Nuer and Dinka Are People: Ecology, Ethnicity and Logical PossibilityAuthor(s): Aidan SouthallSource: Man, New Series, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Dec., 1976), pp. 463-491Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2800433 .Accessed: 27/12/2010 12:38

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NUER AND DINKA ARE PEOPLE: ECOLOGY, ETHNICITY AND LOGICAL POSSIBILITY

AIDAN SOUTHALL

University of Wisconsin-Madison

It is preferable to call the Nuer Naath and the Dinka Jieng, as they do themselves. Since both terms mean 'people', the distinction between them is in part a question of linguistic differentiation. Economical interpretation of the evidence suggests that the much smaller, though expansive, population of Naath must have emerged from a pre-existing population of proto-Jieng. The Naath identity probably emerged as a result of overpopulation in the jebel- Ghazal triangle, the central pocket of an extreme ecological region, forcing them to break out by attacking their neighbours and expanding at their expense. This emergent contrast be- tween attacker and attacked sums up the crucial differences between Naath andJieng, both in social organisation and values. Where the Naath attack most and the Jieng are most attacked the differences between them are greatest, despite the high absorption ofJieng by Naath under these circumstances. Elsewhere they are rather alike, some groups of Naath and Jieng being more like one another than to other groups of their own nominal category. The possible course of events which led to their present distribution is examined in the light of oral tra- dition, institutional variation and logical possibility.

'Even a tentative reconstruction of their historical relations with each other which led to the formation of two distinct cultures is out of the question'-Evans- Pritchard.I

Names and identities The debate which followed the statement that 'the Nuer are Dinka' (Newcomer

I972) raised some fascinating questions but left them poorly answered. Who are the Nuer and the Dinka, and how did they arrive at the differentiated cultures which have been described ? These are really important questions, of universal signifi- cance for anthropological theory. The major authors, Evans-Pritchard and Lien- hardt, provide a wealth of evidence, which is the more convincing as they did not press it to answer these questions. However, Evans-Pritchard clearly realised the extent to which 'Nuer are Dinka' and have a common origin, although he did not wish to delve into all its implications (I940: 3-4; I956: 72, 82-3).

The proper answer to the first question must be that the Nuer are not Nuer and the Dinka are not Dinka. As with most ethnic groups around the world they have become known in the literature by names they did not recognise themselves (Southall I970). Evans-Pritchard says he used the name Nuer because it was hallowed by a century of use (I940: 3) and that like so many things Nuer, it was probably of Dinka origin. He does not seem to have been aware that 'Nuer' is indeed what the Dinka call the Nuer. The Nuer call themselves Naath (S. Raan)

Matt (N.S.) II, 463-49I.

464 AIDAN SOUTHALL

that is to say People. This is the most common type of genuine ethnic name all round the world, but since we are all people it only distinguishes one speech com- munity from another. Where the language changes, so will the ethnic label.

The Nuer call the Dinka Jaang (Evans-Pritchard I940: I26, 234-5) which is ob- viously a cognate form of Jieng (Lienhardt I958: I07), which is what the Dinka call themselves and which, again, means 'people'. It is therefore appropriate that I should use Naath for Nuer andJieng for Dinka in the rest of this account. Let us also remember in passing that while in the plural they distinguish themselves as Naath and Jieng, in the singular they are all one: Raan (person).2 No doubt they fre- quently call themselves by the name of the particular segment which is relevant to them at the moment, like most other segmentary societies. Jaang does not unequi- vocally designate Dinka in Nuer speech, for the Nuer are inclined to apply it to any group which they habitually raid (Evans-Pritchard I940: 224). The question 'Who are the Nuer and the Dinka?' is thus in many ways inherently absurd, and the argument as to whether Nuer are Dinka has no foundation. But there are also in the western literature two Nilotic languages known in English as Nuer and Dinka, which may have more objective reality. This is true, but unfortunately the Dinka, with a very large and scattered population of over a million, without any centralis- ing institutions of their own, speak a large number of dialects varying considerably from one another. Although major dialects are mentioned,3 the language studies we have, and especially the glottochronology (McLaughlin I967), fail to take account of them. It is probable that the speech of someJieng is more like that of some Naath than that of otherJieng,4 but Dinka and Nuer were convenient fictions for the early explorers, administrators, missionaries, and, alas, linguists and anthropologists, and so they are still with us, having acquired sufficient vested interests in the identities imposed upon them during the colonial period to perpetuate them. We should therefore recognise them for what they are and investigate them accordingly

What reality underlies the fictional names? Very little apart from the linguisti- cally expressed distinction of identity, together with some perceptible shifts of emphasis in various social institutions and cultural features. One is tempted to see the myth of Aiwel, or the worship of Deng, or the presence of totems, as dis- tinctively Jieng, but the difficulty is that so many Jieng have become Naath by absorption that a great deal of what Evans-Pritchard describes as Naath religion and culture has to be referred tojieng origins There are distinctions of emphasis but they are subtle and relate very closely to the fundamental identity contrast, which Evans-Pritchard perceived as a structural relationship, a sort of cosmic comple- mentary opposition in which two categories of people saw themselves as pre- destined to the roles of raider and raided, with profound implications for contrast in the complex balance of ritual and political features. There is a very wide recog- nition of Aiwel as culture hero (though even the name shifts from one account to another), at least among the western, eastern and northern Jieng (Lienhardt I96I:

I85). Yet, having said that it is not recorded among the Naath, Lienhardt is im- mediately forced to note its similarities with the myth of Kir, the founder of the Jikany Naath. But then, Evans-Pritchard saw the Jikany themselves as probably of Jieng origin! At first sight Deng seems a quintessential symbol ofJieng identity, yet the worship of Deng is so widespread among the Naath as to make any clear dividing line impossible. The main shrine of Deng is said to have been overrun by

AIDAN SOUTHALL 465

the Naath some four or five generations ago (P. P. Howell in Lienhardt I96I: 97- I02) and in any case, for the Naath too, Deng was the greatest of the spirits of the air (Evans-Pritchard i956: 29 and passim).5 Totems have been regarded as charac- teristic of Jieng, yet they are so pervasive among the Naath that Evans-Pritchard spends an important part of his account of Naath religion in discussing them, al- though they are classified asJaang (i956: I20) by contrast with the spirits of the air, which are diel, 'true or aristocratic spirits', yet the greatest of them was Deng.

We can say empirically that the population referred to as Dinka, and calling itself Jieng, comprised a number of genuine named groups such as Rek, Agar, Bor, Cic, Twij, Rut, Thoi, Luac, Ngok, Ruweng, Abiem, Malwal, Padang, Aliab and so forth, while Naath comprised Bul, Jagei, Leek, Jikany, Lou, Gaawar and so forth. Few of these large and widely dispersed groups have been studied in sufficient detail to make reliable and meaningful comparison possible. We do not accurately know how much objective cultural and linguistic unity they display, nor how far they were aware of themselves or considered themselves as single people until the colonial administration told them they were and treated them as such. Lienhardt remarks that theJieng do not know the names of all the major groups, and a mem- ber of one, travelling in the territory of another, could find himself insulted as a stranger (i958: I07). However, different sections of many of the major groups were widely separated from one another, such as the Ngok in the northwest and in the east ofJieng, or the Jikany in the west and in the far east of Naath. Such dispersion of sections possessing more or less common traditions did provide some bonds to hold the amorphous mass together, though all were not fully aware of them.

0 100 200 300 MILES Renk

0 100 200 300 KM BURUN NUBA MOUNTAINS 0uu

BAGGARA elut DAR FUNG

Bahr el Arab LaeITV~ MABAN

X X 2 G O K Sh G Lae\4hTI

MALUAL ,Q4~Y~I No % ~, AWEM~ ~ ~ A~AK RUT p KOMA

L A -- W1LAR-

A ( Rumbek tAGHOL IAJar y

ATUOTAR ( Bi boLr E

W AFRICA t;,\7 GROUPS MANDA,4 X

M. NAATH .....LEEK

X 4 | ~~~JIENG ........ bO

OTHERS.....BURUN

FIGURE I.

466 AIDAN SOUTHALL

The burning question is how did a speech community whose members called themselves Naath, with a degree of common culture which we cannot precisely specify, emerge as distinct from another 'congeries of peoples' (as they are evasively called)6 perceiving themselves as Jieng and referred to by the Naath as Jaang ? Newcomer (I972: 7) suggests that Naath emerged from Jieng by a social mutation which took the form of a segmentary lineage organisation specially adapted to predatory expansion as argued by Sahlins (I96I). This social innovation arose in re- sponse to ecological differences.

Glickman (I972) regards the concept of social mutation, with its implied evolu- tionary biological analogy, as inappropriate and redundant, since the differences between the two systems under consideration are in his view amenable to an eco- logical interpretation. But to speak of Nuer and Dinka as both these authors do, as though they were unambiguously distinct groups each one capable of distinctive characterisation and concerted action, is grossly misleading, though perhaps less so for the Naath with their continuous area of settlement than for the Jieng with their far-flung blocks of separate territory. We wish to understand how it came about that various groups of proto-Jieng began to call themselves Naath and developed a propensity and a social organisation which enabled them to raid a lot of other groups of proto-Jieng all around them, whom they began to call Jaang, successfully capturing many of their cattle and many of their people, incorporating the latter eventually as Naath and expanding into their territory.

It is quite clear that the main scholarly experts on these peoples, Evans-Pritchard and Lienhardt, were reluctant to entertain or answer such questions. At the time when they were writing it was, indeed, taboo. But is it still ? We have exorcised the ghost of conjectural history long enough to be able to give serious consideration to questions of time perspective and sequence, rather than leave them all to historians reworking our data for us. If there were two distinct peoples, Nuer and Dinka, each with its own language and culture (a perspective which needs radical correction as we have seen), living in close proximity and, indeed, the one almost surrounded by the other, the question of how this came about cannot be evaded, even if it cannot be completely or definitively answered.

The most anti-evolutionary anthropologist would hardly deny that African languages and cultures have proliferated during the last two millennia. Nuer and Dinka language and culture are recorded as more similar to one another than to any other, although Nuer and Anuak are reported as very close (McLaughlin I967). However, there is no doubt that Dinka and Nuer are more similar to one another in general culture and social institutions than to any other groups, and that they share a generally similar environment, though local differences within this could have been critical and causative. Naath and Jieng either diverged from a common stock or the one emerged from the other.7 Evans-Pritchard found that 'persons of Dinka descent form probably at least half the population of most (Nuer) tribes'8 (I940: 22I). The rate of absorption was highest among the eastern Naath who carried out the most recent and far reaching expansion. Thus Evans-Pritchard estimated that as much as 75 per cent. of the Lou (a large group of 33,000) were ofJieng descent (I933: 53).9 The population estimates are very unreliablelo but it seems as though the jieng are still from three to four times as numerous as the Naath despite the large numbers of them absorbed by the latter. This in itself is strong evidence that the

AIDAN SOUTHALL 467

Naath emerged from the Jieng. The peculiarity is that, having emerged, the Naath proceeded to incorporate Jieng to such an extent that they became again, in a secondary sense, more than half Jieng themselves. Of course, the Jieng also changed in the long process during which the Naath emerged and became dif- ferentiated from them and began to conquer and incorporate them. It is appropri- ate for this reason to call the common stock from which both Naath and Jieng are derived proto-Jieng.

This conclusion so far accords with Newcomer's, but he is prepared to assume that Jieng and Naath constituted 'one culture/people/society resembling present- day Dinka in social structure' as recently as four hundred years ago (I972: 7). Such an estimate is widely out, since McLaughlin's glottochronological analysis yielded a separation date of around A.D. 85 for the Nuer and Dinka languages (I967: 27). Whatever the pitfalls in glottochronological interpretation, as Glickman points out (I974: I42) this must err if anything on the side of underestimation in view of the intensive and prolonged interaction between the two groups, not to speak of the large-scale incorporation of the one by the other. Most of the accounts ofJieng incorporation by Naath refer to the last three hundred years, but there is plenty of other evidence to indicate that it was occurring very much earlier than that. Both Naath andJieng regard it as an immemorial process and Evans-Pritchard saw it as a structural relationship.

The example of Kir is particularly instructive and there may well be many others similar if less spectacular. Kir was born in a pumpkin near Lake No, ap- parently among the Jieng. He was reared by Rueng (presumably standing for the Rueng (Ruweng) group of Jieng, who are actually still to the north and west of Lake No). Kir killed his Jieng foster-brother and went first to live among the Bul Naath, who gave him a wife, then among the Leek Naath who gave him a second and then among the Gaawar Naath who gave him a third (Stigand I919: 224).

From his sons descend the lineages of the Gaatgankir clan which dominates the Jikany Naath. The Jikany eventually split, leaving one section in the west, while the other, led by the Gaatgankir, proceeded to expand eastwards, conquering and absorbing Jieng on a huge scale. This culminated in the nineteenth century, by which time the Gaatgankir were the largest of all Naath clans (Evans-Pritchard I956: 720) and the Eastern Jikany had pushed and settled right to the Sobat and beyond. This is a vivid and concise parable in a gourd, which tells how Jieng and Naath both killed and married one another and, most strikingly, how a group of essentially Jieng origin came to define itself as Naath and to be thus regarded so that, paradoxically, the most successful, large-scale, recent and well-documented case of Jieng incorporation by Naath was actually carried out by Naath of Jieng origin and thus the largest Naath clan was, in a sense, Jieng. It is the more re- markable that these Naath ofJieng origin were dil 'aristocratic' as Evans-Pritchard calls them (I940: I94, 2I4). It would seem that as Jaang connotes 'those who are raided' so Naath connotes 'those who raid'. Stigand points out that the story indi- cates that the Bul, Leek and Gaawar Naath (and also presumably the Rueng Jieng) are much older groups than the Gaatgankir. He estimates by generations that the Gaatgankir were on the Bahr el Ghazal 300 years ago and records the tradition that they migrated and fought the Shilluk, proceeded along the Nile till they were opposite to Melut, waded across because the river was very low that year, and

468 AIDAN SOUTHALL

fought the jieng on the east bank. Given the nature and function of genealogies, it is possible that these events occurred more than 300 years ago. They have the interest- ing implication that the Paloic Section of the northern Padang Jieng (or, of course, some other Jieng population) were already there.

How did this double process of inversion and reversion come about, whereby two ethnic categories became differentiated from one another out of a common background, largely defined by birth and ascription, symbolically expressed in language and myth, but also to some extent achieved, through successfully claim- ing and implementing one of the two polar identities which were most strikingly expressed in the contrast of orientation and of action involved in becoming either raider or raided ? In a brilliant incursion into strange territory, Sahlins (I96I) attri- buted it to the development of the special Naath type of segmentary lineage as an organization of predatory expansion. He argued that this was an adaptive mechan- ism developed by groups invading territory already occupied by others. But this in itself is no explanation because the Naath were no more newcomers than the Jieng. If the propensity to invade led to the development of segmentary lineages, there was no reason why the Naath should have invaded Jieng rather than the other way round, unless we invoke some other factor. The only conceivable other factor which can be suggested is differential ecology, including its demographic implica- tions.

II Ecology

The basin of the Bahr el Jebel and the Bahr el Ghazal indeed constitutes a very extraordinary ecological region. The country occupied by the Naath and Jieng forms a lop-sided trianglc, or an irregular T, with the crossbar formed by the Bahr el Arab, the Lol River and the Bahr el Ghazal flowing from west to east, joining the Bahr elJebel at Lake No where both continue east, and by the Sobat and its tributaries flowing into them from east to west, while the shaft of the T is formed by the Bahr el Jebel flowing north from Juba and Bor to Lake No. The Naath and Jieng spread 500 miles from the upper Bahr el Arab in the west to the Pibor and Akobo tributaries of the Sobat in the east on the Ethiopian border, and 300 miles from north of Lake No to Bor in the south.

This huge basin is bounded by the desert on the north, with the Nuba Mountains in the centre, the foothills of the Ethiopian plateau on the east, and by thick wood- land on the west and south. All these boundaries mark the possible limits of the way of life which the Jieng and Naath developed in the basin. The Nuba Mountains are totally unsuitable from this point of view and have sheltered very numerous and diverse small scale societies from ancient times (Nadel I947). On the northwest, the Baggara ('Cattle') Arabs occupy terrain similar to that oftheJieng in their southern- most movements, but extend much farther north into far more arid country, where they are nomadic rather than transhumant. North of the Bahr el Arab, between the Ngok Jieng and the southern limits of the Baggara, there is a stretch of heavily wooded country sheltering disease bearing insects. In recent times there have been epidemics of trypanosomiasis, rinderpest and bovine pleuro-pneumonia (Howell 195I: 242). To the west and south, the ironstone rim of the basin rises gradually in altitude and becomes more thickly forested, so that grazing is restricted and sleep-

AIDAN SOUTHALL 469

ing sickness and other cattle diseases are a deterrent. Similar disadvantages of in- creasingly heavy forest and cattle diseases discourage expansion eastwards into the Anuak country and the Ethiopian foothills (Evans-Pritchard I940: I32-3).

Within the basin, major variations, despite local particularities, can be most simply expounded as a differing balance between three types of terrain. The higher ground, which is usually above the level of flooding in the wet season, accommo- dates permanent houses and cattle byres, with cultivated gardens round the settle- ments and some grazing above the flood level. The lowest ground, the flood plains, near permanent rivers, lakes, swamps and water courses, comes into use at the height of the dry season. The intermediate land is the most varied and usually the most plentiful. It is often covered with perennial tufted grasses, such as the hypar- rhenia types, which are unpalatable to cattle when tall and dry, but when burnt after the rains produce a succulent regrowth, which later shrivels as the ground dries. In the flood plains there are various nutritive grasses, according to the depth and duration of flooding, which go on producing edible regrowth for a longer period after dry season burning, because the ground remains moister. On the high ground there is grazing after the rains begin, but it is often limited, and quickly exhausted when the rains end. Some higher ground settlements have to be aban- doned completely for lack of water in the dry season, whereas if there are springs, some elements of the population can remain. These three broad types of land can relate to one another in many different ways and provide the basis for many dif- ferent patterns of seasonal movement.

The generalised model may thus be stated schematically as:

A. Period of high flood. Grazing round settlements, limited in quantity, if insufficient, distant moves may be necessary.

B. Floods begin to subside, exposing intermediate ground. Tall grass burnt, producing suc- culent regrowth and expanded grazing.

C. Height of the dry season. Rivers at their lowest, intermediate ground parched. Cattle and humans near rivers, depending on swamp grazing, fishing and milk.

D. Rains begin. Planting maize and sorghum round village sites. Cattle move back over intermediate ground towards villages.

E. Rivers rise. Floods drive cattle to high ground. Back at stage A.

In the northeast, the furthest groups ofJieng occupy a very long tract of country on the east bank of the Nile and running inland from it, while immediately across from them on the other side are the Collo (Shilluk). Why should two fairly closely related groups face one another across a river in this way with contrasting ethnic identities and political institutions? Why did not the Jieng adopt centralised king- ship from the Collo, or why did the latter not conquer them ? In the absence of further research there is a beguilingly simple ecological answer. On the Collo side the high ground for permanent settlement is near to the river and the main stretch of intermediate land lies behind it. Each Collo community occupies a narrow corri- dor of territory at right angles to the Nile so that it can exploit the fishing and water resources of the river and the wet season grazing opportunities of the hinterland while living permanently settled between the two. These permanent settlements made it possible for a more centralised political system to emerge, with a single, pre-eminent politico-ritual figure at its head. On the Jieng bank the high ground suitable for wet season residence is much farther away from the river and lacking

470 AIDAN SOUTHALL

in dry season water supplies, so that to exploit the three essential types of terrain through the seasonal cycle, thejieng are forced into a transhumant pattern of move- ment which inhibits centralisation. They also depend far more on cattle than on fishing whereas with the Collo it is the other way round.

The Naath seem always to have occupied the very centre of this region, the triangle where the great rivers Bahr el Jebel and Bahr el Ghazal flow into one another, a niche with the most extreme ecological conditions, or almost total flood- ing in the wet season. The Jieng almost surround the Naath and may for long periods have done so completely, before the huge nineteenth-century expansion of the latter. Hence they occupy the periphery of the basin, with less extreme con- ditions: less extensive flooding in the wet season and smaller, more numerous, widely distributed but probably less reliable sources of water in the dry season. Besides occupying the edges of the open savannah country, in the centre of which were the Naath, they could also exploit the savannah forest on the ironstone rim of the basin. As I have noted, the whole vast region was hemmed in by thick wood- land, unsuitable for cattle, on the west and south, by desert on the north and by the wooded foothills of the Ethiopian mountains on the east.

Sahlins produced an exciting hypothesis, which waited eleven years to be either followed or challenged. He emphasised that the Naath system constituted a specially efficient ecological adaptation, but he did not use a detailed argument. Newcomer explicitly disavowed any environmental explanation, though characterising the Jieng ecology as 'easier' and requiring less frequent movement and less wide rang- ing transhumance. It is not correct that Jieng movement was less frequent. It was more frequent in the sense that Lienhardt claims three distinct annual moves for the Jieng as opposed to the Naath two. It would seem that Jieng movement was on the average less wide-ranging than Naath though the distances travelled by Jieng varied rather markedly. Glickman emphasises ecological explanation and makes a general contrast between Jieng and Naath, though he also quotes Evans-Pritchard's contrast between western and eastern Naath.

The two major flaws in all these arguments are that they do not relate ecological influence to specific times and places. Sahlins emphasises that the Jieng were there first, occupying empty country, and that the predatory segmentary lineage organ- isation of the Naath was an adaptive mechanism for the conquest of already occu- pied territory, but Newcomer rightly insists that neither group was intrusive. There is a certain homogeneity in the ecology of the whole region, but it is so vast, with such a large population and so many separately organised groups that we do not really know what the full range of particular local ecological adaptations is.

It is obvious that an explanation in terms of ecological stimulus or constraint can only have meaning if it is properly related to the time and place at which it oc- curred. We know that the eastern settlement of the Lou and easternJikany Naath is relatively recent, placed by most authors early in the nineteenth century. The mili- tary advantage of the Naath over the Jieng cannot be explained by the ecological contrast between the western Jieng described by Lienhardt and the eastern Naath described by Evans-Pritchard, for the latter is too recent and the two groups are not in contact with one another. It would have to be explained by contrast with those western Naath with whom some of the western Jieng are and have been long in contact. Furthermore, it does not make sense to explain the military inferiority

AIDAN SOUTHALL 471

of the western Jieng by the influence of their present ecology, for mnany groups of western Jieng have been pushed out of their previous ecological niches by the Naath, so that if that ecological stimulus provided an advantage the Jieng would have received it first. It is necessary to consider the influence of the ecology in more detail and the known and probable movements of different Jieng and Naath groups within it.

The best accounts of ecological adaptation are those of Evans-Pritchard,II con- trasting eastern with western Naath, LienhardtI2 contrasting western Jieng with eastern Naath and Howell'sI3 account of the Ngok Jieng north of the Bahr el Arab. Evans-Pritchard makes a progressive contrast (I940: II7-I8) between the western Naath (Bul, Leek, Jagei, WesternJikany), central Naath (Zeraf Island, Lak, Thiang, Gaawar) and eastern Naath (Lou, Eastern Jikany). From west to east the numerical and territorial size of 'tribes' (see note 8) gets larger and larger and the range of their seasonal movements more extensive. This continuum also corre- sponds to the sequence of Naath expansion from west to east. Although he gives some weight to the 'integrating effects of conquest and settlement' and to the absorption of large numbers of Jieng resulting from it, he relates it directly to the amount and distribution of high land available for wet season occupation. The eastern Naath can have a concentration of homesteads and villages on wide stretches of elevated land, which is not possible for the western Naath who have only small and 'sparsely distributed' ridges available for their villages. But in addition, the western Naath always have plenty of water, grazing and fishing, not far from the villages, even in the dry season and thus these wet season villages, isolated from one another by floods, can maintain their isolation and independence in their dry season camps also. But in eastern Naath drier conditions compel greater concentra- tion and wider seasonal movement, therefore several village communities have to mix with one another in the dry season, sharing water, pasture and fishing and so achieving greater spatial and also moral density. People of one section may have to cross territories of other sections to reach their camps, families may camp with kinsmen and affines from other villages, and distribute their cattle in several dif- ferent parts of the country to avoid total loss from rinderpest. All these things make a larger scale (though of course uncentralised) political organisation very advan- tageous. For the Naath there can neither be such autonomy and exclusiveness of small village groups as among the Anuak, nor such high density and developed political institutions as among the Shilluk (Evans-Pritchard I940: II 9).

The dry season does not impose such a wide range of movement nor such high concentration upon the Jieng, because their sources of water are more numerous and less far apart. In the wet season the whole population is not forced to concentrate in separate and isolated village communities because (being near the margins of the Savannah basin) they have pastures in unsettled Savannah forest, where the cattle can sometimes stay throughout the wet season, without being brought to the vil- lages at all. Savannah forest settlements may straggle for many miles at a stretch, with no visible boundaries between what are in fact distinct political communities.

These contrasts are complex and their significance is crucial. Western Naath have relatively small but dense and very cohesive groupings, corresponding to their small ridges, which are able to maintain much the same composition in the dry season because the necessary resources are plentiful and not too distant. The eastern

472 AIDAN SOUTHALL

Naath are able to concentrate larger populations in villages because their ridges are larger, and the scarcity of water in the dry season forces them to amalgamate into even larger groupings. It would appear that the western Jieng could easily have just as large wet season villages as the eastern Naath, because there is plenty of land above flood level, but in fact although they do indeed have large continuous areas of settlement they are not politically unified to the extent that those of the Naath are. In other words, political co-ordination is permitted by the ecology but not implemented, so this difference between Jieng and Naath cannot simply be attri- buted to ecology. But the eastern Naath do have to mobilise in larger groupings to make orderly use of sparse and distant dry season water supplies. The Jieng do not, because their water supplies are more abundant and less far apart. Perhaps it could be argued that the larger groupings required for the eastern Naath dry season en- courage larger political communities in wet season villages also whereas the lack of need for large scale dry season organisation discourages large-scale co-ordination of wet season villages among the jieng.

This may be so, but it is not only a question of differing levels of political co- ordination but of markedly different mechanisms and structures for achieving them. According to Evans-Pritchard's epoch-making account of segmentary lineage organisation (I940), the Naath tie all individuals and groups in the locality (whether they are Naath or Jieng by proximate origin) to a single dominant (dii) agnatic framework, not by all men belonging to it through descent, but by recognition of its leadership and co-ordinating functions. Through it they can mobilise effectively for political and military action within the pyramidal system of segmentary groupings balanced in complementary opposition. The Jieng have no such single agnatic core to the local community, but may have several in rather fluid and am- biguous or rival association (Lienhardt i958: I24-5, I33-4). At any one time, various sections of a number of different 'warrior' clans or lineages join together with a focus of common action and unity in their recognition of the ritual, super- natural and to some extent political leadership of what may be several different spearmaster lineages belonging to different dominant bith clans. Each of these may be recognised as superior but one may provide the dominant focus over the others, which one, however, may vary over time as the leadership of one becomes more effective than that of another. Within the spearmaster clans it is, of course, the pro- minent elders of particular local segments who provide leadership, one single per- sonage among them usually being pre-eminent in any particular locality. It is when one of these elderly leaders acquires particular sanctity, veneration and widespread recognition that he acquires some of the attributes of a divine king, who in the past might even by his own instructions have been ritually buried alive.

This generally accepted view requires radical modification by two points to which Gough's re-examination of Naath kinship (I97I) draws attention. She argues convincingly that the more consistent and unitary agnatic framework of Naath group structure, which has been taken by Sahlins and Lienhardt as the basis of Naath military superiority over the Jieng, was result rather than cause, or at least an accompanying cumulative process of accentuation. The conquering and expand- ing eastern Naath became much more clearly and prominently 'aristocratic' (dil) in the process of their successful conquest, incorporation and domination of the Jieng (Gough I97I: 90). They were able 'by fact or fiction to establish a single

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agnatic clan as strongly dominant in most sections' (even, one might add, when such conquering clans themselves appear to be of a more remote Jieng origin according to their oral tradition). 'On the other hand, agnation seems to have be- come a less constant and pervasive principle of organization for the conquered, captured, immigrant or otherwise absorbed Dinka andfor many Nuer [my emphasis] who do not belong to the dominant clan in each tribe. In the case of such persons, who "greatly outnumber the dominant clanspeople", residential ties, which are based on cognatic or affinal ties to segments of the dominant clan, far outweigh agnatic ties in the establishment of day to day obligations and loyalties' (Gough I97I: 90). Furthermore, 'the dominant lineages of a tribe, whose segmentation in theory follows the lines of territorial segmentation, are seldom all of one clan' (I97I: 88-9). Evans-Pritchard's ethnography shows that this diversity of descent was true at all levels of segmentation: in primary, secondary and tertiary sections and also in villages. This is not the same point as the 'E.-P. paradox' referred to by Sahlins (I965) but it is related to it.

Thus, in the very characteristic which has usually been thought to distinguish Naath fromJieng social organisation most significantly, the distinction turns out to be largely illusory. The distinction may have more validity in the case of those dominant Naath lineages whose status and situation is the direct product of the most recent expansion of the Naath to the east in the nineteenth century. The ad- justment to the effects of this expansion was by no means complete at the time of Evans-Pritchard's fieldwork, and these Naath were probably more divergent from the rest than they would have been if the process of adjustment and digestion had been able to continue (that is, in the absence of colonial conquest and interference). But the western Naath, on the other hand, are accordingly seen to be much more like their westernJieng neighbours than has usually been realised, not only in their relative lack of unitary agnatic structure, but that, as we shall argue later, their leopardskin priests, who resemble the Jieng spearmasters in many respects, are like them also in usually belonging to the dominant clan (Howell I954: 29), unlike the situation in eastern Naath where Evans-Pritchard considered that they usually be- longed to marginal, neutral groups.

The military superiority of the eastern Naath cannot be explained by their ecology because the Jieng occupied their country before them and therefore were subject to the same ecological influence before them. The same is true of the Naath in Zeraf Island. Nor can the military inferiority of the western Jieng be explained by their present ecology, because they moved into the territory they now occupy from further east under Naath pressure. In fact we are forced to assume that when Jieng groups occupied Zeraf Island and the eastern country before the Naath ex- pelled or swallowed them, the Jieng adaptation to this ecology was not the same as that of the Naath subsequently. For, as is well recognised, the particular adaptation of a group to a specific natural environment depends on the particular goals, values, organisation and capacity of that group at the time when it enters that environ- ment.

The clue to the initial ecological stimulus is provided by Evans-Pritchard's description of the special western Naath environment:

The Southern borders of Western Nuerland fringe ironstone country, likewise covered with savannah forest. As a rule when the rivers are in flood they have no banks and the country

474 AIDAN SOUTHALL

lying on either side of them is swamp threaded with wide lagoons, often running parallel to the main channel. This is especially the case with the Bahr el Jebel and the greater part of the Bahr el Ghazal and the Bahr el Arab, theJebel and the Ghazal being united by surface water in the rainy season. The Bahr el Zeraf is bounded by swamp to a lesser degree and the lower reaches of the Sobat not at all (1940: 54, my emphasis).

This Jebel-Ghazal triangle, which lies at the very centre of the vast savannah basin and is the most flooded part of it, is precisely where the original Naath home- land was, according to all the evidence. It appears forbidding to Europeans, and certainly provided the most extreme ecological conditions in the whole region. Yet at some point groups of proto-Jieng must have moved into it, adjusted to it and prospered, within the limits of their technology. As Evans-Pritchard remarks (I940: 5I):

from a European's point of view Nuerland has no favourable qualities, unless its severity be counted as such, for its endless marshes and wide savannah plains have an austere, monotonous charm. It is throughout hard on man and beast, being for most of the year either parched or a swamp. But Nuer think that they live in the finest country on earth and, it must be ad- mitted, for herdsmen their country has many admirable features.

Once they could make the necessary adaptations to it they enjoyed some major ad- vantages, such as unlimited water and magnificent pastures. We must assume that the population of this corner of the country grew, reached optimum point and passed it, prompting efforts to expand. This point may have been reached a millen- nium or more ago, for there can be no precise evidence and it was probably a slow process over centuries. Meanwhile, other proto-Jieng groups had moved into the Zeraf triangle and farther up the Nile to the south towards Shambe and Bor. There may have been other groups on the West, perhaps masked by laterJieng migration, and the proto-Lwo must have been somewhere to the southeast. As time passed, minor dialectal differences could already have begun to develop between different widely separated groups of proto-Jieng. At least, it is quite plausible, as all the oldest Naath tradition suggests, that this should have been the first niche in the whole region to reach overcapacity and hence also larger population groupings and organ- isation, and to attempt aggressive expansion.

Howell points out (personal communication) that, in fact, there is only a single stretch of higher ground in the Jebel-Ghazal triangle and that in exceptional years of very high flood the available grazing would be severely limited. Such occur- rences would have forced the population to break out and invade neighbouring areas. Outbreaks of cattle disease could have been another cause, as they have been observed to lead one group to attack another to keep its diseased cattle away, or to invade a third group in order to escape from the second. Since in most years the very well-watered country in the centre of the basin had definite advantages to those who had adapted to its conditions, the nearest country desirable for expansion from the Jebel-Ghazal triangle would seem to be the Zeraf triangle immediately to the east, but the Bahr elJebel is very hard to cross along that stretch, and anyhow there is no high ground near to its east bank-the high ground is yet further east. It is likely, therefore, that the expansion out oftheJebel-Ghazal triangle led to a move southwards, down the west bank of the Bahr el Jebel, towards the country now occupied by the Nuong Naath. On reaching farther south, towards Shambe, the Bahr el Jebel is easier to cross, and so Naath expansion probably spilled across the

AIDAN SOUTHALL 475

river eastwards at that point, as well as pushing further south. Since the Zeraf triangle is so narrow there, it would have been natural after crossing to move back north into the country now occupied by the Gaawar, Thiang and Lak. This whole move was probably in process over a very considerable period of time.

I assume as a plausible hypothesis that as the occasional high flooding of the Jebel-Ghazal triangle, or rare outbreaks of cattle disease, or other precipitating causes, combined with gradual population growth, forced the proto-Jieng of that restricted corner into aggression against their neighbours to the south, and sub- sequently east and again north into the Zeraf triangle, the contrast between attacker and attacked led to a growing perception of distinct identity which led eventually to the socio-linguistic differentiation of Naath from Jieng. It is quite possible that the terms naath and jieng were already present in the language as alternative desig- nations for human beings, just as today jieng contains a number of other alternative terms, such as koc, thai, orji (Nebel I948: I6I). Such a situation constantly arises, as with dhanu and ng'ato for 'person' among the southern Nilotes.

The Jebel-Ghazal triangle probably became the most densely populated area in the whole basin, relative to its topography (Evans-Pritchard I940: III-I2, II7). Its population had nowhere to go to relieve the pressure without invading the terri- tory of neighbours. Furthermore, the restrictive topography of their extreme ecolo- gical niche may have imposed upon their segmentary organisation a somewhat greater degree of co-ordination, and a superior pattern of mobilisation, which gave them an initial advantage over their neighbours and encouraged them to continue the aggression once started, still further prompted by the same set of causes which had precipitated it in the first place. As they expanded into new territory they inevitably began to capture, absorb and incorporate some of their fellow Jieng whom they were defeating in the process. Thus the emergent distinction between attacker and attacked was reinforced and perpetuated by that between captor and captive, which led on to the broader one between dominant and subject or in- corporated groups.

While in looking back speculatively at the conceptual emergence of the new, distinctive Naath identity there is a temptation to see it as a sudden flash of lightning, accompanying the initial aggression, it is unlikely to have been like that. Forms of segmentary opposition and raiding must always have been present, though raids may have been few and far between while the population remained very sparse. The crystallisation of the perceived contrast between raiders and raided, as attaching in a special sense to the relations between specific neighbouring populations (whose differing demographic and ecological situations had precipitated it), may have been a long and gradual process, during which the distinction between Naath and Jieng would have been fluctuating, irregular and by no means clearcut. Thus we are bound to envisage the dynamic conditions of the emergence of a relationship which Evans-Pritchard was content to see as structural and seemingly eternal.

While the general expansion of the Jieng was towards the periphery and there- fore gives the impression of progressive flight before the expansion of the most cen- tral Naath, much of it was, in fact, directly prompted by the demographic ex- pansion of the Jieng themselves and not by immediate Naath attack. Although Naath andJieng oral tradition bears symbolic testimony to their ultimate common origin, its empirical spatial content refers to the later period when Naath and Jieng

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were already cognitively and spatially distinct. By that time, the nuclear area of Jieng occupation was around Shambe, at the southern end of the Zeraf triangle, just as the Jebel-Ghazal triangle was the likely nuclear area of Naath emergence. Jieng groups which moved east, northeast and far to the north, opposite the Collo, and those who moved west and northwest, retain recollections of their move from the region around Shambe. Naath see the Jieng country as a fringe of their own, while Jieng see Naath country as a wet enclave in the midst of them.I4

The growing sense of distinctive identity, at the cognitive level, and the growing division at the social level resulting from habitually successful aggression, provided a situation which would in turn have encouraged a more marked differentiation over the centuries in both language and social institutions. One general expression of such increasing differentiation must have been the emergent contrast in the pattern of co-ordination and scale of organisation between wet season and dry season villages and cattle camps, already described by Evans-Pritchard, Lienhardt and Howell (among others) and further emphasised in their arguments by Sahlins and Glickman. This change, in its first beginnings, may have been stimulated by the extreme ecology of the Jebel-Ghazal triangle, but once it began it gave those affected by it a slight edge of military advantage over their neighbours. Once they began to exercise this advantage they would have been prompted to carry it fur- ther. In some such way did the Naath gradually emerge from the Jieng.

The chief puzzle in explaining the present distribution of Naath and Jieng from a likely sequence of past events is that the most impressive Naath expansion appears to have been eastwards from the Jebel-Ghazal triangle into the Zeraf Island and right across to the Sobat and beyond, while the major path of Jieng movement appears to have been in the opposite direction. This may be explained by the fact that most of the eastward expansion of the Naath is much more recent than the westward expansion of the Jieng. The following considerations are relevant. All authorities are agreed that the final occupation of the Sobat by the Eastern Jikany Naath and of the country west of them by the Lou occurred early in the nineteenth century, but it was not by any means the first time that Naath had raided out in that direction. Jackson reports a great upheaval in the fifteenth century or earlier (I923: 74) in which the Naath swept across from the Bahr el Jebel and Lake No across as far as Nasser on the Sobat and that in the eighteenth century or later there was another explosion in which the Naath split into two divisions following different routes and raided as far east and north as the Shilluk capital at Fashoda, driving out the reth, but then returning to settle between Nasser and the borders of Ethiopia. It is hard to assess the evidence for this, but all authorities agree that the Naath did make very long-distance raids, sometimes staying at distant bases and continuing to raid from them even for several years before returning home. ThusJieng groups far away from normal Naath territory were none the less subject to their raiding, but raids were not the same as permanent settlement, although they might eventually lead to it. It seems, then, that the final eastward expansion of the Naath was only the culmination of a very long process which both Naath and Jieng regard as im- memorial and which was brought to an end by the colonial conquest. This eastward expansion absorbed huge numbers of Jieng in its course, so that as we have seen (Evans-Pritchard I933: 5, 53) more than 5o per cent. of the Naath east of the Nile are really of Jieng origin. Evans-Pritchard also considers that most of the country

AIDAN SOUTHALL 477

east of the Nile was still occupied byjieng in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although particular raids were sudden and spectacular, the process of settlement and incorporation was progressive and gradual. There is thus no inconsistency be- tween the impression of slow drift and that of rapid conquest, as Glickman (I972: 588) suggests, since both seem to have occurred.

It seems reasonable to assume that the main direction of earlier Naath pressure, perhaps for many centuries since they first began to differentiate themselves from the Jieng, was southwards, into the country now occupied by the Dok and Nuong Naath. Pressure thus built up on the southernJieng towards Shambe and Bor. This pressure split many Jieng groups in two (Luac, Ngok, Gok, Twij). Some of these did manage to break through to the north and east. They were later cut off entirely from the rest of the Jieng by the eastward expansion of the Lou, which also drove parts of the Rut, Thoi and Luac Jieng east out of Zeraf Island and probably forced the Padang Jieng even further north to where they are now on the White Nile opposite the Collo (Shilluk). But either the largest number ofJieng, or at least those groups which later expanded most, moved westward from Bor and Shambe rather than north. They could not expand northeast because of the waterless country between the Nile and the Pibor and the latter was also fought over by the Anuak and Beir (Evans-Pritchard I940: 62). Nor could they move east because of the warlike Beir, who had migrated down the Omo River from Ethiopia to Lake Rudolf and then, under probable pressure from the Eastern Nilotes (Toposa, Jiye and Turkana) moved west to the upper Pibor (Lewis I972: 22). They looked on the Jieng with contempt (I972: 6) and are said to have driven the last of them from the Pibor tributaries three or four generations ago. This strengthens Lienhardt's tra- dition (I96I: I87) of hostile encounter between the Twij Jieng and the Ber Ajou, although he was not sure of the identification with Beir. This Twij tradition is particularly interesting because they are now far to the northwest near Bahr el Arab though their other section is still east of the Nile near Bor. In Jieng tradition the Beir are orphans descended from a pregnant woman whom they had driven out and hence they always harassed the jieng in revenge (Anon I92I: sI). The Beir may thus have precipitated the major long-term migratory movement of the Jieng west and northwest from Bor.

Nor could the Jieng move further south for that would have brought them into forest unsuitable for their savannah transhumance and dangerous to their cattle, and in any case it was already occupied by other peoples such as the Mandari and Moru. The southernmost group of Jieng, who were faced with this decision, were the Aliab, who have the reputation of being the toughest of all the Jieng.I5 They have the distinction of having killed Major C. H. Stigand, the colonial administrator of their area, in I919 (Evans-Pritchard I940: I). Government reports record fighting in Bor district in I9I7, resulting from the occupation of Mandari grazing byjieng- presumably the Aliab. So the Jieng went west-northwest, always unable to go south, or further west, because they were already on the edge of the best savannah country. Keeping thus within the 'ironstone rim' (Lienhardt I956: 97) they went on, over an unknown period, till they reached the Jur River, then the Lol and finally the Bahr el Arab. Thus occurred the somewhat perplexing counterpoint in which, at different periods as I would argue, the Jieng moved west northwest after being pushed south, whereas further north the Naath moved from west to east.

478 AIDAN SOUTHALL

The Naath move culminated in the early nineteenth century, but, as we have seen, they may have been raiding occasionally far to the east and north for centuries before. Thejieng move from Bor to the Bahr el Arab must have been older, as well as continuing for a long period. If the Ngok were north of the Bahr el Arab by the eighteenth century and if the Rek reached the Jur River three hundred years ago (Howell I95I) the process probably began some centuries before. Myths such as those of Aiwel constantly play upon river crossings, which certainly must have occurred many times in this migration. This theme is obviously of deep symbolic importance also. It is not surprising that in this way oral tradition seems to reflect the long move westwards from Bor, but carries little hint of the movement south to Bor under Naath pressure which must have preceded it. The latter probably lies beyond the time period to which most oral tradition refers. As with other re- lated peoples, oral tradition passes from the doings of legendary beings to recollec- tions which may include more historical content but are restricted to the proximate time period and some of the most striking natural features associated with it. Alur oral tradition refers almost exclusively to events perceived as having occurred since their ancestors (like the Jieng further north) crossed the Nile from east to west (Southall I954: I48). The beings and doings reported from before that benchmark are primarily legendary and symbolic in character.I6

We are dealing with the intricate combination of certain distinctive conditions of the natural environment in a dynamic, that is to say evolving and adaptive, inter- action with a particular level of technology and with specific cognitive orientations and sets of values, which develop in feedback loops, partly stimulated (or con- strained) by environmental and technological conditions and partly influencing them in turn. Hunters and fishermen could have occupied parts of this environment in sparse groups which, in the absence of cattle, would not have been forced into larger organisation or into confrontation with one another. Peoples with more ad- vanced technology, such as the peoples of ancient Nubia, would have been repelled by this environment and been diverted into other directions such as that south- westward towards Lake Chad. But people who moved into this terrain with cattle would have been forced to develop a quite different adaptation from that appro- priate to the drier country further north.

It is useful to consider briefly the wider setting of time and space within which the first settlement of proto-Jieng in the region and the subsequent emergence from them of the Naath must have occurred. As we have seen, this means going back beyond the reach of oral tradition, yet, in so far as the latter provides any evidence of group movements, or of evolving institutions, it must also be considered if we are to make sense of the present disposition of groups and their differences of cul- ture and social organisation.

III Prehistory and oral tradition

In a very long time-period of three millennia or so it must be assumed that there has been a general southward movement of negro peoples. Diverse archaeological evidence suggests that they once occupied areas much farther north in the Sahara region than at present. The final desiccation from 2500 B.C. onwards may have

AIDAN SOUTHALL 479

driven some north, to be absorbed in other groups, and the rest south. It was the period in which domestic cattle and sorghum probably reached this region. There was pressure from Pharaonic military and slaving expeditions and from the Nubian kingdoms and finally by the Arabs during the present millennium. But it is un- likely that this pressure reached very strongly as far as the Jebel-Ghazal confluence and there may well have been a sparse population of fishing and cattlekeeping proto-Nilotes in that special ecological region for the last two or three millennia. The mysterious Fung outposts of Nubian state culture were not far to the north- west, at least from about the sixteenth or seventeenth century, while the Arab occupation by the Baggara (Henderson I959: 52) west of the Nile in Kordofan seems to have been later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

We have to assume that the very beginnings of the linguistic divergence of Naath fromJieng go back at least two millennia. It has to be remembered also that the most closely related peoples are the Shilluk-Lwo and that their ancestors must already have diverged from the Jieng-Naath somewhat earlier. But they must at one time have been in the same general region or near it. Recent attempts by oral historians to construct convincing accounts of Lwo migrations raise awkward problems in relation to the Naath and Jieng. For example, Cohen's (I968) picture of Nuer, Dinka, and Lwo as three families all settled near thejunction of the Bahr el Jebel and Bahr el Ghazal, with the main migrations of the Lwo beginning in about the fifteenth century cannot possibly be reconciled with other factors in the situ- ation. The divergence of Lwo from Jieng must have begun very long before that, and would be easier to understand if it was the counterpart of some degree of physical separation. It is little more than guesswork, limited by certain logical con- straints. Perhaps in the first arrival of Nilotes in this region, several millennia before, the proto-Lwo had settled further southeast from thejieng, perhaps along the Sobat or down towards Lake Rudolf. Some of them may have received influences from peoples of southwestern Ethiopia such as the Kaffa. The most economical reasons to assume for further movement are, as usual, growth of population or pressure from other groups, with famines as a periodic stimulus. The Lwo may have been forced to move by pressure from the Eastern Nilotes coming from further north. Some Lwo may have turned westwards to the Nile and met thejieng there between Bor and Shambe, as suggested by the not altogether convincing interpretation'7 of the Lwel (Lewel) as Lwo (Stubbs & Morison 1938: 251; Lienhardt I96I: 177).

They would then have moved on westward, founding the Jur-Luo settlement round Wau and most of them continuing on, skirting round the areas already occupied by Jieng and Naath, moving up to the north of them and turning back eastwards till they reached the Nile near Malakal and established the Shilluk settle- ment there, with others still proceeding on southeast, establishing the Anuak settlements and some still proceeding further south towards Uganda and perhaps eventually mingling again with those who may have gone directly south after the first pressure from the Eastern Nilotes. It is only in such a hypothetical way that one could agree with Jackson, who thought that the ancestors of Nuer, Dinka, Atwot and Shilluk were all at one time congregated round Shambe (1923: 59-107).

He does not give any convincing evidence for this, and appears to refer to much too recent a period.

It is more important to ask whether the detailed oral traditions and myths of

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origin of the Jieng and Naath groups themselves, as partially reported by non- Jieng writers, can throw any light on the problem of the divergence. Many Jieng traditions point to a migratory dispersion at some point from the region of Bor or Shambe, on the east side of the Nile some two hundred miles south of the Jebel- Ghazal confluence. This is reported for the Padang in the far northeast, the Twij (Bedri 1939: i25-9), the Ngok north of the Bahr el Arab (Howell I95I: 242), the Ruweng, Rek and Agar (from whom the Rek are said to be derived) and a number of other groups.

All these traditions seem to be associated with the Jieng culture hero Aiwel (Aiwel Dit, Aiwel Longar).'8 Bedri (1948: 40) says the Padang left Bor some 200 years ago under a son of Aiwel, passing through the Zeraf Island on the way, meeting the Maban and finding the Fung across the Sobat already broken by the Shilluk. On the other hand, Stubbs and Morison (1938: 25i) claim that the Rek, after leaving Bor and fighting the Lwel and driving them as far asJur, went on still further west as much as 300 years ago. Bedri's date seems much too recent and that of Stubbs and Morison surprisingly long ago. No evidence is given for any of these dates, so they need not be taken too seriously. They are probably derived from the misinterpretation of genealogies. A more convincing date is that the Ngok reached Kordofan from Bor at least in time to meet the Baggara Arabs by 1745 (Howell 1951: 241; Henderson 1939: 52).

Other important evidence, unfortunately fragmentary, comes from some of the great Jieng shrines. These are most closely associated with Deng, or Deng Dit (Great Deng), the rain spirit of the Jieng who is very close to Divinity itself, so that Stubbs equated Deng with Nyalich (1934: 243) and the Naath equated Deng with Kwoth (Howell, in Lienhardt I96I: 98) which is the Naath designation of God (Evans-Pritchard i956: 49), as well as spirit and any spiritual being. But Deng also has innumerable 'refractions', is often the spirit possessing great prophets, as well as the personal name of many ordinary men. The most important shrine of which we have an account is that described by Howell (in Lienhardt I96I: 97-103). It is called Luak Deng'9 'the cattle-byre of God' (Luak Kwoth for the Naath) and is now in the country of the Gaawar, for the Naath overran it four or five genera- tions ago (I96I: 98), although some Rut Jieng are still living around it while the main body of Rut had to migrate more than fifty miles further north to escape from the Naath. The manifestations of Deng and Aiwel are so multifarious that there is a great deal of overlap between them and in fact Luak Deng is associated with them both, but it still seems correct to state that while Deng is most essentially a 'free divinity' (one of the four most important of this category: Lienhardt I96I:

56), Aiwel is a much more human culture hero, though with many supernatural attributes. Deng is sometimes represented as the supreme divinity, sometimes as the son of Nhialic (the sky, and in Lienhardt's view more suitably the supreme God and Creator-I96I: 29) or the son of Garang, who in other contexts is the son of Deng. The principal spirit in the shrine of Luak Deng is that of Deng Garang, who 'originally came from the north, but travelled far south into Twij Dinka country, accompanied by Aiwel Longar' (I96I: I02). While the shrine is particularly associated with the Rut Jieng who were driven out by the Naath, the Thoi Jieng were in occupation of the country before the shrine was established.

I suggest that this story indicates that the establishment of the shrine of Luak

AIDAN SOUTHALL 48I

Deng refers to a time before, perhaps long before, the dispersion of groups west- wards from Bor, hence Aiwel's journey on southwards to Twij, which is in the Bor region. Deng Garang's arrival from the north also suggests an ancient time at which Jieng were living in the north, presumably in the Zeraf triangle as well as in the country to the east of it. This is further supported by the story that Aiwel also moved west from Luak Deng into the Zeraf Island and established the pyramid Pwom Aiwel and Jumbiel (Lienhardt I96I: 102). The fact that Pam Deng (the rain- stone of Deng) consists of granite which apparently could only have come from the Zeraf Hills (Howell in Lienhardt I96I: ioi) is further confirmatory evidence.

Lienhardt (I96I: I8I commenting on Bedri 1948: 44) thinks that Aiwel could 'reflect some historical acceptance of a new cult' and Howell (in Lienhardt I96I: IO3) suggests that Deng and Aiwel could represent 'two distinct sets of Dinka peoples who have in the course of history migrated from different areas and merged.' It is not at all clear what this could mean. If they migrated from different areas they would none the less have had to come from some ultimately common source.

It is also hard to see how Deng Garang and Aiwel Longar represent two distinct groups when Howell says the former is almost always in one way or another associated with the latter (Lienhardt I96I: 102). If anything is symbolised here it would seem to be the fusion of the two. But Aiwel is above all the ancestor or mythical hero and symbolic charter of the dominant bith Spearmaster clans. It is therefore essential to remember that even if these traditions do carry a historical as well as a symbolic message, it must in the first place be the history of the migrations of the Spearmaster clans and lineages and nothing can be assumed for certain as to what was happening at the same time to the kic 'warrior ' clans, which were actually the majority, except that it is reasonable to assume that then, as now, Spearmaster groups formed the cores of larger populations which they led. If indeed two dis- tinct sets ofJieng are involved, it seems most likely that the two sets are the bith and kic and the Aiwel myths may reflect the spread of dominant Spearmaster groups among the rest of the Jieng population. This has far-reaching implications. For example, if we say the Ngok reached Kordofan before 1745 since the Baggara found them there then, we do not really know whether the Spearmasters were al- ready there or came later. In many ways the spread and elaboration of the Spear- master institution into its present form must be seen as itself a reaction to Naath raiding.

The rich mythology of the Jieng contrasts strikingly with the relative lack of it among the Naath. Evans-Pritchard states that they 'can hardly be said to have a creation myth' (i956: 6) and he finds that many details in the versions given by Jackson (1923: 70-7I) and Fergusson (1921: 148-9) are clearly foreign, either Dinka (Jieng) or Shilluk or even Atuot or Mandari. He finds Crazzolara's account (1933) closest to Nuer (Naath) tradition, in which the tamarind tree itself was the mother of men, who either emerged from a hole at its foot or dropped off its branches like ipe fruits. But what is of the greatest importance is that this tree was in the Jagei

country, that is, in the same nuclear area of the Jebel-Ghazal triangle that we have dealt with before. 'Sons of Jagei' is a term for the Naath as a whole (Evans- Pritchard i956: 74). Furthermore, this western part of the Naath country was called naath cieng, the homeland, as opposed to the east which is naath doar, the bush

482 AIDAN SOUTHALL

(Evans-Pritchard 1933: 6, 21). The tree of creation is also spoken of as being on the bank 'of a great water'. According to MacDermot (1972) 'the story of Latjor states clearly that the Nuer originally came from the west.'

Both Jieng and Naath agree on the immemorial and predestined quality of their complementary opposition. The Naath have a myth, like that of Jacob and Esau, which explains and justifies it. God promised his old cow to Jieng and its young calf to Naath. Jieng came to God by night imitating Naath's voice and got the calf When God found that he had been tricked he was angry and charged Naath to avenge the injury by raiding Jieng's cattle to the end of time (Evans-Pritchard 1934: 3; 1940: 125). The same story was reported from theJieng, by the keeper of the shrine at Luang Deng (ibid.) and also by Bedri from the Padang-Jieng (1948: 47). So thejieng live by robbery and the Naath by war (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 126).

IV Structural likeness and difference

The polar identities of Naath and Jieng came to be expressed through contrast- ing sets of institutions, types of organisation and political co-ordination. Despite the contrast, the two types clearly seem to be derivatives of a common prototype when carefully analysed. Within each polarity was an internal dual division into bith and kic for the Jieng and dil and rul for the Naath. Lienhardt glosses the Jieng divisions as Spearmasters and Warriors. Evans-Pritchard calls the dil and rul aristocrats and strangers. The bith/kic duality is a ritual and symbolic rather than a behavioural one, for members of Spearmaster and Warrior clans are equally involved in fighting when occasion arises. The Spearmasters are senior in rank to the Warriors, and their most successful elders, whose efficacy is derived from primogeniture, act as priests, arbitrators, controllers and initiators of age-sets and revered leaders who provide the main focus of Jieng political unity. Spearmaster and Warrior clans or sections of them retain their special status wherever they are settled. The dil/rul distinction of the Naath is now quite different. Dil are simply members of the clan which is con- sidered to 'own' the territory in which they live and to supply it with political leadership. If dil move into the territory of another clan they are not dil but rul 'strangers'. Some Jieng have a similar distinction between koic and pancieng, as Howell records for the northern Ngok (1951: 249), which does not correspond to bith and kic, though most bith would be koic and most pancieng would be kic. The bith and kic categories have an immemorial appearance, as many cognitive and structural polarities do, especially when they are ascribed by birth. But as I have tried to explain how they could have arisen from the reaction of emergent groups to one another and to ecological variations, it is of extreme importance to note that bith status could also be achieved, as Lienhardt found in the case of Padiangbar (I96I: 145-6)

The Jieng Masters of the Fishing Spear, or for short Spearmasters,20 have many similarities with the Naath Leopard Skin Priests, but also differ in significant re- spects. There is plenty of evidence scattered about the ethnography to demon- strate that Spearmasters and Leopardskin Priests are fundamentally the same and if we can explain how they came to operate so differently we can explain the essential difference between Jieng and Naath. The Spearmasters are the overwhelmingly

AIDAN SOUTHALL 483

dominant ritual specialists of the Jieng, whereas there are several other ritual roles among the Naath, but it is difficult to telljust how the latter related together or how frequently several of these roles might be played by the same individual. In fact, the Naath also had Spearmasters since their gwan biedh is a precise linguistic counter- part of the Jieng bany bith. But the gwan biedh had only a minor role in fishing battues (Evans-Pritchard i956: 74). Furthermore, the Naath Leopardskin Priest actually used a fishing spear in sacrifice (i956: 293). The Leopardskin Priests are also seen as figurative mothers' brothers to the groups they serve (i956: 293) just as theJieng Masters of the Fishing Spear are, but it is significant that it is the domi- nant dil lineages of the Naath who see the Leopardskin Priests as mothers' brothers, while the dominant Spearmaster lineages of the Jieng see themselves as mothers' brothers to the 'Warrior' lineages they serve. The great Naath prophet Ngundeng was himself a Leopardskin Priest also (Evans-Pritchard 1940: I85) but Evans- Pritchard sees him as rather Jieng in quality, as he does the gwan biedh. In fact, Naath Leopardskin Priests are usually rul (strangers) and this means that they could very well be and sometimes were in fact of Jieng origin (Evans-Pritchard i956: 292-3). On the other hand, among the Jieng, all the really great prophets were also Masters of the Fishing Spear (Lienhardt I96I: 74) and some prophets wore leopard- skins (I96I: 268), though the leopardskin was more specifically associated with men possessed by the spirit Garang (I96I: 84). Evans-Pritchard insists on a clear con- ceptual distinction between Naath priests and prophets, but it is hard to tell what this amounted to in practice.

The fishing spear itself was of enormous importance and extraordinary value to bothJieng and Naath. Iron was so scarce until recently that war spear-blades were most often made from horn or bone, but the leather socket used would not have held in water so that all fishing spears had to have iron blades, and were traditionally valued at six head of cattle (Howell 1947). Evans-Pritchard remarks that it is always hard to tell whether features common to Naath and Jieng are derived from com- mon background culture or to the huge absorption ofJieng by Naath. In the case of the Spearmasters and the Leopardskin Priests I consider that it is basically the former, sometimes accentuated by the latter:

One may ask ... why it is that the title of spiritual leaders in Dinkaland is taken from the fishing-spear (bith) instead of from the fighting-spear ... Whereas among the Nuer the fighting-spear is the symbol of the clan because what is being symbolized is exclusiveness and opposition, among the Dinka the fishing-spear is the symbol of spiritual leadership because what is being symbolized is inclusiveness and unity (Evans-Pritchard 19$6: 246).

Jieng Spearmasters were the most revered personages in Jieng society and most leadership functions were fused in them. They provided the main ritual and politi- cal focus and were the pivots of the whole social structure. Naath Leopardskin Priests were also revered for their sanctity and supernatural powers and their arbi- trational, sanctuary and peace-making functions were vital to the system, yet they had an essentially individual rather than corporate status and were marginal to Naath Society. Their stranger status was a guarantee of their neutrality, which was basic to their manner of operation. Evans-Pritchard contrasts the stranger origin of Leopardskin priests with the fact that other Naath ritual specialists (wut ghok, kuaar ghok, ring ghok) were always 'true' (dil) Naath (i956: 300), though Butt says they too were usually strangers (1952: 154). Evans-Pritchard thought that the role of the

484 AIDAN SOUTHALL

Leopardskin priest had been seriously undermined during the previous two decades (1934: 44), in which case their similarity to the Spearmasters might have seemed greater before then. The 'Warrior' Clans of the Jieng were supposed to supply community leaders for actual fighting, though some authorities hold that war leaders were only prominent among those Jieng close to the Naath border (Butt 1952: 133). In any case it was still the Spearmasters who led theJieng in war, bless- ing the warriors and praying for success beforehand. Strangely enough, Evans- Pritchard also emphasises that prophets made sacrifices and sang hymns 'before Nuer set offfor any large-scale fighting against strangers' (i956: 45), yet from other passages he makes plain his view that Naath prophets were a recent phenomenon of Jieng derivation, even in the case of the great prophets who, very much in Spearmaster fashion, led Naath resistance to the Arabs and the British. It might be said that the most important community leadership for the Naath was secular and purely political, provided by the 'bulls' who were expected to arise by demon- strated achievement from among the dominant (dil) lineages, whereas Jieng com- munity leadership, also from their dominant (bith) lineages, was fundamentally ritual and supernatural, though of course it served political ends.

Beidelman has re-examined (1971: 375) Evans-Pritchard's account of Naath priests and prophets, demonstrating reverently that Evans-Pritchard's interpre- tations are full of inconsistencies and that his early, less reflective writings are often more convincing than his later interpretations. Evans-Pritchard insisted on the sharp distinction between priests and prophets, whereas his ethnography demonstrates so much overlap and convergence that Beidelman justifiably concludes that priests may become prophets and prophets priests, the former in order to increase their authority through charisma, the later to confirm and legitimate their power through routinised status. Thus the same individual was, in some of the most important in- stances, both priest and prophet, being at the same time kuaar muon (earth priest), kuaar twac (leopardskin priest), probably kuaar thoain (serval priest) and ruic (spokes- man) as well as gwan kwoth (owner of spirit, i.e. prophet).

Evans-Pritchard interprets these numerous ritual roles as much more distinct and independent from one another than they seem to have been, but it is possible that in the eastern Naath situation which his account reflects, the politicisation of leadership in the 'bulls' of conquering lineages did indeed produce an atonisation of these roles by comparison with western Naath, and westernJieng as described by Lienhardt. Thus he says that age-sets are controlled in each tribe by a wut ghok (Man of Cattle) yet notes that in western Naath (the nuclear area) it is sometimes done by a prophet (1940: 250). In the Jikany tradition (and we must always re- member the paradox of their Jieng derivation), the ancestors of dominant lineages gave leopard skins to their maternal uncles to serve as tribal priests, so that they had a mediatory position in relation to all the structurally opposed dominant lineages who were 'sister's sons' to them (Evans-Pritchard i956: 293; Beidelman 1971: 389).

On the basis of this evidence we may say that in both eastern Naath and western Jieng there is a symbolic identification of the mediatory role with the status of mother's brother, but whereas in Jieng this is the dominant role and the supreme focus of beneficent supernatural power, leadership and group co-ordination, in eastern Naath it is overshadowed and fragmented by the political dominance of the

AIDAN SOUTHALL 485

conquering lineages. Consistently, the Naath symbolism clustered round the politi- cal fighting spear andJieng symbolism round the ritual fishing spear.

The raider mentality of the Naath was essentially political, whereas the mentality of the Jieng society of the raided was, in its highest coordinative functions, ritual. On the plane of action and accompanying group organisation it is easy to see how the difference arose. Once the Naath emerged, through the orientation of the nuclear groups in the Jebel-Ghazal triangle towards aggression and expansion, the capture of cattle and the incorporation of people, they became focused on specifically poli- tical goals, over and above the general business of subsistence. But successful aggression itself contributed materially and substantially to Naath subsistence and this kept them highly motivated. It was an opportunity system which others could join, as the Jieng themselves in large numbers did. Commentators on both Jieng and Naath and even on their neighbours, are remarkably unanimous on the nature and importance of Naath raids upon the jieng. Fighting was one of the chief activities and dominant interests of the Naath (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 126) and a method of repairing stock losses (1940: 93). Naath youths plan raids to get cattle for themselves as soon as they are initiated, and 'every Nuer tribe raided Dinka at least every two or three years and some part of Dinkaland must have been raided annually' (I940: 126). Fighting Jieng was a 'trifling test' for Naath compared with fighting one another (1940: 126). Naath raids were nearly always successful (Howell 1947: 133) andJieng seldom resisted but rather loosed their cattle and tried to drive them away (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 127). It is a striking demonstration of the dif- ferent organisation and orientation of the Jieng that it is 'by no means expected that all Dinka within call will rush to the assistance of their fellows against members of a different people' (Lienhardt i958: 129). Lewis confirms a similar reaction of Jieng to attack by the Beir: 'if one village is attacked the whole idea of the others is to keep clear' (1972: 7). Raiding led to migration and permanent settlement through 'the raiders settling permanently in Dinka country and by systematic raiding compelling the inhabitants to withdraw farther and farther from the points of occupation. In the following season a new series of raids was initiated and the process was repeated till the Dinka were compelled to seek refuge with their kins- folk of another tribe and leave their country to its invaders' (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 128). The unconqueredjieng continued to expand, as they moved towards the periphery, and they remained the majority population. They seem to have been more seriously devoted to their agriculture (Stubbs & Morison 1938: 252), in addi- tion to their loving care of cattle, whereas Naath agriculture, though resourceful in its way, was more limited2I and perhaps inhibited by the adverse conditions of the nuclear Naath terrain by which it was originally shaped (Evans-Pritchard 1940:

76-7; Howell 1947: 131). It may seem paradoxical that the Jieng who were so regularly defeated should

have had a much more institutionalised leadership, but as we have seen it was elaborated more in the direction of ritual and spiritual than political goals. In fact, the special position which the Jieng Spearmasters came to occupy, and the major differences of Jieng from Naath group organisation, which have given the im- pression of fuzzy shallow genealogies and muddled vacillating groupings, can both be easily explained by the very process of Naath raiding itself. As Howell cogently pointed out for the Ngok (1951: 250-5) and as was probably true for the Jieng as

486 AIDAN SOUTHALL

a whole, because of Naath raids whole segments ofJieng tribes were forced to move and take refuge with other tribes, sections became mixed and had to reform, and this even for the northern Ngok who were further from Naath areas of settlement than most Jieng groups were. No wonder the Jieng were in desperate need of a focus for the constant reforming of groups and reorganising of settled communities and of systems of transhumance in the constant chaos resulting from raids. No wonder the institution of the Spearmaster developed through this long experience to meet the need. Naath segmentary organisation brought them military success, so that what they needed was a marginal, uninvolved neutral as arbitrator between them. Jieng, who were regularly defeated, needed a central, institutionalised focus of social solidarity to hold them together and enable them to reform after groups were broken up and to provide mystical unity and supernatural comfort to com- pensate for the constant experience of military defeat.

I am tempted to see, as many of the ethnographers of the area, and even Evans- Pritchard in his earlier ethnographic writings was tempted to see, a basically common institution adapting over a huge area to the different challenges of local ecological and political conditions and to the influence of different external forces. The leading Ngok Spearmasters, under Arab pressure and influenced by their political institu- tions, became more firmly institutionalised and centralised. They were formally and ceremonially installed, they were hierarchically organized by primogeniture (Howell 1948: 48; Deng 1972: 2), had elaborate regalia and were ritually killed after the manner of divine kings. The latter practice, hard though it is to document, is sporadically reported from all over Jieng country. The Padang Spearmasters became more formalised also, probably in reaction to the Collo (Shilluk) influence so close to them on the opposite bank of the Nile (Lienhardt I96I: 257). The insti- tution of the Shilluk reth (king) itself was a special permutation of an institution found in varying forms among other Lwo groups. It may have developed in reaction to the mysterious and controversial Fung many centuries ago, while many traditions credit the Shilluk in turn with attacking and influencing the southern Fung outposts to the northeast of them (Stubbs 1934: 260), if indeed they did not actually at some point attack and occupy Sennar itself (Evans-Pritchard 1932: 59). Evans-Pritchard noted nilotic influences in southern Dar Fung, attributing them to the Jieng, but they could perhaps more probably have been the Shilluk. He says the Jieng once raided as far as the Blue Nile (1932: 56) but of the Dar Fung groups he sees the Burun as closest to the Naath linguistically and Gule closest to Shilluk. His famous analysis of the divergent development of Anuak ritual and political insti- tutions is an example of the same phenomenon. Lienhardt sees the influence of the Mahdi himself feeding into the prophetic aspect of the Spearmaster institution: the Mahdi was assimilated by the jieng as a 'Son of Deng' and his influence also appears among the Naath as the spirit Madi (I96I: I64).

While the continued practice of raiding by Naath encouraged the divergence of their social organisation and institutions away from a common pattern in one direc- tion, and the suffering of their raids by the Jieng encouraged it in another, it also follows that Naath groups which relaxed from raiding, because they were too far from suitable objects of it, or surfeited by past success, would have been likely in the long run to revert back in the direction of the common type. Thus Jieng and Naath in a very different context and in a very abstract sense, belong to that cate-

AIDAN SOUTHALL 487

gory of cognitive, political and ecological binary complements made famous by Leach's analysis of Highland Burma (i954). We do not assume that intra-Naath or

'The Naath-Jieng socio-cultural continuum'

intra-Jieng raiding ceased, but that it was usually of a different quality and lower intensity, less frequently resulting in major changes of group alignment or terri- torial distribution.

V Conclusion

While much of this analysis may be doomed to remain speculative, it could be extensively confirmed or corrected by more detailed ethnographic knowledge of the distributions and relationships of particular Naath and Jieng dialects and the local variations of key social institutions and ideas, myths, traditions and rituals.

The questions raised are of very wide significance, because they concern the very nature of society, how new societies come into being and how the actions of indi- viduals, the influence of ecology, demography, internal conflict and external pres- sure relate to the processes of social change and the formation of cognitive cate- gories. We may eschew historical speculation because of its past evolutionist or diffusionist dangers, but our ethnographic studies pose problems often involving fairly limited logical choices which it is pointless to ignore. I have come to realise clearly, though I did not at the time of my first fieldwork, how and in general when the Alur must have come into existence as a distinct ethnic constellation aware of itself, when, like the Jieng further north, they crossed the Nile to the west.

So we ought to recognise not only that Nuer were never Nuer and Dinka never Dinka, but that when they said 'we are Naath' or 'we are Jieng' they were not saying 'We are the Naath tribe' or 'We are the Jieng tribe' but just saying 'We are People' each in their own distinctive way.

It is also a good example of the emergence of ethnic categories, between which over time, individuals can flow with relative ease.22 Although the secular process, especially in the most recent centuries, has been of Naath expanding at the expense of Jieng and by heavy absorption of them, there are also Naath individuals and groups who have become Jieng, though on a much smaller scale, and there are also the ambiguous Atuot, unfortunately little known, who are said to speak Naath, or according to Fergusson (192I) a mixture of Cic and Agar Jieng with Mandari, but to be Jieng in the rest of their culture. An important part of being Naath or Jieng has been a habit of mind, belonging to a group oriented towards a high valuation of fighting and raiding, towards attacking, incorporating and taking cattle from the complementary category of people whose orientation focused more upon the cattle themselves and upon the spiritual achievement of harmony, rather than

488 AIDAN SOUTHALL

upon developing an effective organisation for resisting attack. The more the Naath attacked the more the Jieng withdrew and the more their group alignments were disturbed, the more they turned to the Masters of the Fishing Spear as a focus of mystical unity which they could not achieve politically and of a working co-ordina- tion which they were unable to maintain by permanent descent based structures.

This exploration has led into labyrinths which were entirely unsuspected when it began. The writer has certainly learned a great deal, though the lessons may not be startlingly new. The dominant vogue in social anthropology has for the moment shifted from the synchronic study of structural relations between groups, which Evans-Pritchard's own work made so beguiling, to an interest in processes and in individuals, with a striving to find formulations and frames of reference within which all three dimensions can be seen as integrated and meaningfully related.

It must be emphasised, as is customary, that this is not intended as a final state- ment. It has tried to make some things more explicit (which other scholars cau- tiously left implicit for many good reasons), so that errors may show more clearly and have more chance of correction to the extent that further information comes to light. It is offered in further homage to the creative richness and continuing stimu- lus of the work of Evans-Pritchard.

* * * * *

It has recently been reported by the press (e.g. New York Times i6th November 1975) that work is actually about to begin on the long projectedJonglei Canal from the Bahr el Jebel near Bor running north-northeast to the junction of the Bahr el Jebel with the Sobat. It is expected to dry up the swamp and save huge amounts of water from evaporation. An irrigation canal will run west of the canal and it is claimed that 2.5 million acres of land would be recovered. There is opposi- tion to the project in the southern Sudan on the ground that it will mainly benefit the north. Fear is also expressed that it may cause a severe drop in rainfall and losses of buffalo, elephant and hippopotamus. Surprisingly, no mention whatever is made of the Naath whose country it is!

NOTES

Both Dr Paul Howell and Dr Godfrey Lienhardt generously gave of their time and knowledge in reading a draft of this article and spending many hours discussing it with me. I acknowledge their assistance at many points, while accepting entire responsibility for the form in which I have presented the argument. I wish to thank the cartographical laboratory of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for preparing the map.

I (I933: 5). Since the Seligmans relied mainly on Evans-Pritchard for their account of the Nuer their similar but less strongly expressed view may be an echo of his (I932: 206).

2 The confusing variability of spelling is due not only to dialectal differences but to mere differences of orthography and accuracy of reporting.

Evans-Pritchard, I940: 3. 'The Nuer, who call themselves Nath (s. ran).' Lienhardt, I958: I07. 'So, when the Dinka speak of "Dinka", jieng, they cannot have in mind all Dinka, as we

know them to be.' Tucker & Bryan I956: 98. 'NUER, call themselves NAATH.' Tucker & Bryan I956: 94. 'DINKA, call themselves JIErj (jierj, jiarj].' Seligmans I932: I36. 'Jang (s.), Jeng (pl.).'

AIDAN SOUTHALL 489

Deng I972: 2. 'Mony jang "The Man of Men".' Evans-Pritchard I940: I26. 'Indeed jaang, Dinka, is sometimes used to refer to any tribe whom the Nuer habitually

raid and from whom they take captives' Evans-Pritchard I940: 235. 'People speak only of unconquered Dinka of Dinkaland by the contemptuous expression "Jaang".'

Nebel I948: i6i. 'People: koc, thai, D. p. jang'. Person: raan, pI. koc. Man: moc, pl. ror; raan. 'Mankind: raan.' In fact raan has the sense of 'person' in Nuer, Dinka and even Anuak (McLaughlin I967). The picture remains somewhat confusing and we do not know the range of phonetic or

semantic variation for these key roots either amongJieng or Naath. Jackson (I923: 6i) gives Dengka and Seligman (I932: I36) gives Dengkawi as probably

corrupted Arabic versions ofJieng from which the English version Dinka has been derived. Of course, the close approximation to Deng, the jieng divinity, can hardly pass unnoticed. In some accounts Deng is the ancestor of the Dengka (Jackson I923: 6I) So that the Arabic form could very well have been derived from Deng.

Howell feels that Naath is not quite the ordinary word for 'People' and is not the plural of Raan in common usage. Rather, the plural of Raan is Nei, and the Naath would most com- monly say 'kou nei ta naath' (we are people of people), or even 'kou nuwara', which is cer- tainly a good deal closer to saying 'we are Nuer'. He confirms that the Baggara Arabs call the Dinka Denkawi, but also Jangi. Another source of the name Dinka is said to be Deng' Kaak, the name of a Dinka chief near Melut early in this century.

The Bor Cic call themselves Yieng'. The Jieng call the Naath Nuer. 3 Tucker & Bryan I956: 98 'Both theJIKANY dialects (Eastern and Western) were formerly

used in education and for literature. The dialect of the THIANG, who occupy a central position has now been adopted as standard NUER.' I956: 94 'All four main dialects of DINKA (PADANG, BOR, AGAR, REK) are used in education ... and in administration.'

4 Lienhardt feels that the Western Jieng are in general more similar to the Western Naath than to the Eastern Jieng.

Howell feels that, as one would expect, the variation within both Naath language and culture is less than in the case of theJieng and that the former have a correspondingly clearer picture of themselves and their subgroups than the latter have of theirs.

5 Howell feels that this recognition of Deng would especially be true of the Eastern Jikany, among whom Evans-Pritchard worked most, whereas the Central Naath would be more likely to respect Deng but to say that he isJieng.

6 Seligman (I932: I35). 7 Hatashil Masha Kathish (Lienhardt I96I: Io5) by implication supports the idea of Naath

emergence from Jieng, since he puts 'Nuer' as one section of his 'Dinka Nation'. Doubtless this is a somewhat natural position for a Jieng to take!

8 In quotations and in other passages referring to them I have been forced to use the term 'tribe' in the sense in which it is used in the literature on the Nuer, although I have had to abandon it in my other writings (Southall I970).

9 Howell considers this a very high estimate. 10 The Sudan census of i955-6 reported 459,562 Nuer and I,I5I,896 Dinka. On the other

hand, Deng (I972: i) refers to the Dinka as having a population of nearly two million, while Lienhardt thought they numbered 'some goo,ooo' (I958: 97). Jackson (1923: 6i) estimated the Nuer at 300,000. Evans-Pritchard (I940: 3) said a few years later that they were 'round about 200,000 souls' but this was clearly an underestimate, for he quotes the following figures for Naath sub-groups (I940: I I7): 'Sobat Nuer: Gaajak, 42,000; Gaagwang, 7,000; Gaajok, 42,000 (these are the 'Eastern Jikany') Lou, 33,000. Zeraf Nuer: Lak 24,000; Thiang, 9,ooo; Gaawar, 20,000. Western Nuer: Bul, I7,000; Leek, II,000; the three WesternJikany tribes, II,000; the various Jagei tribes, I0,000; Dok, I2,000; Nuong, 9,ooo.' He then says this makes a total of 214,000 for the whole of Nuerland, but in this he appears to omit the 33,000 Lou, so the total should be 247,000. There are no reliable figures but the important fact is that the Jieng, despite their long and heavy absorption by the Naath, are probably still from three to four times as numerous as the latter.

11 It is generally agreed that Evans-Pritchard's fieldwork was concentrated on the eastern Naath, especially the easternJikany, and that his whole account of the Naath is coloured, and in some respects twisted, by this. In 1930 he first made an unsuccessful visit to the Leek (western

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Naath) and then to Muot dit where he made great progress with the language but was soon forced to leave. In I93 I he stayed at Nasser Mission, visited the Nyanding River unsuccessfully, then had his first and only prolonged and successful period of over three months field work, on the Sobat River in EasternJikany. In I935 he revisited Nasser, the Sobat, Pibor and Nyanding (all EastemJikany) for seven weeks and then in I936 spent a final seven weeks mainly in Leek on Bahr el Ghazal (western Naath) (I940: 9-I4).

12 His account (I958: 99-IOI, I32-3) contrasts western Jieng with Naath, but he assures me that he had eastern Naath in mind because he knew that Evans-Pritchard's work was concen- trated there.

13 Howell has the widest expert ecological knowledge of anyone, having administered and researched in many parts of Naath and Jieng country and walked extensively along the Bahr el Jebel in the course of the very detailed investigation of the Jonglei Scheme, whose excellent report is unfortunately, not easily available.

14 Lienhardt: personal communication. '5 Howell: personal communication. 16 Professor Feierman has pointed out to me that there are cases where excavation has con-

firmed memories of much earlier events, when they are materially symbolised in objects re- lated to a locality still continuously occupied by the group in question. Such a consideration is not applicable here.

17 Lienhardt relates Lwel to the Nilotic lual 'red brown'. 'Sometimes in the north of Western Dinkaland a light-skinned Dinka, with finer bones than most Dinka and a delicate appearance, is pointed out as being of Lwel ancestry.' On the other hand, Stubbs and Morison speak of the Lwel as a 'legendary tribe of cattle-owing dwarfs' who built mounds on the Jur and Lol rivers and were driven north by the Jieng across the Bahr el Arab. Crazzolara (I933) speaks as though 'pygmies' called Thoony were actually living in the Bahr el Ghazal swamps, but does not actually claim to have seen any. The confusion between the mounds of these pygmies, of the Lwel, of the Ber Ajou (probably Beir), of the Jieng 'divine kings' and the Shilluk reth are unresolved. But it seems to be an undisputed tradition that the ancestors of ironworking Jo-Luo round Wau came from the south east to settle there.

18 Lienhardt records many versions of the myth of Aiwel (i96i: I72-2i8) and, as he rightly says, an exhaustive examination of its total distribution and variations would make a valuable ethnographic study, but would require a prolonged stay in each area.

19 Howell also describes other similar 'pyramid' shrines (I948) in different parts of Jieng country, such as that of Ayong Dit or Yiek Ayong in Dunjol, north of Malakal, which was important to the Padang Jieng and who is believed to have been buried alive, after the manner of great Masters of the Fishing Spear. The shrines of Aiwel at Luak Deng, Pwom Aiwel and per- haps elsewhere thus seem to be the greatest in a wider class of shrines of great Masters of the Fishing Spear. Lienhardt does not record any shrines of the conical pyramid type although he mentions various reported cases of burial alive (i96i: 300-I3); however, Titherington's account (I925) does imply a conical pyramid, produced by burial in a cattle byre and subsequent making of a mound. The whole practice inevitably calls forth comparison with various aspects of Shilluk royal burial (Lienhardt i96i: 20I fn.). The lack of first-hand evidence and perhaps also the disappearance of mound shrines is partly due to the colonial prohibition of burial alive.

20 Lienhardt gives beny bith, where beny (pl. bany) signifies owner or master and bith is the fishing spear as opposed to tong, the war spear, the two complementary categories of clans among the Jieng. Stubbs has bang a bith referring to the Malwal Jieng (I934: 247). Howell has bany de ring for the northern Ngok, presumably referring to 'Flesh' (ring) the divinity of Spear- masters (Lienhardt i96i: I36) and Bedri for the northern Padang has beny rem (I948: 40), where rem (blood) expresses the same idea. The related clans of Spearmaster priests claiming common ancestry are also called menh dyor (Lienhardt i958: I04n) or dendior in northern Ngok (Howell I9 5I: 255]. Lienhardt also reports that 'the Dinka term for a king, or a really outstanding leader like the prophet Arianhdit (a famous Spearmaster Prophet of the Abiem Jieng), is muor ngak nhom. Muor is 'bull' and nhom is 'head' (I96I: 207n). It is interesting that this symbolic expres- sion for the leadership aspect of great Spearmasters equates them in this respect with the more secular leadership of the influential elders of dominant dil lineages among the Naath (Evans- Pritchard I940: I78-80) who are also referred to as 'bull' (tut). The jieng Spearmaster fuses some of the Naath political leadership quality of 'bull' with fuller expression of the ritual qualities of Naath Leopardskin priests.

21 Both Howell and Lienhardt agree on this point (personal communications). 22 There are innumerable examples close at hand, such as the Kenya Lwo, the Luyia as a whole,

or the Tiriki section of the Luyia and the Terik Eastern Nilotes (Kalenjin) and the various Bantu and Lwo groups all along the course of the latter's southern migration.

AIDAN SOUTHALL 49I

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