The divine kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan

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Previous articleNext article FreeThe divine kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan The Frazer Lecture, 1948E. E. EVANS-PRITCHARDE. E. EVANS-PRITCHARDPDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreIntroductionThe central theme of The Golden Bough was the divine kingship, and it has seemed to me appropriate that a lecture established in its author's honour and now dedicated to his memory should be on that subject. I propose, therefore, to examine one of the examples of divine kingship cited by Sir James Frazer, that of the Shilluk of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and to discuss it as a problem of social structure.It was recorded as early as 1905 that it was a Shilluk custom to kill their kings1 and much information about the Shilluk kingship in general has since been collected. Professor and Mrs Seligman studied the institution in 1909-10 and it was they who brought it to the notice of Sir James Frazer and into the main stream of ethnological theory. Apart from the writings of the Seligmans and a number of articles by other hands there are two monographs on the Shilluk, The [1] Shilluk People by Professor Diedrich Westermann, who conducted linguistic research among the Shilluk in 1910, and Father Wilhelm Hofmayr's Die Schilluk, largely based on the observations of Father Banholzer and other of his fellow catholic missionaries, which date from the beginning of the century. Father Hofmayr himself worked among the Shilluk from 1906 to 1916. There has, indeed, long been a considerable body of knowledge about the Shilluk and I would not have considered it profitable to discuss the Shilluk kingship afresh were it not that new light has recently been shed on their social structure, and more particularly on the place of the kingship in it, by officers of the Sudan Political Service. It is significant that two of them studied anthropology before joining the Sudan Service, Mr P. P. Howell at Cambridge, from where he had carried out some research among the Shilluk before joining the Service, and Mr W. P. G. Thomson at Oxford. It is from this literature, and especially from the more recent accounts, that I have drawn the material for my lecture, for though the Shilluk live in a part of the world with which I am very familiar, my contact with them has been slight.The Shilluk are the most northern of the Nilotic peoples and have been for centuries in contact [2] with the Arab population of the northern Sudan. Their country was first subjected to intermittent taxation and raiding by the Turks about 1820 and was finally conquered by them in 1867 and became part of the Ottoman Empire. When the Turkish Administration succumbed to the Sudanese Mahdi the Shilluk were involved in a struggle against this new ruler and afterwards against his Khalifa. Lord Kitchener arrived in Shillukland at the end of 1898 and since that time the people have been under Anglo-Egyptian administration. I mention these political events because they have strongly influenced the Shilluk kingship for close on a century, during which the kings have been executed, exiled, deposed, and nominated, by foreign governments. The funerary rites of a dead king and the procedures of election and investiture of a new king were probably not performed in the full traditional manner during this period.Social structureThe hamlets of the Shilluk, who number about 110,000 souls, are almost continuous, like beads on a string, along the west bank of the Nile from near Lake No to about lat. 12 N. with a number of [3] settlements on the east bank and along the lower reaches of the Sobat. Their country is treeless savannah but, unlike their cousins the Nuer and Dinka, they are predominantly agricultural and sedentary, for their long river frontage gives them adequate water and grazing in the dry season for the comparatively few cattle (about 25,000) they possess.2 The brief account I give of their social structure is mostly derived from articles in Sudan Notes and Records by Mr Pumphrey and Mr Howell.3The hamlets (myer, sing. pac), built from 100 yards to a mile or so apart on high ground parallel to the river, vary in size from one to fifty homesteads; a homestead (gol), the residence of a family (gol), consisting usually of two huts encircled by a fence. Each hamlet is occupied by members of an extended family, or small lineage, with their wives, and the homesteads of this group are arranged in a rough horseshoe shape around a common cattle-byre, which shelters the animals in the rains and is used as a club at all seasons, and a common kraal. The headman of a hamlet (jal dwong pac) who is also the head of a lineage in [4] the settlement of which it forms part represents the hamlet on the council of the settlement and receives in consequence a robe of honour from the king or from the chief of the settlement. If his hamlet is only a subsidiary seat of a lineage in the settlement he is regarded merely as its senior member.The settlement to which I have just referred is called podh, a word which has a number of meanings but generally designates a group of hamlets, occupied by different lineages, which, though there may be much competition between them, unite for defence, for the ritual of age-sets (an institution otherwise of little political importance), and in intersettlement and national affairs, and have a common chief. There are about a hundred of these settlements in Shillukland, each having a population of from less than 100 to more than 600 adult males. They are structurally distinct groups of a political kind though the distance that divides a settlement from adjacent settlements may be no greater than that which separates a hamlet from its nearest neighbours in the same settlement.In every settlement there is a dominant lineage, the dyil, the owners of the soil, with whom the various stranger and immigrant accretions (wedh) identify themselves politically and with whom they [5] form a separate social community with its own corporate life. This lineage is generally dominant in numbers as well as in virtue of the prestige derived from its traditional association with the settlement site. The chief of the settlement is chosen from it and by its members, though the stranger lineages have some say in the election, which must be confirmed by the king (reth) of the Shilluk. Even when a stranger lineage, sometimes a branch of the royal clan (kwareth), becomes more numerous in a settlement than its dominant lineage and dispossesses its members of the chieftainship they still retain some prestige as owners of the soil. unity in a settlement and the authority of its chief are said to depend on its integration around a powerful dominant lineage. i must, therefore, say something here about Shilluk lineages.There has been, and still is, some obscurity about Shilluk descent groups. There are said to be in Shillukland about 100 groups designated by the word kwa (descendants) followed by the name of the ancestor of the group. These are often described in the literature as exogamous clans but many of them might perhaps be better spoken of as lineages. They have a typical lineage structure with its characteristic branching off in response to the formation [6] of new territorial units. Colonies of the same lineage are found in several settlements, so that in any settlement several different descent groups are represented, one of them, as i have already explained, being always dominant in it and identified with the settlement politically. Although the dispersed lineages of a clan do not intermarry, and sometimes acknowledge their common descent in other ways, a man generally thinks in terms of his localized lineage, reference being usually to the ancestor who founded the lineage in his settlement. it is interesting to note a further common feature of lineage systems: the descendants of a man who has settled with his wife's people trace their descent through the wife to the lineage in whose home they live. This practice is, as among the other Nilotic peoples, one of the ways in which stranger lineages are grafted into the genealogical structure of the dominant lineage in a settlement. However, until we know more than we do at present about the distribution of lineages, about their genealogical structure, and about the part they play in inter-settlement relations it will not be possible to estimate fully their political significance.All the Shilluk settlements compose a common polity, the kingdom of Shillukland. They are [7] segments of an organization. It seems that in pre-Turkish times there was a tendency for contiguous settlements to combine for war against other settlements or under the leadership of an outstanding personality, but such combinations were not permanent, or even consistent enough for us to speak of them as political groups. The Turkish Administration tried to give greater consistency to them so that they could be used as administrative units, and the Anglo-Egyptian Government has done the same and calls them divisions and appoints a chief for each. Previously they appear to have been little more than districts or localities, and the only chiefs between the king and the chiefs of settlements were those of Ger, northern Shillukland, and Luak, southern shillukland, whose functions had, as we shall see, a ritual rather than an administrative character, and those of Muomo and Tonga, the settlements which are the northern and southern marches of Shillukland, whose functions were also partly ritual. In Shilluk speech Muomo and Tonga correspond exactly, Professor Westermann tells us, to the expression of the ancient Hebrews: from Dan unto Beersheba.4 [8] Northern Shillukland and southern Shillukland are the arches of the politico-religious kingdom of the Shilluk of which the kingship is the keystone. That segmentation has taken this particular form is doubtless due to the peculiar ribbon-distribution of the Shilluk settlements.The whole Shilluk people recognize a single head and we can therefore speak of the Shilluk nation and of their king, and it is with his place in the national polity that this lecture is particularly concerned. According to Shilluk tradition the present king is the thirty-first of his line. All the kings are believed to be descended from Nyikang, the leader of the Shilluk in their heroic age, who led them into their present homeland, conquering it from its inhabitants and dividing it among the lineages of his followers; and Nyikang, or, as we would say, the spirit of Nyikang, is believed to be in every king and to have passed from king to king down the line of his successors. Nyikang is thus a mythological personification of the timeless kingship which itself symbolizes the national structure, a changeless moral order.The rule of succession is that only a son of a king can be invested with the kingship. As many sons of kings have never succeeded to the throne, there [9] are today numerous and widely diffused branches of the royal clan whose members are ineligible for royal office and lack authority, unless they are also chiefs of settlements, although they are treated with deference by commoners in virtue of their descent. Indeed, the royal clan is easily the largest single clan in the whole country, being said to comprise perhaps a fifteenth of the nation. In some areas its members are more numerous than commoners and have supplanted commoner lineages in the chieftainship of settlements. This process, which continues today, has been going on for a long time, for it is said that Abudok, the eighth ruler (and only queen) of the Shilluk, prophesied that one day the royal clan would eat up the rest of the Shilluk.5 It results from the custom of sending pregnant wives of a king from the royal capital to bear their children in other, generally their natal settlements. Their daughters are not allowed to marry and therefore do not start lines of descent which would count as sisters' sons to the royal house. Their sons are brought up by settlement chiefs, often their mothers' brothers, and not in the capital. When a prince (nyireth) marries he builds a separate hamlet near that of the settlement chief [10] who has reared him and there his descendants live. Some lineages of the royal clan, the ororo, have been formally deprived of their noble status and can now intermarry with their parent clan. They are said to be descendants of Ocolo, the fifth king, who were degraded by his successor, but Father Hofmayr's and Father Crazzolara's accounts6 would suggest that some of them may be descended from the nobles degraded by other kinds, and furthur research will probably confirm this. They are few in number but they hold the important chieftainship of Tonga settlement and they play a leading part in the royal funerary and investiture rites. A king always has some of their daughters among his wives and it is said to be their duty to smother him in certain circumstances.The emergence of what may be called aristocratic status has been accompanies by the formation of numerous groups of persons of the category of bang reth, royal clients. They are descendants of retainers of past kings—captured enemies, certain homicides, persons who have become possessed by the spirit of Nyikang, and poor men who have [11] attached themselves to the court—and have been given the fictional collectivity of exogamous lineages. They are said to be rather more numerous than the royal clan. During a king's lifetime his special band of retainers used, until the practice was discouraged by the Government, to live near the capital in a hamlet of their own, but when their master was buried in his natal settlement some of them moved there with his elderly widows, and their descendants remained there to tend his shrine. Also, when a prince was 'planted out', as the Shilluk say, in a settlement, his father sent some of his retainers to live there and these became bang nyireth, a prince's clients. They served the prince during his lifetime, and after his death their descendants continued to live near the prince's descendants as a fictitious lineage. consequently, where there is a branch of the royal clan in a settlement there is usually a lineage of clients in the same settlement. The clients are merged in the general category of commoners, colo, of which word 'Shilluk' is an Arabic corruption, though it is said of them that they have a slightly lower social status than members of other commoner clans because they have no traditional rights in the settlements in which they live. [12]The development of the Shilluk kingship has thus produced, though not in a very pronounced or rigid form, a social hierarchy of royal house, nobility (other members of the royal clan), and commoners (including persons of client origin).The kingshipIf we are to understand the place of the kingship in Shilluk society we must, i think, beware of attempts to define it in terms of judicial and administrative functions and view it rather as a ritual office and in a wider political context. in 1903 Father Tappi wrote that the authority of the king is 'absolute'.7 Professor and Mrs Seligman have described the king as 'absolute head—temporal and spiritual—of a state whose territory is divided into a number of provinces, each administered by a chief directly responsible to the sovereign and acting as his proxy',8 and Professor Westermann has also written of the power of the king as 'absolute'.9 Father Hofmayr says that 'Mit dem Regierungsantritt ist der König Herr des Landes, das er nach Belieben vergeben [13] kann, und Herr sogar des Eigentums seiner Untertanen'.10 These statements would seem to require some modification. As Mr Pumphrey has pointed out, it is unlikely that the so-called 'provinces' were in fact more than districts or that they were in any sense administrative departments before they were made into something of the kind by foreign governments.11 Moreover, though doubtless the king exercised considerable influence in the country and have confirmed settlement chiefs in he not They were of settlements in virtue of their as of lineages dominant in those settlements and although they had certain to the king it is, i think, to them as being in any sense administrative such terms as and in of the political would appear to in the light of what is now of it, to be a is that the more recent rather than state what in their is the of the Mr Howell and Mr Thomson speak of the of the king and of a Mr Pumphrey says that in the was probably rough and more than Indeed, appear to have been in the and it is not very they were are that were sometimes brought before the king, but he can be said to have tried such If he at all it was to one to a are that when a settlement war on or to to the king he might a from the adjacent settlements and with this and his own retainers the their cattle and their some of the cattle for himself and the rest were taken by those who his The raiding would generally be enough to for therefore, to have been by sometimes by royal I am not to Father Hofmayr's that for was to the king A different of the king's part in the settlement of is by Mr of the who the settlement of a which had been going on in a for more than by the of the king and the his account it is that the king could not have a settlement had the not been to that the part in it by the king was that of and not of and that his can better be described as than as The king of the Shilluk but not king's in the settlement of gives us a to what is confirmed by a of further his in Shilluk indeed, speak of the king as the des of royal and and of its and of the king as high of the his functions and his status are of a ritual on important especially for and for in and it is his duty to cattle for the of Nyikang at and and a for at Nyikang, the of the Shilluk, their first king, and the of their is in him and this him the of Shilluk the political head of the nation and the of the national The kingship is the common of the Shilluk people Nyikang being an institution which past and present and of political structure with can be at every of the The territorial segments of the nation and their association with lineages is, as we have by the of out of his among the the of which up into a single mythological Some trace their descent from his some from his from the inhabitants of the country conquered by and from men who some part in his The lineage who are the chiefs of settlements have ritual to the in at the king's the of huts at which is the royal capital and the of Nyikang, and the of other and those of past These are widely the country so that every of it in the of Nyikang, who is, it must be in not only the of Shilluk but also the king at every of their Indeed, the of Nyikang, what Seligman calls his are from the of dead kings and they have the same functions in the of the in the at and in times of and The and of the Shilluk are up with the political through the of Nyikang with the The kingship at the of Shilluk moral can only understand the place of the kingship in Shilluk society when we that it is not the at any time who is king, but Nyikang who is the between man and and is believed in some to in as he in the is the but the is not The of Nyikang in the king the kingship to a all or of descent. All the Shilluk in the kingship, their may them apart in other because in Nyikang are all those which are common to all the in war against and the and of and of those which are of to Professor Westermann tells us that they most in their national and has its in Mr Howell and Mr Thomson us that when a king the Shilluk say is no of the world has It is by the investiture of a new king, for though kings may the kingship, that is Nyikang, Mr tells say that should the whole Shilluk would of the with the kingship and in the of the king he must himself in a state of ritual by certain and certain and in a state of say that the Shilluk that should the king become the whole people might that a king becomes or he should be to some national such as in or The king must be to the kingship and with it the whole Shilluk would seem to be the Shilluk statements that the king may be or or up in a and to he to his wives or of or In view of the Sir James Frazer and have attached to these statements I must that I them of more as an of the of the kingship than as that the kings in in the ways or for the It is that Professor and Mrs Seligman state that is not the that kings of the Shilluk were with due when they to of or but I have to that any Shilluk king was to death in although some of the kings must have long before they for on the and I am that the of kings being up in a is a from the up of the of a dead king, the being buried after of the In the of other than traditional of royal in Shilluk and in view of the cited I that the to death of kings is probably a from the of the king, who is himself and Nyikang, an and an which also for the linguistic that a king not but just as Nyikang is said not to have but to have in his in a i will to this of after i have the procedures of election and investiture of kings to what light they shed on the of the kingship. election and of the investiture of a new king were described by Mr P. of the Sudan Political Service, who was an of the investiture of the king, in However, the recent by Mr Howell and Mr who were to observations on what on the death of in and on the election and investiture of his successor, in and on the death of and on the election and investiture of in are and more and are therefore followed in the present the death of a king his is for some in a and his are buried in his natal and not in the royal capital. The are and the by royal ororo, and members of the royal clan head of which is not the king but the chief of It is more a clan, than a The election of the new king, which place a few after his is, on the an of the whole Shilluk who in the election through the chiefs of the and the to whom i have already persons in their in the election and in the of investiture the of Shillukland. have that the Shilluk kingdom has a political in its territorial in its into and and marches and settlements, and ritual in its its in to the of In the ritual the is by the of the country into the northern and Nyikang, the southern which correspond structurally to the political of the kingdom into Ger, the northern and Luak, the southern though they are not The chiefs of the divisions in this ritual of the Shilluk polity are also the political chiefs of and the two settlements which are to the and adjacent to the capital and which is almost where the and is the in the of to that the of election that the prince to be king must have the of the whole Mr Thomson tells us that with the chiefs of and and place unless they and it is that not depend on the of the two men but that they are for the of the country they The other members of what Mr Howell and Mr the and which they say a very of the traditional structure of the Shilluk have to to the of these two The other members are the two chiefs of the northern and southern Muomo and Tonga, chiefs of settlements who are descended from the chiefs among whom Nyikang divided Shillukland when he conquered and settled his in it, and important chiefs of branches of the royal clan which have become dominant in powerful settlements in the the only of all of the kingdom is before a prince can be invested with the kingship. The of the of Shillukland in the of a king is further in the between them in the of the which at the same time the and settlement of the country by Nyikang and his the of the of the country the investiture of a king, which place about a after his election, be The would seem to have this for the kingship represents the whole country and a king can only be made by rites in which the whole country also in the investiture all of the population are The royal clan, its the commoner especially those whose were among the of Nyikang, and the client all have in the settlements in different districts of Shillukland and different clans are responsible for various of the and for the various in its and