sentiments larvés d'agressivité, d'individualisme et de malveillance, sentiments, croient les Dinka, dont tout être humain est porteur mais qui sont la négation des idées de communauté et d'ordre sur lesquels repose la vie en société.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , October 1951 , pp. 303 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1951

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References

page 303 note 2 The word also occurs in Nuer. According to Father Kiggen's Nuer-English Dictionary (1948), peth means a man with the evil eye, or a man who makes a cow refuse or hold back milk.

page 303 note 3 The singling out of witchcraft for special attention may create the impression that it is more prominent as a feature of Dinka society than is actually the case. In fact, one could understand much of their social structure without reference to it, and this article is no more than an analysis of a concept in some ways marginal. I deal also primarily with those features of witchcraft which have a certain inter-consistency, and the interpretation of which requires a minimum of reference to facts outside the narrow scope of the article.

page 304 note 1 A full account of Dinka social structure will appear elsewhere.

page 304 note 2 This may also mean ‘to exorcise’, since the power which enables a man to call them also enables him to drive them away.

page 305 note 1 Simple theft is very uncommon among adult Dinka. There are many words for different sorts of taking from others, but none of the activities they denote is as culpable as ‘eating’.

page 305 note 2 This appears to be a Western Tuic Dinka word.

page 305 note 3 In Nuer, this suggests necrophily. It is said to be one of the few evil-doers of its kind for which the Nuer admit Nuer origin, and it may be for this reason that roth seems to be more specific in meaning among the Nuer. See ‘Nuer Ghouls: a form of witchcraft’, by P. P. Howell and B. A. Lewis, Sudan Notes and Records, 1947.

page 307 note 1 The correctness of this interpretation could be shown from other examples also.

page 308 note 1 An ant-hill is a place of ill omen for the Dinka.

page 308 note 2 The snake has white marks on its neck, and is therefore like the black and white bull makuei, so called because its colours resemble those of the fishing-eagle kuei.

page 310 note 1 As Bacon says: ‘There have been none of the affections which have been noted to fascinate or bewitch but love and envy; they both have vehement wishes, they frame themselves readily into imaginations and suggestions, and they come easily into the eye, especially upon the presence of the objects which are the points that conduce to fascination, if any such there be.’” Essay IX, Of Envy.

page 312 note 1 The most usual ordeal, according to the Dinka, is for both accuser and accused to drink an infusion of sacred ashes, administered by a priest of the spirit of the ashes. I have never seen this, and I have the impression that witchcraft cases rarely reach such a point, so anxious are people not to make any accusation.

page 316 note 1 The technical term for removing the effects of witchcraft from the victim is cau, which seems to be the same word as for washing hands or grain.