• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
by
M.
GRIAULE and G. DIETERLEN
Note:
The following article is translated and published in
its
entirely.It is written for professional anthropologists and ethnographers, and is prc-sented here for the reader who is sufficiently interested in the sul~ject o wishto pursue the source material. It is, therefore, supplementary information,and is not essential for the reader who merely wishes to follow the argument.
FOREWORD
The indigenous knowledge about the Sirius system which is set forth in tl~is haptrr hasbeen gathered from four Sudanese peoples: the Dogon in Bandiagara, t!~rDalnbnra an<!the Bozo in Segoul and the Minianka in Koutiala.The main investigation was carried out among the Dogon between
1946
a~ld 950,where the four major informants were:
Znnekourou Dolo,
a woman aged between sixty-five and seventy,
atnnlnyana
'priestess
of
Amma', and soothsayer, living in the Dozyou-Orey quarter of Ogol-du-Bas (1,ovicrOgol Sanga-du-Haut (Upper Sanga). Tribe: Arou. Language: Sariga.
Ongnonlou Dolo,
between sixty and sixty-five years old, patriarch of thc village of Go,recently established by a group of Arou in the south-west of Lowrr
Gpl.
I.a11~:1n~c:Sanga.
re'bknt?,
fifty years old, priest of the Binou Ytbtnt of Upper Ogol, living
ill
Ba~a(Upper Sanga). Tribe: Dyon. Language: Sanga.
Manda,
forty-five years old, priest of the Binou Manda, living in Orosongo inWazouba. Tribe: Dyon. Language: Wazouba.The system as a whole was expounded by Ongnonlou, its various details
by
thc c;ihrrinformants. Alihough he was not responsible for drawing up the Sigui calcnclar, 0ngno11-lou was acquainted with the principles behind
it
and, during the periods
when
theinvestigators were there, was able to obtain further information from the
hrc;~
i
YougoDogorou on the one hand and, on the other, from the permanent steward of ihc s.,prcmcchieftain of the Arou at Arou-by-1bi.l Ongnonlou is in fact patriarch of the family fromwhich the next holder of the title will be designated when the next holiday
con:cs
around.Ongnonlou's learning, within an extremely secret body of knowledge, thus representsan initial acquaintance or, to use a Bambara expression, a 'slight acquaintance', and thispoint should be kept in mind. Just as, for thelaymafi, the star Sirius
is
thr l.>rit?trst
tar
in the sky, attracts his gaze, and plays the major role in the computa:ion of the Sigui, sothe rules of the Sirius svstem as revealed to the initiated in the first instance are at oncesimplified in some parts and complicated in others, so as to divert the attention fromcalculations which are more secretby far.It must therefore be understood, once and for all, that the system
described
hrrerepresents one phase of the revelations ~ermittedo initiates who are top-rat~lring ut
11c1t
specifically responsible for the calculations to do with this part of the sky.For our part, the documents gathered together have not givcn rise
~o
ally origin??
 
hypothesis or research. They have been simply pieced together it1 such a May that theaccounts of the four principal informants are merged into one and the samr statement.The problem ofknowing how, with no instruments at their disposal, men could know themovements and certain characteristics of virtually invisible stars has not been settled,nor even posed. It has seemed more to the point, under these special circumstances, topresent the documents in the raw.
THE
CALCULATION OF THE TIME OF THE SIGUI
Every sixty yearsQhe Dogon hold a ceremony called the Sigui (ceremony). Its purposeis the renovation of the world, and it has been described at length by them in 1931.~Since the beginning of this investigation, we were faced with thc question ofdetcr~niningthe method uscd to calculate the period separating two Sigui ccrc~~lo~~irs.l'l~r ommonnotion, which dates back to the ~nyth f creation, is that
a
fault in the l'ougo rock,situated at the centre ofthe village of Yougo D~gorou,~ights up with a rcd glow in theyear preceding the ceremony. This fault contains various altars, in particular busts ofAndoumboulou(tlie narne given to the people of small stature wl~oor~ncrl~ived ill tl~c rocks), and a rock painting called
omnm bnra,
'god helps', to which we shall I-efcr ater.Furthermore, and before this red glow appears, a spot situated outside the villagebecomes covered with elongated gourds of a type which no one would have so\vn.FYhen these signs are observed, an apparently simple procedure of calculation iscarried out, solely by the people ofYougo Dogorou who belong to the .4rou tribe:6' hecouncil of elders assesses the interval by means of thirty two-yearly
drinking-bouts
whenbeer made from millet is drunk; and the eldest elder marks up each bout with a cowrieshell.These bouts are held about one month before the first rains, sometinlrs in May orJune, in a tent or shelter pitched to the north of the village centre.' I;ut this rule is onlytheoretical: between the last Sigui, celebrated at the beginning of the century, and 1931~there has been only one bout, halfway through the period; but the two-yearly cowrieswere set down and gathered into a pile representing the first thirty years. From 1931onwards, the drinking bouts took place every two years. When the second pile consistingof fifteen cowries has been collected, the second Sigui of the twentieth ceutury will becelcbrat~d.~
,
.
According to Manda, the priest, the calculation of the Sigui is rccordcd above thedoor of the sanctuary of Binou by two figures made ofmillct pulp represr~~tinghe godAmma and his son, Nommo, Instructor of the new world.1° I'hc Iirst cot~sists fa verticaloval
-
he egg of the world
-
and its major axis, Amma in the original darkness. In theright-hand half, each year is marked with a dot, starting from the bottom. FYhen theseventh year comes round, a kind of trident is drawn on the outside, as an
extension
to theline ofdots. The sarne thing is done on the left-hand side, in the order top-to-bottom.Fourteen years are counted in this way: the seven twin years during which the worldwas created, and to which a unit, symbolizing the whole, is added." Iliagram~naticallyspeaking, the figure shows the pod's last gesture, raisin. one hand a~~do\vrr-ing the other,thereby showing that sky andcart11 are made.This drawing is reprated four times, making it possible to reckon a pr1 iod of sixtyyears; it is accompanied by the figure of the In~tructor,~~omposcd of two vertical legssupporting a head atop a long neck. During the first thirty years which arc rrcorded bytwo ovals, the figure fcatures only the right leg. During the second thirty-y~ar eriod, theleft leg is made a little longer each year in such a way that when the Sigui actually occursit is the same length as the right leg. It is by allusion to this figure that people talk aboutthe Sigui 'getting to its feet' during this latter period.
THE
CALCULATION OF
THE
SIGUI CEREMOWIES
When it is time for the Sigui, the elders gathered in the
tana tono
shelter at You30 tlrnw
a
symbol on the rock with red ochre (fig. i), which represents a
kanaga
mask;"
ttli4,
:nturn, represents the god Amma; a hole is rnade in the ground below it sym1)olizinq thrSigui, and thus Amma in the egg of the world. In effect these two signs shouli be '~(arl'in the opposite order: Amma, in the shadow ofthe egg (the hole) revrals hiniself to mril(the red design) in his creative posture (the mask depicts the god's final pe-turr,
S~OM~III'
the universe.)"
Figure
i.
The
Kanaga
sign, connoting the sixty-year ceremonies, at Youp 1)ogorou(indigenous painting)The hole is also interpreted as the hole which must be dug to put seeds in. Fro111 thisviewpoint the holes are arranged in series of three, connoting three Siguis, placrdrespectively beneath the sign of three seeds, after which they are nalncd. 'l'hr~s ile Si?:rriat the beginning of this century was called
emtne
sigi,
the 'sorghum Sigui'; the tlcxt
onc
will be calledytc
sigi,
the 'millet Sigui'; and the one after
nu
sigi,
the 'haricot Sigui'.In theory, then, it would seem possible to record the Siguis using this simple ~rlcthod.In practice, the holes become obliterated and the paipting, moreoften than not, is to1.1cl1rdup instead of being reproduced and thus forming part of a countable sc:.ir~. ?11t
!~crr
sanother figure painted on the fa~ade f the sanctuaries which reveals rarl~crmo:.cspecific data; it is called
sigi
lu,gu,
'calculation of the Sigui', and consists
or
a line nfvertical chevrons, the notches of which are painted alternately black, rcd. r~r~d!>icv;each colour corresponds to a seed, the first to millet, the second to the haricot ar~dliethird to sorghum (fig. ii). This line can be read in two ways: Fither by i~sing
est
orrecounting system (for example the left-hand one), whereby each notch is the ccluivalcntof twenty years; here, the notch upon which a Sigui actually falls
is
carried over to t11cfollowing series: or, by taking the whole figure and counting twenty years for each nn:ch,regardless of its positioning (the right column in fig. ii); here, the notcl; upon whicll
a
Sigui falls is recounted.More consistent evidence of the celebration of the Sigui is pro\~i:lcd by thr l;+~qr
 
wooden mask, whose carving is one of the major concrete purposes of the ceremony. Thismask
-
usually of considerable size1$
-
is seldom rised, and is kept in some shclter orhideaway in the rocks, along with those which have been carved at previous ceremonies.The care with which these masks are treated
-
for in some ways tlley arc the villagearchives
-
means that it is not uncommon to come across series of three or four of them,the oldest of which date back, respectively, to
I
780 and
I
720,''' giveor take a yearor two.In exceptional cases, when the shelter has been well selected and undcr constant surveil-lance, the series may be longer still; thus at Ibi, in
1931,
nine poles were countcd, andmure ii. The calc~ilationof the Siguithese must have succeeded three more which had been reduced to a few fragments andpiles of dust and were still visible; as were the special places earmarked for them at theback of the shelter, all perfectly protected from the damp, vermin and animals. 'Theoldest in the series of nine, which showed a continuous progression of agcing in the corlrseof time," thus date from the beginning of the fifteenth century; and if the three othersare taken into account, the remnants of the earliest would date back to the first half of tht:thirteenth century."It is not easy to come across material evidence dating back further tl~arihe traces
of
these poles at Ibi. Brlt there is another object, existing in asingle edition, which is fasliio~irilduring these Sigui ceremonies and which might also, be a significant rni:cstone in thecalculation process. With the festival in mind, each regional Hogon,
as
well as tt~esupreme Hogon of Arou, has a fermentation stand woven out of baobab fibr-es; tl~isstand is used during the preparation of the first ritual beer. This beer is clistribrrterl
iri
small quantities to each family; it is then added to everybody's cup, and thus erlsrrl-c: thehomogeneousness of the beer drunk by the community. In addition to this, all the otl~erfermentation stands are associated, by contact, with the principal one, which is excrption-ally large: the lid measures 40 cm. (16 n.) in diameter, and the four 'pon~porns' .e thcsize of the normal object. As a result, it can only enter the large jars.These objects are kept in the Hogon's house where they are hung from the maillbeam, and thus form a permanent sequence. Ongnonlou saw six or seven
oC
them ill theofficial residence of the Hogon of Sanga; the latter, one of the oldest
n:en
in Uogorlcountry, has it that his grear-great-grandfather had seen eight others which precedcdthe oldest in the present series.lS Assuming a total of fourteen objects for r!~e Sar~gachieftainry, the first
-
which almost certainly does not denote the first ceretnorly held inthis region
-
would have been woven in the twelfth century, if one reckons on thr prjriodseparating two Siguis being sixty years.Again, Ongnonlou counted a series of eight in the house of the supreme Iiogcrn of thtcArou, at Arou-by-Ibi. But he adds that the number 'should' be twenty-fu~lr,~althoughhe cannot explain if there is an ideal series which a complete sequence wcuid ainl fcr, 01.which, conversely, would correspond to reality if the fibres had not turned to dust..z0The methods described above for both keeping track of the ceremo~lics ncl fo~nl-culating the intervals between Siguis are simple and tend to be mnemoteclinic. For theinitiate they simply act as understudies for other more complex practices and knowledgeto do with the Sirius system. The Dogon names for this star
-
sigi tolo, star of the Sig~i;~'oryasigi tolo, star of Yasiguiz" sufficiently indicate its relation with the ceremony of therenovation of the world which takes place every sixt
Y
years.
Sirius, however, is not the basis of the system: it is one of the foci of the orbit of a tinystar called Digitaria,
/JO
t0l0,~~r star of the Yourougou,24yurugu tolo, which plays acrucial role, and which, unaided as it were, hogs the atlention of male initiates.This system is so important that, unlike the systems:of.other parts of the sky, it hasnot been assigned to any particular group. In effect the Ono and Donuno tribes governthe stars, the former including Venus rising among its attributes, the latter Orion's belt.The sun should be assigned to the most powerful tribe, the Arou; but so as not to be guiltyof excess, the Arou handed the sun over to the Dyon, who are less noble, and hung onto the moon. As far as the star Digitaria and the system to which it belongs are concerned,these are common to all men.
THE
ORBIT
OF
DIGITARIA
The orbit described by Digitaria around Sirius is perpendicular to the horizorl, and thisposition is alluded to in one of the most common ceremonies in which masks piay a part:
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...