DIOLA RELIGION

DIOLA RELIGION . Numbering some four hundred thousand people, the Diola inhabit the well-watered coastal plain between the Gambia and São Domingo rivers of Senegambia and Guinea-Bissau. They are sedentary wet-rice farmers and usually described as a stateless people, governed by village councils. Despite a common ethnic label the various Diola subgroups speak distinct dialects and have somewhat divergent religious beliefs and political organizations.

The past two centuries of Diola religious history have been characterized by the increasing interaction of Diola religion with Islam and Christianity. While Muslims and Christians have been in contact with the Diola at least since the sixteenth century, few conversions occurred before the late nineteenth century. On the north shore of the Casamance River, where contact with Islam was both earliest and most violent, many Diola have embraced Islam and, to a lesser extent, Christianity. However, the growth of these new religions had to await the firm establishment of colonial rule and the growth of commerce in peanuts before gaining dominance over the traditional religion. On the south shore the vast majority of the population resisted the advance of Islam and Christianity until after World War II. While Christianity has made substantial inroads since that time, Diola religion remains dominant. This may partly result from the south's escape from the devastation of the Mandinka invasions and its slower integration into the colonial economy. A major factor, however, was the ability of south shore religion to adapt to rapidly changing conditions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Innovations in ritual structures, the creation of new cults, and the emergence of Diola prophets have all contributed to the vitality of Diola traditional religion. This study will focus on south shore Diola religion.

Adherents of Diola religion believe in a creator god and in a number of lesser spirits whose powers originate with the supreme being but who are more accessible to the religious community. A study of Diola ritual might suggest that the supreme being, variously known as Ata-Emit or Emitai, was a remote high god whose name was rarely invoked in prayer, who had no shrines, and who was not a moral force in community life. The lesser spirits, variously known as ukine or sinaati, dominate ritual life. By examining the history of various cults and other religious beliefs, it becomes clear that Emitai is an active force in Diola life as a provider of life itself, as a source of spiritual aid in a time of crisis, and as the creator of the various cults. His name is derived from emit, meaning both "sky" and "year," thus indicating a strong relationship with the heavens and the order of an agricultural year. Furthermore, Emitai ehlahl, which means "it is raining," indicates Emitai's crucial role in the disbursement of that life-giving resource.

Emitai is seen as the creator of the world and all its inhabitants and as the source of human knowledge of farming, ironworking, and healing. He established a set of duties and interdictions to which he holds people accountable. At the time of death, Emitai decides whether a person has lived morally enough to become an ancestor or whether, if the individual concerned disregarded Emitai's interdictions, he will become a phantom wanderer or, ambivalently, a village dweller in a land to the south. All fates are temporary; the dead are eventually reincarnated.

Emitai communicates with people through dreams and visions and endows some of them with powers to communicate with him and with lesser spirits. While lesser spirits receive the bulk of ritual attention, prayers are ultimately received by Emitai. In times of crisis or when people feel they have exhausted other means, Emitai is prayed to directly. This is especially true during droughts when a ritual known as Nyakul Emit is performed. Rituals are conducted at all the village shrines, and prayers are offered directly to the supreme being: "Ata-Emit, is it true that this year's rice is destined to wither in the rice paddies? … The misfortune will be so large that we will not have the strength to speak. Give us water, give us life."

In Diola religion, the lesser spirits provide specific ways for individuals, families, and communities to resolve recurrent problems and to sustain a religious community. Thus there are shrines associated with rain, women's fertility, farming, hunting, fishing, war, ironworking, healing, family welfare, and village councils. These cults were introduced in a variety of ways. Some are said to have existed since the time of the first ancestors, that is, beyond the memory of Diola historians. Others were borrowed from the Bainounk, a people who were conquered by the Diola but who still retain a spiritual authority as the first inhabitants of the region. Still others were introduced by people who had spiritual powers, who were said to be able to travel up to Emitai or make contact with spirits through dreams or visions. Others were learned about from neighboring Diola or from other neighboring peoples. Such shrines were installed by elders from the outside community who also initiated a local group of shrine elders. The large number of shrines helps to ensure that one path can resolve any particular problem, and it allows a broad access to religious authority. Most people eventually become shrine elders. The shrines themselves contain ritual objects associated with spirits but not the spirits themselves. These objects help to summon the spirits and focus the attention of the worshipers.

While the preceding description represents broad continuities in Diola religion since 1700, environmental disruption, political and economic changes, and prophetic leaders have all influenced Diola religion. Droughts and epidemics have created spiritual challenges that have led to the formation of new cults and changes in ritual structure. Diola participation in the slave trade generated new sources of community vulnerability as well as new sources of social stratification, each of which had religious consequences. Men who gained wealth from the ransom or sale of captives often invested their wealth in the acquisition of priestly offices, thereby changing the role of priests and the ability of the less fortunate to gain religious authority. A new series of cults stressing lavish sacrifices to gain ritual authority became increasingly important to the Diola in the eighteenth century.

During World War II a Diola woman named Alinesitoué had a series of visions of Emitai. It was a time of severe drought and increasing French military conscription and confiscation of rice and cattle. Alinesitoué revealed that Emitai had given her a series of shrines that would help procure rain but whose ritual offices would be open to all, regardless of wealth, age, or sex. She advocated a renewed commitment to community, a stripping away of social and religious hierarchies, and a reaffirmation of many customs that had fallen into disuse. She taught that Emitai was deeply involved in the lives of the Diola and that they could expect his assistance if they followed his ways. Alinesitoué's teachings enabled the Diola to meet the crisis generated by the French occupation and a renewed Christian mission challenge. They allowed the Diola to adapt to their increasing integration into the rapidly changing order of a colonial and independent Senegal with the support of a vital Diola religion.

Bibliography

The major ethnographic study of the Diola, with extensive discussion of religious issues, is Louis-Vincent Thomas's Les Diola, 2 vols. (Dakar, 1958). Thomas has also written a vast number of articles on Diola ritual, concepts of death, initiation, and so on. J. David Sapir has written a number of articles on Diola symbolic thought, of which "Kujamama: Symbolic Separation among the Diola-Fogny," American Anthropologist 72 (December 1970): 1330–1348, is the most important. On the relationship between religious beliefs and legal and economic change, see Francis G. Snyder's Capitalism and Legal Change: An African Transformation (New York, 1981). Historical approaches to Diola religion include Jean Girard's Genèse du pouvoir charismatique en Basse Casamance (Sénégal) (Dakar, 1969) and my "Belief and Value Change among the Diola-Esulalu in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Senegambia" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1986). There are also two important studies of the influence of Islam among the Diola: Frances Anne Leary's "Islam, Politics and Colonialism: A Political History of Islam in the Casamance Region of Senegal, 1850–1914" (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1970) and Peter Allen Mark's "Economic and Religious Change among the Diola of Boulouf (Casamance), 1890–1940" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1976).

Robert M. Baum (1987)