Divinity and Experience
by Godfrey Lienhardt
Buy on AmazonDivinity and Experiences is a sensitive and very complex account of the cosmology of the Dinka people in Southern Sudan. It’s a wonderful book in itself and very delicately written. It deals with African religion as related to the reality and the life of a particular people. These religions are embedded in that particular way of life, such that you can’t induct other people into the religions, they are local in every sense. The Dinka are unusual in that their religion is less occupied with the source of misfortune and more occupied with generating good fortune. Godfrey Lienhardt writes it up as very mystical. He didn’t ask the direct question; ‘What do you believe?’ He watched and listened to what they were saying and discovered what they believed from what they said and the way they said things. The religion is all derived from the Dinka world and the symbolism is all very localised. Cattle is involved in all their rituals. You might generate good fortune by driving cattle through ritual fires. The cattle themselves participate in the ritual because they represent wealth and the good fortune will affect them and the human beings who depend on them. It is peculiar to the Dinka that they do believe there are witches, that witches exist, but they don’t try to identify or try to rid themselves of them. He did. In those days we did longer field work. There was more funding for that kind of thing. He went back more than once and he was a very gifted linguist. He learnt the language very well and he continued to speak it to Dinka friends back here in the UK. Not all of us maintained the languages we learnt for field work. I certainly haven’t. Mine has faded. But because he knew the language so well he was able to identify the various layers of meaning in particular Dinka concepts, adding a great deal of subtlety to his work.