DINKA

Dinka village on the Nile River in the southern Sudan also called Jieng, people who live in the savanna country surrounding the central swamps of the Nile basin in the south of The Sudan. Numbering about 2,960,000 in the late 20th century, the Dinka speak an Eastern Sudanic language of the Chari-Nile branch of the Nilo-Saharan family and are closely related to the Nuer. They form many independent groups of between 1,000 and 30,000 persons. These are grouped on a regional, linguistic, and cultural basis into clusters, of which the best-known are the Agar, Aliab, Bor, Rek, and Malual. The Dinka are primarily transhumant pastoralists, moving their herds of cattle to riverine pastures during the dry season (December to April) and back to permanent settlements in savanna forest during the rains, when their food crops, principally millet, are grown. Each group is internally segmented into smaller political units with a high degree of autonomy. Because of the vast geographical area they occupy, the Dinka exhibit great diversity of dialect, although they value intra-group unity in the face of enemies. By tradition certain of their patrilineal clans provide priest-chiefs (masters of the fishing spear), whose position is validated by elaborate myths. Spiritual leadership and intervention are important to the Dinka, who are intensely religious and for whom God (Nhial) and many ancestral spirits play a central and intimate part in everyday life. Anything from a lie to a murder may be an occasion for sacrificial propitiation of the divine. Proud, independent, and warlike, the Dinka ritualize the passage from boyhood to manhood through age-old ceremonies during which a number of boys of similar age undergo hardship together before abandoning forever the activity of milking cows, which had marked their status as children and servers of men.