The Meaning of Sacrifice Among the Nuer

Abstract

THE MAIN C O NC LUSI ONs reached in earlier accounts of Nuer sacrifice (Crazzolara 1949; Evans-Pritchard I95I, 1953a, b) are as follows: (i) There are two broad types of sacrifice, the confirmatory type which is chiefly concerned with social relations changes of social status and the interaction of social groups and the piacular type which is concerned rather with the moral and physical welfare of the individual. Our attention is here mostly directed to the second, the piacular, type because of its greater importance for an understanding of Nuer religion, but it is not possible to keep the two classes entirely apart. The ritual configuration is the same in both and no rigid line of demarcation between them can be based on intention alone. Moreover, in seeking to grasp the significance of some of the chief features of the sacrificial rite, symbolic content has to be discussed at the collective as well as at the individual level. (2) The piacular sacrifices are performed in situations of danger arising from the intervention of Spirit in human affairs, often thought of as being brought about by some fault. In such sacrifices ideas of propitiation and expiation are prominent and their purpose is described by words which have the sense of bargain, exchange, and purpose. They centre, however, in the general idea of substitution of lives of oxen for lives of men. (3) Almost all sacrifices consist of four movements formal presentation, consecration, invocation, and slaughter. It is particularly in the invocation and consecration that we must look for the meaning of the whole drama. The invocation states the intention of the sacrifice, and it is made with the spear in the right hand. The spear, being an extension of the right hand, represents the virtue and vitality of the officiant and through it, as well as by speech, he throws his whole self into the intention. In symbol, the spear is the man. When a whole lineage or clan is concerned in the sacrifice the spear is that of the ancestor of the lineage or clan and represents the whole group which, through its representative, offers up the victim. (4) The consecration by placing ashes on the back of the victim with the right hand is also, at any rate in the piacular sacrifices, a gesture of identification of man with victim; and this is a special and emphatic expression within the sacrificial situation of an identification which has also a more general denotation, perhaps arising from that situation, for in sacrifice man and ox can be said to be really equivalent. Thus Nuer have an identification with the oxen given to them, together with a spear, by their fathers at their initiation to manhood, and the collective counterpart to this is the identification of the lineage with its ancestral herd; and all cattle are reserved for sacrifice. So if in symbol the sacrificial spear is the man, so also is the sacrificial victim. We may now ask ourselves what light is shed by what we have discovered about Nuer sacrifice on theories of sacrifice put forward by anthropologists and others, and attempt, with the aid of these theories, and in terms of them, to reach some general conclusions about the meaning sacrifice has among the Nuer. Much has been written about the nature of sacrifice, and this is not surprising in view of the central position it has had in the Hebrew and Christian religions and in the religions of pagan Greece and Rome. These writings are for the most part doctrinal, devotional, or philosophical, or are more concerned with historical and exegetical

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 41 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.