SUPYIRE VOCABULARY IN THE DOMAIN OF SACRIFICE
Types of sacrifice
Supyire Literal gloss
Free translation cîîre ük—bilini
Divination + chicken chicken sacrificed for divination
buüi k…sanraga sÃragaüi
Corpse + the last + sacrifice
corpse’s last sacrifice ük—pîn
Chicken + be bad tasting
sacrificed chicken which falls on its side or stomach, signifying that the
sacrifice is not accepted or that the answer to the question is no
ük—tan Chicken + be sweet
sacrificed chicken that falls on back, signifying that the sacrifice is accepted
or that the answer to the question is yes
Places for sacrifice
Supyire Literal gloss
Free translation cìzunyi
Species of tree plural + worship
sacred grove of ciüî trees
kafugo the ensemble of sacrificial sites in a
village j¡nabaga
jinn + house jinn house
k…jicyîgî place on the path to the graveyard for
sacrifice of goat serege
half wall half wall in the vestibule which serves
as an altar for ancestors tasunmbw›he
place + worship + large
principal place of sacrifice in a village ¤cw•sunüke
pool + worship sacred pool
tasunüke place + worship
altar; place of sacrifice
Recipients of sacrifice
Supyire Literal gloss
Free translation d…haba
sacred pot üÃütanhii
twins + winnowing basket
fetish made of small winnowing baskets joined, symbolising twins and
put inside a calabash
dÃmbaa trust + without
fetish to which strangers to the village who were not trusted were sacrificed
kacyiin fetish
Other compound nouns with the verb sun
Supyire Literal gloss
Free translation kacyinzun
fetish + worship fetish worshiperfetish priest
kasunni thing + worship
reason for sacrifice sunükanni
worship + way of doing
method of sacrifice The following remarks may be made concerning the above vocabulary.
1. SÃraga has been borrowed from Arabic via BambaraJula, where it can refer to
all sorts of offerings of a religious or quasi-religious significance: for example, animals sacrificed to God, alms, gifts at a naming ceremony for infants which are
reciprocated by a blessing for the child.
69
In Supyire, too, sÃraga is the word for
sacrifice with the widest semantic domain. It includes all kinds of bloody and non-bloody sacrifices, to God or to gods. It may be used of gift with a religious
significance, such as alms by those who are Muslim, or a gift prescribed by a diviner as a means of dealing with a problem.
2. The Supyire have not only borrowed certain divinities like the jinas from their
dominant Bambara neighbours, but also the word for worshipping them, sun. The use of the word implies that one is dealing either with these lesser divinities, or
fetishes or ancestors. Like their Bambara neighbours, they do not sun the creator God.
3. In many contexts, sÃraga and sun can be used interchangeably, and may even be
combined in one sentence side by side as in the following excerpt from a conversation recorded by Robert Carlson:
70
“Every year, when the year changes, they go and offer sacrifices in each of those [sacred places]. It is the sacrifices of
those [sacred places] that you see are given sÃraga ww– and offered in
worship sun
.” 4.
It is fairly common for the idea of sacrifice to be left implicit, as it is readily supplied by the context and by the ideas of killing or death that are explicit, as in
the following examples that are literally translated from Supyire.
69
Goerling, Fritz, The Use of Islamic Theological Terminology in Bible Translation and Evangelism among the Jula in Côte
d’Ivoire, Masters of Arts Thesis, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1989, p.117.
70
In Supyire dialogue, a speaker will often make the same point in more than one way.
“When a fetish worshipper cuts the chicken’s throat, he pours the blood on the fetish.”
“Let us catch this chicken to come kill it for the people of the pool” i.e. “let us sacrifice it for the purposes of divination at the sacred pool
where the jinas live”.
“It is a sheep that dies there.” “We went to Cwoono of Nangola and he did divination and said we that
we must come and pour water
71
to the dead, and then wait for the outcome.”
5. Supyire has a large number of compound nouns; this is illustrated by the number
of compounds with the verb sun in the above table. We shall return to the question of vocabulary in chapter eight when we
consider how to translate the biblical terms in this domain.
71
“To pour water” is a common way of making an offering and the term in itself implies a sacrificial rite.