Sacrifice: a Polythetic Class of Atuot Religious Thought

Abstract

... the realization of the confusions brought in social anthropology by stock classificatory terms may serve to prepare our understanding in coming to terms with alien concepts which, in a fashion that is similarly unrecognized by those whose modes of thought we want to comprehend, are also polythetic.' This essay is inspired largely by Needham's recent assertion that if an appreciation of polythetic modes of classification2 can advance the comparative study of social facts, it is desirable that more detailed empirical demonstrations should be fully set out.3 In a more modest vein, the present brief essay is equally an attempt to understand that while these acts are common to many of their social and religious festivities, Atuot4 lack any single term that could be literally glossed sacrifice. Rather, like the neighbouring Nuer and Dinka, Atuot employ the phrase kill a cow (nake yang) idiomatically to designate a great variety of sacrificial acts and contexts. I shall attempt to argue the case that this usage, like that of polythetic classification, is not intended a programme for eliminating variations monothetically, but is used as a means of accommodating many possible.5 THE ETHNOGRAPHIC SETTING The Atuot, who call themselves nei cieng Reel, the descendants of their ancestor Reel, a quasi-mythical figure who was a brother of the original Nuer and Dinka, are a group of approximately 35,000 Nilotic-speaking pastoralists living west of the Nile in Lakes Province of the Southern Sudan. During the dry season a number of Atuot tribal sections (dor) share inland riverine pastures and fishing sites with the Adok and Nuong sections of the western Nuer. The