The Divine Kingship of the Jukun: A Re-Evaluation of Some Theories

International African Institute

The Divine Kingship of the Jukun: A Re-Evaluation of Some TheoriesAuthor(s): Michael W. YoungSource: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Apr., 1966), pp.135-153Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1158201 .

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[I35]

THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN: A RE-EVALUATION OF SOME THEORIES

MICHAEL IF. YOUNG

FOR many social anthropologists the problem of divine kingship was solved in

1948 when Professor Evans-Pritchard, in a well-known Frazer Lecture, put a

respectably structural interpretation on the facts of the Shilluk case.' Divine kingship in Africa was rather an embarrassment because the central tenet of its doctrine-that the king must be killed when he fell sick or grew senile-was usually beyond empirical verification. There was also perhaps some reluctance to accept the explanatory theories of Sir J. G. Frazer when in so many other respects his authority had long since been overthrown.2 In a single essay Evans-Pritchard appeared to have effectively slain both the problem and its discoverer. Such problems and such intellectual kings, however, have a way of rising from the dead. In this paper I resuscitate in part Frazer's theory of divine kingship and try to show that it illuminates important aspects of the problem which are ignored by the structuralist interpretation. With reference to a single example of divine kingship, that of the Jukun of Northern Nigeria, I utilize two familiar conceptual distinctions-person/office and political/ritual. Com-

plementary to these, and perhaps even more analytically fruitful, is the man-god dichotomy which was one of Frazer's main preoccupations.

I

I begin by circumscribing the theoretical interests in African divine kingship, and indicating the types of explanation and interpretation that have been offered to date.

Although Frazer does not appear to have formally defined his usage, it is clear that he employed the term to denote a particular class of sacred kings: those who should not be permitted to die a natural death.' Divine kings ' incarnated ' dying gods ' and were approximately intermediate evolutionary figures between the magician and rainmaker of the ' Age of Magic' and the ' god-king' of the ' Age of Religion'.3 Perhaps the first to use Frazer's descriptive categories in African ethnography was Seligman,4 who later provided a convenient definition of the divine king which doubtless received Frazer's approval. The term was to be restricted to:

... such rulers, as being held responsible for the right ordering and especially the fertility of the earth and domestic animals, end their lives by being killed or killing themselves with greater or lesser ceremony, often at a fixed period (or the oncoming of senescence) or ceremonially expose themselves to the chance of death or else feign to die.s

This definition incorporates Frazer's diacritical feature: the notion that the divine

I Evans-Pritchard, 1948. 4 Seligman, 19I3. 2 See Jarvie, 1964, pp. I73-5. 5 Seligman, 1933, p. 5. 3 Frazer, 1911-I5.



THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN

king should not die a natural death. It is more empirical than any of Frazer's implied definitions, however, in that it points to the connexion between king and nature without requiring Frazer's original postulate of an incarnated nature god who, being mortal, must be 'transferred to a vigorous successor '.1

More recent use of the term by social anthropologists has been rather confusing. There are those who adhere to Frazer's or Seligman's usage,2 there are those who give to the term a more general connotation, using it synonymously with sacred king,3 and there are those who employ it literally to mean a deity king having divine origin.4 Even when qualified by the epithet ' Frazerian ' its specificity suffers if consensus is

lacking on how Frazer himself employed it.5 In short, it is no longer a very useful

type-label. A category which has been made to include, in Africa alone, the Dinka

master-of-the-fishing-spear and the Aga Khan of the Shia Imami Ismailia sect can

scarcely be of much analytical value.6 However, there is something to be said for its retention and use in the restricted

context which Seligman, following Frazer, gave to it. If Frazer's intellectualist

approach led him to stress criteria which we now consider less important or even

mistaken-namely that all such kings incarnate gods and that such gods are believed to be mortal-there remains the very prevalent complex of beliefs that African kings are mystically associated with the fertility of the land, the state of the crops and the

well-being of their people, with the corollary that they should not be permitted to die natural deaths. For this complex of beliefs and the customs in which they are

expressed it would seem useful to retain the term' divine kingship ', with the under-

standing that the' divine origin ' or' nature god ' clause of Frazer's implied definition is the least crucial. This is not to eschew the narrower' theological' aspect of divine

kingship for we shall see that there are interesting lines of analysis to be pursued here. It is rather the cosmological status of such kings which is the more important diacritical feature for distinguishing divine kings from a more general class of sacred

kings. The term thus refers to an ideological system of a particular kind of kingship. Stressing the ideology of divine kingship partially avoids the sticky problem of

de facto regicide. On the whole, modern social anthropologists have been sceptical regarding its existence in an institutionalized form, and it is sometimes asserted that what is important is not whether kings were actually put to death in the manner claimed by informants but rather that' this is how the kingship was thought about '.7

The ideology of customary regicide is regarded as a statement of the importance to the society of the king's physical health. It is arguable, however, that in many societies the belief was expressed in action-that ceremonial regicide did in fact occur. If such be the case then interpretations are required which are meaningful on a behavioural as well as symbolical level.

Since Evans-Pritchard's essay on the divine kingship of the Shilluk was the first

I Frazer, I9II, p. 9. (I962, p. 325) considers all African kings, with only 2 e.g. Evans-Pritchard, I948; Wilson, I959a and a few exceptions, to have been divine kings 'in the

1959b. Frazerian sense '. 3 e.g. Murdock, 1959. 6 Seligman, I932, p. 23; Morris, I958. 4 e.g. Morris, 1958. 7 Beattie, I 959, p. 138. Probably the first statement 5 e.g. Richards (I960, p. 38) doubts whether the of this viewpoint was Evans-Pritchard's (1948,

Interlacustrine Bantu kings 'can be regarded as p. 20). " divine " in the Frazerian sense ', whereas Vansina

136




attempt by a social anthropologist to treat the subject in a thorough-going sociological manner, and since it is in this essay that we find the most forceful expression of the point of view which regards customary king-killing as a fiction, it must briefly be summarized here. The argument was based on three principal premises: that it is the kingship not the king that is divine; that divine kingship is as much a political as a ritual phenomenon, and that the office must be viewed in the total context of the social structure.

Nyikang, the Shilluk culture hero, is medium between god and man and is immanent in every Reth. The Reth is a double pivot: head of the political community and centre of the national cult. Owing to the decentralized segmentary structure of Shilluk society, the king reigns but does not govern. In reigning, however, he

symbolizes the whole society and must not become identified with any part of it; for this reason his office is raised to a mystical plane. Succession to the throne alter- nates between rival branches of the royal clan and segmentary oppositions, con-

sequent upon the lineage structure of local groupings, express themselves in relation to the common symbol. Evans-Pritchard thinks that the ceremonial slaying of the

king was probably a fiction arising from the dual personality of the Reth' who is both himself and Nyikang, both an individual and an institution'.I He nevertheless considers that regicide was of frequent occurrence for, should the kingship tend to become identified with sectional interests, the other segments asserted their rights in the office ' at the expense of the king's person '.2 Likewise, it might be expected that should a national misfortune weaken the king's support a rival prince would be

encouraged to raise rebellion 'against the king in the name of the kingship '.3

Finally, divine kingship

... is an institution typical of, though doubtless not restricted to, societies with pro- nounced lineage systems in which the political segments are parts of a loosely organized structure without governmental functions .. . (and in which) . . . the political organization takes a ritual or symbolic form.4

For Evans-Pritchard then, the dogma of customary regicide is not only a statement about the value of the king's health and vigour for the Shilluk, but also a statement of the mode of resolution of structural opposition and segmentary competition for

participation in the kingship. While it seems clear that Evans-Pritchard was influenced

by the kind of situation he found among another Nilotic people-the Anuak-where the symbols of an embryonic kingship circulated among the competitive segments, the only gratuitous part of his argument lies in his reinterpretation of the Shilluk mode of king-killing. He postulates a different kind of regicide from that claimed by Shilluk informants, but it is a postulate no better authenticated than the tradition that their kings were ceremonially strangled when they fell sick or grew senile.5

I Evans-Pritchard, 1948, p. 20. that over half of them were strangled in the ' tradi- 2 Ibid., p. 38. tional' manner. The evidence is beyond satisfactory 3 Ibid., p. 35. verification. Hence the wide divergence of opinion; 4 Ibid., p. 37. but it is perhaps worth noting that Howell (I952) s The most recent study of Shilluk history, by implies that the danger of civil war was most acute

Riad (I959), reverses Evans-Pritchard's estimate that after a king had died, i.e. when the throne was vacant. most Shilluk kings died in rebellions, and claims

L

I37



138 THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN In an earlier publication Evans-Pritchard had conceded to a ' Fuin ' group of Dar

Fung what he later denied to the Shilluk. He wrote:

Though the rulers at Ulu seem to have been killed partly for political reasons, their executions occurred with such regularity and in such a traditional manner that we may regard them as being more than the outcome of dynastic intrigue.'

In the same place he defines this ' Frazerian ' mode of king-killing as:

Regicide sanctioned by tradition and not merely by precedent, the outcome of legal procedure and not merely of dynastic intrigue, carried out in a prescribed manner and not by haphazard killing.2

He thus clearly distinguished between institutionalized, ceremonial regicide and

socially sanctioned assassination. In the essay on the Shilluk, however, this distinction is blurred by denying the existence of the former and introducing the notion of socially sanctioned rebellion in which regicide is a contingency.

Evans-Pritchard's reference to the Fuin indicates that some African ethnography refuses to yield to the structural approach in this matter. Not all traditions of king- killing can be explained away as political ideologies. There is, as it were, an ineducible core of' Frazerian ' ritual motives behind the fate of some divine kings which seem to fit no structural pattern. Although the Dinka masters-of-the-fishing-spear are in no sense kings, Lienhardt is prepared to believe that, as Dinka traditions state, they were voluntarily and ritually put to death for other than structural reasons.3 Likewise, the Lovedu rain-queen unquestionably committed suicide when the allotted span of her reign was over.4 Nor does Wilson doubt the authenticity of her informants' state- ments regarding the ceremonial killing of the Lwembe of the Nyakyusa and, as Mair recognizes, the accounts of the operation are so circumstantial that it is difficult to believe that they were purely imaginary.5

However, we are not simply obliged to choose between two alternative interpretations of this most striking feature of divine kingship-the ritual imperative of Frazer and the structural contingency of Evans-Pritchard. Indeed there is no dearth of ' explanations ' of the custom, from the frankly psycho-analytical which regards the king both as phallic symbol and father-figure,6 to the psycho-social which sees the practice as primarily a cathartic 'ritual of conflict' and the king as a scapegoat.7 From a more instrumental standpoint the removal of a sick or ageing king by regicide is, for Firth, the means by which a more efficient leader replaces a less efficient one. Thus it is suggested that the mystical aspect of divine kingship:

.. does not fly in the face of common sense. From an organizational point of view, the symbolic quality in their belief expresses and leads them to adopt good rational administrative practice.8

In a footnote Firth tacitly acknowledges that the interests of administrative efficiency are served whether the king is killed in a rebellion or secretly strangled:

Is it just feasible that the notion of ceremonially killing the Shilluk king may not have

I Evans-Pritchard, 1932, p. 13. 5 Wilson, 1959a, pp. 21-23; Mair, 1962, p. 227. 2 Ibid., p. 6o. 6 Roheim, 1930. 3 Lienhardt, I96I, pp. 313-I9. 7 Norbeck, I963. 4 Krige and Krige, 1943, p. I67. 8 Firth, 1955, p. 13.



THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN I39 been entirely a fiction? Could this possibility have been held in reserve in case he was not removed by the normal process of rebellion as his powers began to wane ?'

But the word ' normal' begs the question although, by trying to have it both ways, Firth shows that we are not forced to choose between either an exclusively' political' or an exclusively ' ritual' interpretation.

It was one of Evans-Pritchard's most important points that, contrary to earlier assertions, the Shilluk king was deficient in constituted authority. There has since been a tendency to suppose that divine kings 'reign but do not govern ', a dictum based on the view that divine kingship is found in its 'purest' form among the Shilluk. However, it would be arbitrary to insist that the Nyakyusa Lwembe and the Ndembu Kanongesha, for example, deserve the designation divine king more than do the Bemba Citumukulu or the Ruanda Mwami simply because they resemble the Shilluk Reth in this respect. On the other hand, it is generally thought that there is some degree of negative correlation between administrative capacity or political powers and ritual authority. This remains an hypothesis to be refined, however, rather than an index by which the extent of one may be gauged by the extent of the other, for all African kings appear to use ritual in some degree to bolster their power, and it is possible that historical developments may be more relevant than structural correlates in this context. Thus Beattie has pointed out that whereas the Shilluk kingship appears to have attracted some degree of secular power by virtue of its ritual significance, ritual has clustered around the Nyoro kingship as the primary focus of secular power.2 In short, minimal secular authority is not a necessary condition of Frazerian divine kingship. We have only to recall the considerable constituted authority of such kings as those of the Bemba, Banyankole, and Yoruba-examples which aptly qualify for inclusion in the category of divine kings.

II

Having considered the concept of divine kingship in the light of some of the theoretical opinions currently held by many social anthropologists, I now propose to examine the evidence from a single West African society. I shall consider the political, ritual, and cosmological aspects of the institution and, with particular reference to its most dramatic element, regicide, I shall seek the mutual significance of these aspects.3

The Jukun-speaking peoples of Northern Nigeria are believed to be the descendants of the ruling stratum of the powerful Kororofa ' empire ' (probably a loose federation of tribes), which dominated the Benue Valley from about the fourteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth. Wukari, the present home of the majority of Jukun, was founded as a new capital after the break-up of Kororofa, and represents its successor state on a considerably diminished scale. Wukari's political boundaries continued to contract up to the time of British pacification through Jukun failure to

I Ibid., p. 12. of conciseness and convenience, therefore, I docu- 2 Beattie, I959, p. 139. ment only quoted sources in what follows. Full 3 The remainder of this paper is based on a more documentation of the Jukun ethnography can be

detailed analysis in my M.A. thesis (Young, I965), found in my thesis. presented to the University of London. For the sake



I40 THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN withstand Fulani and Chamba encroachment from the north, east, and west, and Tiv infiltration from the south. In the I930's Wukari Jukun numbered about 20,000; today there are even fewer. During the nineteenth century the Aku Uha-the king of Wukari-probably ruled a tribally heterogeneous population of at least four times this number.

The Jukun kingdom appears to have had a very different structure from that of the Shilluk, though their respective kingships show some interesting similarities. The political segments of Wukari, the chiefdoms, were not organized on the basis of common descent. Descent groups (atsupa) were small and localized, perhaps a function of the abundance of agricultural land in the region. Although recruitment to atsipa is patrilineal at present,' Meek believed the Jukun to have been a matrilineal

people in the past. Extant data on the problem suggest that during the late nineteenth century Jukun atsupa may have been ambilineal descent groups. They were weakly structured, named, non-exogamous, and corporate in respect of ritual observances and the hereditary transmission of some, especially priestly, offices. Genealogical subdivisions of these social units formed the nuclei of extended families, empirically composed of bilateral kin and affines occupying a single compound and representing the largest economic unit in the society. Accompanying an optative principle of residence and virilocal marriage there was an expressed preference for succession to be patrilineal and the inheritance of movable goods to be matrilineal. Effectively, descent reckoning appears to have been optative also with a later preference for

patrilineal affiliation. Succession to the kingship was, however, emphatically patrilineal. The sole rule

of succession stated that only sons of dead kings were eligible for the throne and there was a strong ritual injunction regarding the ineligibility of sisters' sons. Since the foundation of Wukari in the eighteenth century there appear to have been at any one time two royal atsupa at the capital with rights to the throne, and despite dis- crepancies between the various king-lists they indicate that the succession has alternated fairly consistently between the two dynasties.

The government of the state was conducted from the Aku's palace in Wukari through a system of ranked offices. Broadly speaking, there were two main categories of officials: those holding civil or state titles whose function was to administer the state, prosecute war, and counsel the king; and those holding priestly and royal household titles whose functions were largely ritual and ceremonial. The former titles tended to be held by agnates of the king-his brothers and father's brothers' sons-while many of the royal household titles were held by his uterine relatives.

Earlier writers on the Jukun assumed that the AAku Wukari was an autocrat. For Meek he was a potential tyrant since the doctrine of divine kingship attributed to him absolute powers. However, analysis of his constitutional position reveals that although his office was pivotal it was not autocratic. His constituted authority could only manifest itself through the hierarchy of officials, and his own attempts to enhance his power were balanced by the attempts of others to do the same. These ministers, often close agnates of the king, depended on his right to appoint, promote, or depose them, and therein lay the locus of his power. They were ranked, and promotion was nominally by seniority, but the Aku could override this rule and advance those

I Personal communication from Mr. M. Yamaguchi.



THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN he favoured over those he mistrusted. Ministers were unable to make their offices hereditary; the only strictly hereditary offices in the Jukun constitution were ceremonial and priestly ones with minimal secular powers. Although some of the ministers were territorial chiefs economically independent of the king, their administrative ' fiefs ' were attached to their offices, so they were unable to claim lasting ties of personal allegiance from outlying parts of the state.

With regard to policy decisions, the present Aku Wukari claims that his office was the only locus of policy-making and that his ministers could only propose and advise. It does indeed appear that indigenously there was no formal council to check the king in political opposition. The senior ministers formed, in Meek's phrase, 'a patrician caste ', and he is careful to write of ' counsellors ' and not' councillors '. By the nineteen-thirties, however, this informal advisory group had, under British rule, been transformed into a corporate, deliberative governing body, or council, with the king at its head. The present Aku's statement that ' formerly the Aku could have no opponent by definition-his power was total ',I may be taken to refer to the ideology of kingly power rather than to the extent of his autocracy in practice, since he was doubtless obliged to accept a majority decision of his counsellors. Even so, the king's effective powers were probably quite considerable, and he was not as M. G. Smith assumes, analogous to the Shilluk king in this respect and ' marginal to the process of policy formation ',2 though he was handicapped by his divinity in direct dealings with his subjects.

The very religious doctrine which granted the Jukun king theoretically absolute

powers also prescribed his death when it became apparent that he was no longer worthy of them. Regarded as a check on the king's powers, institutionalized regicide is validated by the dogma of the mystical relation between the ruler and his people's welfare. As J. H. Vaughan puts it:

. . . inauspicious circumstances in the kingdom may logically be blamed on the inadequacies of the king, since he is the kingdom, and conversely, overt failings of the king, sickness, senility or the like, may be viewed as threats to the well-being of the kingdom.3 These beliefs were, in effect, a conditional constitutional clause providing for the

king's violent deposition. It remains to be seen, however, to what extent regicide was institutionalized among

the Jukun-and here our difficulties begin, for the mode and frequency of king- killing lie beyond empirical or impartial verification. At Wukari the king was said

traditionally to have been killed after reigning for seven years. He was also supposed to have been killed if he fell off his horse, if he broke any of the royal taboos, or if he fell seriously ill. He was killed, not during, but after, a famine or serious drought. Secret strangulation was the only legitimate means of slaying a king, though the

present Aku asserts that poison rather than strangulation was the rule. The existence of variant, often mutually contradictory traditions within the same society regarding the mode and frequency of regicide is characteristic of this aspect of divine kingship. While they feed the scepticism of the anthropologist,4 they are perhaps to be ex-

pected, given the customary secrecy and probable infrequency of executions.

Personal communication, I965. 4 See, for instance, Evans-Pritchard, 1948, pp. 2 Smith, 1960, p. 67. 20-2I. 3 Vaughan, 1964, p. 1084.

I4I




Responsibility for the king's death lay with the senior counsellors of the king- the same officials who were to choose his successor. They charged the king's most intimate personal attendants with the task of execution, which was carried out at

night with the utmost secrecy. It is said that if a king tried to summon help to save himself, he was reminded by his executioners that they were but performing the ancient custom and that he should behave quietly as did his ancestors. There was a clear expectation of the king's acquiescence. There were certain minimal or negative requirements: the king must not be killed publicly or by spontaneous violence, nor must his blood be shed; the approval and co-operation of the chief minister, the Abo Achuwo, was essential and the royal diviner had to give divine sanction-even if it was necessary to bribe him. Finally, no one with a claim to the throne might witness, much less take part in, the execution. The strict injunction regarding the secrecy of the whole operation and its aftermath served to minimize conflict between contenders for the succession. Overt political machinations were discouraged.

Owing to the shortage of detailed case-history data the structural background of

regicide among the Jukun-if indeed it occurred-remains obscure. It is highly improbable, however, that the Jukun state had what Gluckman calls a 'rebellious structure.I Only the royal atsupa at the capital had rights in the kingship, and it

appears that the majority of those royals, said to have been relegated to outlying chiefdoms by each king on his accession, were sloughed off to form Ganda-like ' peasant princes '. There are no traditions or historical instances of rebellions being raised in the provinces or of marches on the capital to snatch the throne. Unity of the state on the basis of' conflicting allegiance around the sacred kingship '2 appears to have been precluded. This is not to say that revolts or civil strife never occurred, only that such struggles would not have been 'unifying', for the number of chiefdoms which claim to have been founded from Wukari indicates that quarrels over the throne resulted in secession of the defeated faction. A myth which tells of the transference of the Jukun capital from Kororofa to Wukari makes the same point in each of its many versions: that conflict over the throne is not resolved by force of arms but by physical separation of the protagonists. A clue to a structural background for the traditions of king-killing might be expected to lie in the form taken by quarrels over the throne, but historical records are too scanty to be of much use here, while data on the pattern of political opposition at Wukari are frankly puzzling. In short, what evidence there is does not permit us to link the traditions of ceremonial regicide with competition for the throne.

The senior counsellors or state officials, of which there were traditionally four or five, were usually close agnates of the king, and it was they who are said to have decided whether or when a king should be killed. One of these title-holders, the Kinda Achuwo or king's official 'younger brother', was even formally and ceremonially blamed for the king's death-whether he had in fact been killed or not- at the installation of his successor. The hereditary king-maker, a purely ceremonial official, handed over the king-elect to the Kinda with the words:' Formerly we gave you a king and you killed him when he fell sick. Let me never hear that you have treated this king in this way.'3 The Abo Achuwo, by his very position as the king's

I Gluckman, 1954, P. 24. 3 Meek, I931, p. 137.

2 Ibid., p. 25.

I42



THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN 143 prime minister, was automatically implicated in the removal of a king. During the interregnum he ruled the state and took charge of the king's property, while one of the king's close attendants-usually a sister's son-mounted the throne and im- personated the king to maintain the fiction that the king was still alive. Paradoxically, it was the most intimate royal attendants who were said to have actually slain the king, yet it was these very officials who were recruited by the king from among his uterine relatives for the expressed purpose of' surrounding himself with attendants whose families had no claim to the throne' in order to secure his safety.' Clearly, both categories of the king's kin were thought to have some part in his death. Their direct involvement runs counter to the idea that politically motivated regicide is the outcome of inter-dynastic intrigue, or to put it conversely and in Evans-Pritchard's euphemistic manner, that segmentary oppositions may be ' expressed at the expense of the king's person '.2 Despite the tendency for the succession to alternate, the structure of political opposition at Wukari cannot be reduced simply to the competitive struggle for power and prestige between the two royal atsupa. That political opposition did not necessarily crystallize along descent group lines can be illustrated by a relatively recent case of the selection of an Aku from one royal atsupa by an electoral council composed entirely of members of the other royal atsupa. Com- petition for the kingship, therefore, was both within as well as between these royal descent groups, and for reasons that are not clear, historical tradition and customary attitudes indicate that conflict over the throne was more likely to occur between royal agnates and thus within the atsupa.

Obvious difficulties arise at this point if we seek political motives for regicide among the Jukun. Firstly, if the succession frequently alternated and if, as his reign pro- gressed, the king filled most positions of power with his own agnates, why should they jeopardize their positions by killing him? Alternatively, if the king appreciated that the greater threat to himself lay in the secret intrigues of his kin would he not, so far as possible, keep them out of such positions ? He would surely prefer to retain the counsellors of his predecessor-the very chiefs and ministers who had elected him. Conceivably, too, although belonging to the other royal atsupa, these men may have hoped to stay in office under the new regime if they felt they could dominate an inexperienced king of their own choice. But besides the extreme unlikelihood of such political motives being the mainspring of institutionalized regicide, all the evidence points in the other direction: that a king did gradually replace his predecessor's chiefs and ministers with his own kin.3 Secondly, assuming that there was competition for power between ministers, how was unanimity reached on a decision to kill the king when some of them at least had nothing to gain and everything to lose by his death? And if regicide was the outcome of a real political struggle how was it managed as smoothly and secretly as custom demanded? The answer here may lie in the dominance achieved by some ministers over the rest. This is indeed borne out by one historical instance which also happens to be the best-documented case of probable regicide. It will be worth relating the relevant facts at this point, for

1 Ibid., p. 55. been brothers or father's brothers' sons of the Aku 2 Evans-Pritchard, 1948, p. 38. under whom they served. No Abo Achuwo has held 3 With regard to the most important counsellor, office for more than three years after the installation

for example, each of the last six Abo Achuwo have of a new Aku.




although they are undoubtedly atypical they do at least demonstrate that this kind of political situation was possible among the Jukun.

On 26 February I927 Ashu Manu III, the sixteenth king of Wukari, died in his

palace, and the District Officer, stationed some thirty miles away at Ibi, undertook an immediate investigation. Some weeks earlier the D.O. had promised to send the sick

king a guard of native soldiers on the receipt of a warning message. The expected message never came-word came instead that the king was dead. The D.O.'s in-

quiries, for want of a doctor to perform an autopsy, led to the open verdict that the

king had died from causes unknown. It appears to have been freely admitted by the ministers and elders at Wukari that regicide had occurred, but since no witnesses could be found the D.O. made no arrests. There seems to have been little doubt that the Abo Achuwo was directly responsible for 'helping' the king to die. It was later recorded that when the next Aku was installed '. . . the Lieutenant-Governor suggested to the Abo Achtiwo that if anything happened to the king seven years hence, the consequences for himself might be unpleasant'.' The relationship and respective careers of the main protagonists are briefly as follows: Ali, later Ashu Manu III, and his elder brother Ahamdu, later Abo Achuwo, were sons of Aku Audu Manu (i 87I- 1902). All belonged to the Ba-Ma royal atsupa. Both sons held royal household titles under the king who succeeded their father, Agbu Manu II (1902-I 5), who belonged to the Ba-Gya, the other royal atsupa. Ali was later promoted to an important priestly office and when Agbu Manu died he was selected to succeed him as Ashu Manu III. Ahamdu had been banished from Agbu Manu's court for an alleged intrigue with one of the king's wives, but when Ali became king he recalled his brother from exile and in 1917 gave him the post of Abo Achuwo. Ahamdu was clearly a remarkable man. He dominated council and court for thirteen years and was the epitome of

intransigence and obstinacy in his dealing with the British Administration. The Resident, Benue, writing a few months after the accession of Agbu Manu III, Ali's brother and successor, believed that Ahamdu

... had ruled the Aku and Wukari by sheer force of personality as much as by virtue of his office. The present Aku is another younger brother and is obviously nearly as much afraid of him as everyone else in Wukari. The late Aku was the only man who ever dared stand up to him.2

In nominating his own candidate for the throne Ahamdu overrode traditional selection procedure and imposed his own will on the rest of the council, which was, however, exclusively composed of other members of the Ba-Ma royal atsipa. We can only surmise the reasons for Abo Achuwo Ahamdu's intrigue against one brother in favour of another, but in the light of the Resident's comments it is probable that he was seeking even more power for himself. His previous banishment had ruined his own chance of being given the throne, while his subsequent position as Abo

I Perham, 937, P. 45. The reference to the seven that although Ashu Manu III's death was not natural, year ' rule ' is curious since Ashu Manu III had he believed that his successor's was. The next king, reigned for twelve years and his predecessor for Ashu Manu IV belonging to the other royal atsupa, thirteen. The king referred to-Agbu Manu III- reigned for only five years, and his death was died in 1941 after reigning fourteen years. Ahamdu 'clearly not natural, but medical evidence was not himself died in 1930. given or even available '.

In a personal communication the Revd. E. H. 2 Monk, 1928, para. 4. Smith of the Sudan United Mission at Wukari stated

I44



THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN I45 Achtuwo rendered him ineligible according to the Jukun rule. If he could not be king, however, he could-and did-become the power behind the throne.

This example, although perhaps unrepresentative of the usual kind of political situation existing at the death of a Jukun king, does illustrate two points made earlier: that

inter-dynastic competition was not necessarily the most crucial political factor, and that candidates for the throne are not necessarily involved in conspiracies to kill the king.

With regard to the political dimension of regicide among the Jukun, so far as the data allow, we conclude as follows: that consonant with the aristocratic regime and the centralized administrative structure, revolts against the king would tend to take a conspiratorial form culminating, if successful, in secret assassination. In so far as such assassinations occurred, however, we may assume that they conformed to the Frazerian pattern, or to use Evans-Pritchard's earlier criteria, they were sanctioned

by tradition, the outcome of regulated-if secretive-procedure, and were carried out in a prescribed manner. The inadequacies of, and contradictions within, the data do not allow a satisfactory political interpretation to be put upon the traditions of cus-

tomary regicide among the Jukun. It is perhaps inevitable that some political motives underlay the killing of a king-inevitable because some people would stand to lose and others to gain much from a change of regime, and they would presumably be

prepared to struggle to retain or achieve these benefits. But no clear pattern is discernible which would justify our concluding that regicide among the Jukun was

purely a political act consequent upon certain structural arrangements such as segmentary opposition or upon the competition produced by flexible rules of succession.

III

It remains for us to examine ritual aspects of the Jukun kingship, and consider more closely the pervasive ritual idiom of king-killing.

Although all writers on the Jukun stress the divinity and godhead of the Aku it should be pointed out that nowhere in the elaborate installation ceremonies does a god or spirit enter the king-elect, as, for example, the spirit of Nyikang enters and

possesses the incumbent of the Shilluk throne. The Jukun king, furthermore, is not

exclusively distinguished by his divinity, for 'all Jukun chiefs, however minor, are

regarded as being in some measure incarnations of deity'. The king of Wukari is characterized rather by superlative degree as 'the supreme incarnation '.I Who or what he incarnates and in what sense he is divine is not easy to answer.

The Jukun pantheon comprises two high gods-a creator and creatrix, cosmic deities of natural and celestial phenomena, 'tutelary' or cult deities, and the ancestral

spirits. These four main categories of supernatural beings are collectively designated Basho-the mighty ones. Although Meek argued that the Aku was formerly identified with the sun and moon, it is more likely that this association with the cosmic deities was metaphorical rather than mystical. Likewise, the king is not exclusively identified with any of the lesser, ' tutelary ' gods, but as many of them are said to be dead kings he is closely associated with them through his royal ancestry. However, being identified with no single deity he can represent them all, and Meek summed up the theological status of the Aku as ' an earthly image of the plurality of the gods '.2

There is a sense in which the living king is superior to the cult gods, and after his I Meek, op. cit., p. I22. 2 Op. cit., p. 122.



I46 THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN installation this section of the pantheon does symbolic obeisance to him. This is

probably a concomitant of sociological factors rather than a religious dogma, however. Thus, in view of the fact that some of the cult deities are non-Jukun in origin and that still others are the exclusive concern of other ethnic groups in Wukari, their

absorption into the Jukun pantheon would be conditional upon their spiritual sub- ordination to the Jukun king as a reflection of Jukun political dominance. Secondly, since the priests of the majority of the cults are hereditary and thus far independent of the king, his authority over them is validated by his spiritual ascendancy over the deities their cults attempt to control.

The king's ritual duties were essentially concerned with providing for the well-

being of his people. His mere existence was not enough; he had to maintain harmony between society and its natural environment by means of ritual action. His duties in this sphere were threefold: to perform the daily rites for which he was uniquely qualified by office; to provide for and direct the activities of other cults; and to sustain and control his own spiritual potency. The potential coercive use of his ritual powers by the king was considerably restricted by the existence of many other priestly offices and by the innumerable taboos which regulated his ritual behaviour. With regard to the former, the priests of the many cults were not deputies of the king, and their ritual authority and consequential prestige did not derive from him. This is illustrated by the injunctions which forbade the king to be present at the performance of rites other than those held in his own palace, and which forbade the king to meet certain priests face to face. His was the ultimate responsibility, however, for ensuring that appropriate rites were carried out at the customary times, and for directing the priests to co-operate on contingent occasions which required special rites. In this

capacity the Aku was a high priest with a somewhat remote supervision of numerous ritual specialists. The distribution of ritual authority in the society together with the elaborate taboos of his office were the categorical checks on the king's ritual power, which was thus in practice no more absolute than his political power. The conditional check of regicide presumably could also be brought to bear on a king who abused his supernatural mandate.

If the king's divinity cannot accurately be characterized in terms of his being an embodiment of any particular deity, there is a sense in which the Aku was a god in himself, having considerable supernatural potency and being the object of a cult. A question which has received no little discussion then arises, namely, whether it is not the kingship rather than the king, the office rather than its incumbent, which is divine. In so far as this distinction is maintained it is probably true to say that it is the kingship which is at the apex of the state's structure, the permanent symbol of its unity and continuity, the embodiment of the culture's values and the guarantor of the society's prosperity. These and other attributes are clearly intrinsic to the office. Since, however, the office must always be occupied-even when it is not, the fiction is maintained that it is-the distinction is elusive. Inevitably too, the assimilation of the person to the office entails the assimilation of these attributes to the incumbent. In few other social statuses or structural positions is expectation of role-fulfilment so high as in kingship. It is interesting therefore, that Jukun appear to give some recognition to the person-office distinction on the two important ceremonial occasions which constitute the rites de passage of an individual king.



THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN At his installation the king is seized and stripped of his former status by the king-

maker, then given the symbols of the political and ritual competences of his office one

by one. His status is incremented like a snowball as he undergoes a territorial and initiatory passage. At his funeral and in reverse sequence his titles and competences are demanded back by those who bestowed them: the title of Manu (Mallam) by the chief of the Hausa community, the seed-corn by the priest of the corn, the rain- making cloth by the priest of the rain, the coat, cap, and whip of political office by the king-maker. These are, as it were, elements of the Jukun kingship, symbolic components of the office. There was thus a conception of the syncretic nature of kingship as an amalgam of competences or functional roles: the king as ruler, as

guardian of the corn, as rain-maker and even, since about i800, as ' Mallam' to Islamized subjects. There is also the suggestion that, as these elements were bestowed

upon and reclaimed from each individual king in a piecemeal fashion, the kingship exists by virtue of the consent of the various groups and offices involved in the ceremonies.

In popular Jukun belief it is the personal immortality of the king as well as the continuity of the kingship which is stressed by these ceremonies. Commoners and the king's untitled subjects participate in them only to a minor degree. They welcome the king when, his sacralization complete, he rides into his capital seated on a white horse, and they bid farewell to his mummified body, again seated astride a white horse. So far as they were concerned, only a few days elapsed between the going of one king and the coming of the next. This was the extent of formal interregnum.

Meek took pains to emphasize that the installation ceremonies of the king were a form of initiation cycle which raised the initiate to the status of a god.I Although there is no single point at which it may be said that the king became imbued with the

specific supernatural power which inheres in kingship, once the ceremonies were over the king's person was sacred and he possessed great spiritual potency. The main aspect of this potency-called 'dynamism' by Meek-is denoted by the term juve which is used in the sense of' kingly personality'. It also means 'royal fiat' and, significantly, the king's physical body. It is axiomatic that divine power is dangerous as well as beneficial; it therefore has to be controlled and treated circumspectly. The

king's wrath was terrible; it was said that if he flew into a rage and struck the ground the country would be blighted. Those who angered him hastened to calm him and

pursuade him to dip his fingers in water to quench 'the fire of his hand'. The numerous taboos which surround the king, besides serving to elevate his office and

emphasize his apartness, also serve to protect his subjects from this dangerous potency which inheres in his body, for it is axiomatic also that the sacred is contagious. All that comes into contact with his person is contaminated and potentially harmful. One of the most powerful oaths was that sworn on the mat, couch, or slippers of the

king. It partook of the nature of an ordeal when the swearer came to touch the object he had sworn by, for if falsely sworn it was believed that he would be ' struck dead as if by an electric shock '.2

If the king's body itself was sacred, the analytical distinction between person and

I Indeed, he relies so heavily on this interpretation 2 Meek, op. cit., p. 127. that he misses the sociological significance of many of the rites. See op. cit., pp. 135-9.

I47



148 THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN office is only of limited use in discussing the concept of the king's divinity. Further- more, the idea that the king does not die, expressed verbally in such sayings as ' he has returned to the skies ' and symbolically in many ritual practices, does not entirely refer to the permanence of the office. The Jukun, like many other peoples with sacral kingship, appear to make another, less legalistic, distinction which parallels but does not coincide with the person-office dichotomy. This is the man-god dicho-

tomy of the king's dual nature-one which Frazer found so fascinating. From one

point of view, the doctrine of the king's dual nature appears to be elaborated in custom and belief to resolve the contradiction between the imperfect humanity of the incumbent and the ideal nature of the office.

Jukun theories of personality are complex, there being at least three entities which can be loosely translated as ' soul' or ' spirit'. The uncommonly elaborate eschato-

logy of the Jukun resolves the contradiction between the cult of the ancestors and belief in reincarnation by the idea of a double soul: the dindi which remains in the afterworld as an ancestor, and the dindi of rebirth which returns to animate a physical body. The king's dindi, unlike that of ordinary men, is immune to the malignant forces of witches and sorcerers and to the harmful emanations of menstruous women. But even the king's vigorous dindi would appear to weaken as he grows old, for one of the numerous traditions surrounding the killing of the king states that an ageing king was given a mirror when it was thought time for him to die. What a person sees when he looks in a mirror is his dindi. The king's dindi is clearly associated with his humanity; thejuwe, as we have seen, with his godhead, although it also refers to his body. Thejuwe, as the principal aspect of the king's spiritual potency, is dangerous to men and potentially harmful to the crops. The dindi, on the other hand, is magically beneficial to the crops. The most powerful physical manifestations of the dindi-hair and nails-of priests and counsellors are buried at Puje, the sacred site of the annual harvest festival. The nails and hair of the king, carefully preserved during his reign, are buried with his body, formerly alongside a slave who was called the 'attendant of the corn '.

Another entity, the bwui, Meek describes as ' the personified dynamism of a living thing . . . which persists after death and with a power commensurate with that exhibited during life '.1 The bwi of a king is presumably also very powerful, for like that of certain animals, it can kill a man through the dying glance of the slain body. The bwi of all creatures can be strengthened during life, and there is some evidence for saying that it was this entity which was strengthened during the Ando Ku ceremonies-' rejuvenation' rites traditionally undergone by every king in the sixth

year of his reign. The king's bwi, unique to the individual, is separated together with the dindi when the death of the body occurs. However, in popular belief, kings do not die, they 'return to the skies ' or simply disappear. The elaborate and highly secret preservation of the king's body and its animated farewell to the people on its last journey is a vivid expression of the king's personal immortality-as a god. As a man, once stripped of its titles and its kingly roles, the corpse is renamed and buried secretly with few grave goods. The grave is even permitted to fall into

disrepair. These practices and beliefs-including the apparent paradox that although the king

I Meek, op. cit., p. 205.



THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN 149 must be killed he never dies-make sense in the light of the concept of the king's dual nature. Frazer maintained that the man was killed to save the god. This is merely the cosmological aspect of the person-office problem, for the positive act of regicide not only rescues the god from the man but also preserves the vitality of the kingship -the institution-from inept human frailty. The ' god' that the Jukun rescue from their ailing king is not a spirit like Nyikang, but a more indefinable spiritual potency which is the quintessence of kingship. Juwe is immortal and inviolable, manifesting itself in the bodies of kings and in their very commands. It would appear to be con- centrated particularly in the heart and right arm, for each king is joined to the line which preceded him and will succeed him through these parts of the body-he eats the powdered heart and keeps the right arm of his predecessor as a sacred relic. The

kingship is perpetuated in this way. To borrow a metaphorical concept from medieval English political theory and theological doctrine, juwe is the king's immortal 'body politic' representing the 'uninterrupted line of royal bodies natural '-his own ancestors.' Visible in the form of the king's own body, it is analogous also to the dignitas of medieval English kings which was represented at one period by an effigy at their ' demise ,.2

In so far as the distinction can be made meaningfully, it is in his ritual rather than

political capacity that the king is, or should be, killed. Meek did not inquire into the political implications of the custom and he offers the following pragmatic interpretation with sole reference to the ritual aspect of the kingship:

I would suggest ... that the main reason for the killing of the king during serious ill- health was that by continued ill-health he was unable to perform the daily rites by which the royal ancestors were fed and the life of the crops sustained.3

This does not emphasize sufficiently the mystical identity between the life of the individual king and the life of the crops, for among his other roles the Aku Wukari is a ' corn-king '. Although he does not incarnate any ' nature god ', he does in some way embody the ' spirit of the crops '. On all public appearances he is hailed by his

subjects as 'Our Corn! Our Beans! Our Groundnuts! ' The grain from the king's farms is used for making the sacred beer which it is his daily duty to consume. Meek

suggests a theological subtlety: beer is spiritualized grain, the food of the gods and the ancestors. By drinking it the king holds communion with the gods and ancestors immanent in himself; but since he is also mystically identified with the corn he is

offering himself in daily sacrifice.4 It is said that if the king were to be buried during the dry season the crops would die for ever, the implication being that they would 'die' with him. The crops harvested after his death are said to belong to him, and at his funeral, just before his public' disappearance ', he symbolically releases a hand- ful of grain in response to his subjects' appeal to him not to take away the crops. On

I See Kantorowicz, 1957, p. 3I6. The distinction is conserved in the individual' (ibid., p. 385). Thus, of the 'king's two bodies' was not simply one of incidentally, the high expectation of a king's role- person and office, but of a mortal 'body natural' fulfilment: the unique extant form must be the perfect and an immortal 'body politic ', the latter being representative of its class. the corporation sole of the perpetual dynasty. The 2 Ibid., p. 395 et seq. king's duality was sometimes expressed in the meta- 3 Meek, op. cit., p. 164. phor of the Phoenix which was both a mortal 4 Ibid., p. 153. individual and an immortal species;' the whole kind



THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN this day of formal interregnum all Jukun males shave their heads, and they remain unshaven until the accession of the new king when the sprouting of the hair is likened to the sprouting of new crops. During this brief interregnum it is forbidden to pound the corn in the town-a further expression of the idea that the king takes his harvest with him.

Despite the manifestly Frazerian character of the king's role as a ' corn-king ', it cannot be established that it was invariably in this capacity alone that the king should be put to death when he-or his dindi-showed signs of enfeeblement. It is possibly in this context, however, that the septennial rule of regicide belongs. Meek notes that if any credence is to be given to the chronology of kings given at Wukari, the

seven-year rule would not appear to have been enforced during the last two centuries, but even today the Jukun of outlying districts calculate the king-list according to this rule, so the belief retains some force.I Meek makes the pertinent suggestion that the

seven-year rule might have been based on 'the observation that famines seem to occur at intervals of seven years in the Northern Provinces of Nigeria '.2 It was claimed that drought and famine were the most compelling reasons for killing the

Jukun king, so there is the implication that serious drought cycles regulated the

length of reign. It should be noted that regicide was said to be performed after, not

during, the drought, so the notion of the king as scapegoat rather than as sacrifice is present. Thus, although the king's ritual role predicated more than his being a personification of the crops to his subjects, the ' corn-king' aspect was a not in- considerable part of the pattern of Jukun divine kingship. It belonged, as it were, on the human side of the man-god dichotomy, and in terms of the other polar concepts, the killing of the ' corn-king '-alias the Frazerian scapegoat-was a ritual rather than a political matter. It had nothing to do with the immortaljuwe, the essence of

kingship which, it will be recalled, was capable of harming the crops. It concerned the individual king-or his dindi-rather than the kingship.

In general terms, 'ritual kingship' connotes the symbolic aspects of kingship and its control of society and nature through supernatural agencies. It posits the doctrine of absolute power-the reciprocal of which is total responsibility. Dysfunctions in the social or natural orders are ascribed not to the failure of ritual kingship but to the

personal inadequacies of the individual king. The Jukun king was supremely responsible not only for good harvests and the regular natural phenomena on which they depended, but also for the delicate harmony of the interrelations between his people and' the mighty ones '-the gods and ancestors. At the point of integration between nature, society, and the gods, the king's ritual task was superhuman: a god unlike other gods, a man unlike other men, he must yet be acceptable to both. He must live in harmony with his officials and the various groups they represent, with the priests of the various cults, and with his own ancestors. Being subsistence farmers the Jukun see the king's incapacity or dereliction of duty with regard to these demands to be most conspicuously signalized by the failure of the crops. ' The gods have repudiated the king ', it is then said, and he should be put to death. The moral dimension obtrudes here, for it is said that even if the shortcomings of his people are to blame for a natural disaster, the king's identification with his subjects, his responsibility to and for them is such that he should be killed nevertheless.

I Personal communication, Mr. A. Rubin. 2 Meek, op. cit., p. I64.

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IV

The notion of Frazerian divine kingship with its central dogma of ceremonial

regicide has been examined in the analytical contexts of three main aspects of Jukun thought and customary behaviour-the political, the ritual, and the cosmological. While it has been shown to have some significance in each of these contexts, divine

kingship is more meaningful among the Jukun when considered as a ritual rather than a political institution. In trying to answer the implicit question of whether

regicide-assuming that it sometimes occurred-was primarily political action with ritual or ideological justification, or a ritual imperative with political consequences, I conclude-perhaps unfashionably-in favour of the latter alternative. Thus, while it may be said that the doctrine of regicide provides a conditional constitutional check on the king's political power, it cannot be satisfactorily shown that it is a corollary of the Jukun pattern of political competition for the kingship. In so far as political motives could be found to underlie the killing of the Jukun king they were in- sufficient to explain the existence of the custom with its elaborate beliefs and cos-

mological ramifications. Political action utilized, as it were, a ritual act which was

potentially autonomous.

Ritually, the king may be killed because his health is mystically connected with the

well-being of his people and his life with the life of the crops, because, in short, he is

supremely responsible for nature to society. Cosmologically, regicide resolves the contradiction inherent in his status as a deity and symbol and his existence as a flawed and mortal human being whom the other gods may reject. To paraphrase Frazer at a metaphysical level, society kills the man to rescue the symbol. In periodically killing one who transcends nature by controlling it and transcends society by embodying it, men assert their command over nature and demonstrate their final control of society. The function of the doctrine of the king's dual nature is evident: to reconcile his

political and ritual roles on the one hand, and the person and office dichotomy on the other. Both are distinctions which the Jukun appear to recognize.

The custom of ceremonial regicide and its associated complex of beliefs can be

analysed and interpreted as subserving structural, organizational, and ritual ends. The mainspring of customary regicide may be any one of these and is likely to vary from case to case within and among those societies where it existed. But these aspects interpenetrate. While the only documented case of a Jukun king's death in which

regicide almost certainly occurred gives prominence to the political machinations of a rival kinsman, this king's death also coincided with a year of serious drought and famine conditions. Tradition and the mandate of the people's expectations underlay the political motives for the king's removal, and if it was for the conspirators a political coup, it was for the ordinary people of Wukari a validation and reaffirmation of their beliefs in the nature of kingship and the mystical association between the life of the king and the fertility of the crops.

REFERENCES

BEATTIE, J. H. M. I959. Rituals of Nyoro Kingship ', Africa, xxix. I34-45. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1932.' Ethnological Observations in Dar Fung ', Sudan Notes and Records, xv. I-6I.

1948. The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan. The Frazer Lecture for I948, Cambridge. FIRTH, R. 1955. ' Some Principles of Social Organization ', Journal of the RoyalAnthropological Institute, lxxxv.

I-I8.

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THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE JUKUN FRAZER, J. G. 1911-15. The Golden Bough, 3rd edition, London.

1911I. The Dying God, Part III of The Golden Bough. London. GLUCKMAN, M. I954. Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa. The Frazer Lecture for I952, Manchester. HOWELL, P. P. I952. ' The Death of Reth Dak Wad Fadiet and the Installation of his Successor ', Man, lii.

141, pp. I02-4. JARVIE, I. E. 1964. The Revolution in Anthropology, London. KANTOROWICZ, E. H. 1957. The King's Two Bodies, Princeton University Press. KRIGE, E. J., and J. D. 1943. The Realm of a Rain-Queen, O.U.P. LIENHARDT, G. I961. Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka, London. MAIR, L. I962. Primitive Government, Harmondsworth, Middlesex. MEEK, C. K. 193I. A Sudanese Kingdom, London. MONK, G. L. 1928. Letter to Lt.-Gov. H. R. Palmer. C22/I928/4. (Unpublished MS.) MORRIS, H. S. 1958. ' The Divine Kingship of the Aga Khan: A Study of Theocracy in East Africa ', South-

Western Journal of Anthropology, xiv. 454-72. MURDOCK, G. P. 1959. Africa: Its People and their Culture History, McGraw-Hill, New York. NORBECK, E. 1963. ' African Rituals of Conflict', American Anthropologist, lxv. I254-79. PERHAM, M. I937. Native Administration in Nigeria, O.U.P. RIAD, M. I959. ' The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk and its Origin ', Archivfur VIlkerkunde, xiv. 141-284. RICHARDS, A. I. I960 (Ed.), East African Chiefs, London. ROHEIM, G. 1930. Animism, Magic and the Divine King, London. SELIGMAN, C. G. 19I3. ' Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan ', Journal Royal

Anthropological Institute, xliii. 593-683. SELIGMAN, C. G. and B. Z. 1932. Pagan Tribes of the Nilotic Sudan, London. SELIGMAN, C. G. 1933. Egypt and Negro Africa: A Study in Divine Kingship, The Frazer Lecture for I933,

London. SMITH, M. G. 1960. Government in Zazzau, O.U.P. VANSINA, J. I962. ' A Comparison of African Kingdoms ', Africa, xxxii. 324-34. VAUGHAN, J. H. 1964. ' Culture, History, and Grass-Roots Politics in a Northern Cameroons Kingdom',

American Anthropologist, lxvi. pp. 1078-95. WILSON, M. 1959a. Communal Rituals of the Nyakyusa, London.

- 1959b. Divine Kings and' the Breath of Men ', The Frazer Lecture for 1959, Cambridge. YOUNG, MICHAEL W. 1965. A CriticalAnalysis of Ethographic Materials on theJukun Kingship. London University

M.A. Thesis. (Unpublished MS.)

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS NUMBER

I. SCHAPERA. Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics; author of A Handbook of Tswana Law and Custom (I955), Praise Poems of Tswana Chiefs (I965), etc.

MICHAEL W. YOUNG. Recently completed graduate studies in the Department of Anthropology, University College, London; at present a Research Scholar at the Australian National University, Canberra, preparing for a field-trip to New Guinea.

MERRAN FRAENKEL. Research Officer at the Centre for Urban Studies, London; carried out field- work in Monrovia from April I958 to April 1959 while holding a Research Fellowship from the Inter- national African Institute; author of Tribe and Class in Monrovia (1964).

E. CHEDEVILLE. Spent many years in French Somaliland as an army officer and administrator; received a Field Research Grant from the International African Institute in I955 to assist his study of the'Afar and 'Afar-Issa languages on which he is now working.

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Resume

LA ROYAUTI DIVINE CHEZ LES JUKUN: RECONSIDISRATION DE QUELQUES THJ2ORIES

LA premiere partie de cet article concerne certains des problemes theoriques que pose l'interpretation de cette institution africaine si repandue, la royaute divine. Ce terme y est redefini d'apres la terminologie frazerienne et, en consequence, se rapporte essentiellement a un systeme ideologique dont le principe central est que le monarque divin n'a pas le droit de mourir de mort naturelle. Les plus importants aspects de l'interpretation ' structuraliste ' telle qu'elle a ete soutenue par le Professeur Evans-Pritchard dans son fameux travail sur les Shilluk, sont examines et critiques brievement.

La royaute chez les Jukun Wukari du Nigeria du Nord, exemple classique de la royaute divine selon Frazer, est choisie comme sujet particulier d'etude. Dans la seconde partie de l'article est examinee la signification politique de la royaute jukun. Bien que les donnees sur les pouvoirs du roi, le schema de la competition politique pour le tr6ne et, defacto, sur le regicide soient incompletes et parfois confuses, il est possible de conclure que le regicide chez les Jukun n'etait pas un acte purement politique ayant des repercussions sur des rela- tions structurales telle que l'opposition des groupes de la posterite royale. Dans la mesure ou l'execution du roi jukun peut etre imputee a des motifs politiques, ces derniers ne suffisent pas a expliquer l'existence de la coutume avec son accompagnement de croyances et ses ramifications cosmologiques.

Les aspects rituel et cosmologique de la royaute jukun sont, a la suite, passes en revue. La distinction sociologique habituelle entre la personne et l'office s'est averee valable pour l'interpretation des rites de passage du roi. D'ailleurs, les Jukun eux-memes semblent etablir une distinction parallele entre le roi en tant qu'homme et le roi en tant que dieu. Cette doctrine de la nature dualiste du roi ouvre un apergu considerable sur l'ensemble des croyances et des pratiques (en particulier l'association mystique du roi avec les recoltes et le regicide ceremoniel) qui constituent la royaute divine selon Frazer.

En conclusion, le regicide chez les Jukun etait, a l'origine, plutot un imperatif rituel avec des implications politiques qu'une action politique basee sur un rituel ou une ideologie.

M

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The Divine Kingship of the Jukun: A Re-Evaluation of Some Theories

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