In the Upper Shiré district, I was not very successful in gleaning information, but have a note that a girl told me the ‘Angoni’ a-pempera Mulungu (‘pray to God’) after the following fashion: ‘The people here sometimes sacrifice (kwisula) a goat; it is done by the head-man, and the people all stand round nda! nda! nda! (i.e. in a row or circle); they eat the meat afterwards.’ Here too, evidently, the head-man acts on behalf of the village; and though it is not clear whether Mulungu here means the spirit of a dead chief, or a Supreme Deity, this is, for the moment, immaterial. I do not know whether the word kwisula is Nyanja or not, as I never heard it on any other occasion, and have hitherto been unable to trace it.
We have already seen that Mulungu is a name applied to the spirits of the dead—the amadhlozi or amatongo of the Zulus (we shall come back to these presently), and as local deities seem to be in many instances (perhaps in all, if we could trace them) identical with deceased chiefs, it looks as if the religion of the Bantu consisted, in the main, of ancestor-worship. However, other ideas, though dim and vague, seem to attach to the word Mulungu. Originally, perhaps, it meant no more than ‘the great ancestor’—the Zulu Unkulunkulu. This name, literally ‘the Great, Great One,’ seems to have been used by the Zulus as if conveying the notion of a supreme being and creator; but some of them, on being questioned, stated that he was the first man, the common ancestor, at any rate, of themselves and those tribes whom they acknowledged as akin to them. No special worship, however, was offered to him, as he had lived so long ago that no family could now trace its descent to him; and worship is (as with the ancient Romans) a family, or at most a tribal matter. The word um-lungu, in Zulu, means ‘a European’; it is used in no other sense, but seems originally to have been bestowed under the idea that white men were supernatural beings of some sort.
One might feel inclined to doubt the above etymology, which is Bleek’s, since, in some languages, as in Nyanja, the word Mulungu and the adjective -kulu (‘great’) exist side by side. But against this we may set the possibility of the former being borrowed from other tribes. Mr. Rowley, writing of the time when the Yaos were only beginning to settle in the Shiré Highlands, says expressly that they used the name Mulungu where the Anyanja spoke of Mpambe. Speaking from my own observation, I should say that the former had quite displaced the latter throughout the Blantyre and Upper Shiré districts. Now in Yao, precisely, the word for ‘great’ is not -kulu, but -kulungwa.
However that may be, some Yaos, at any rate, think of Mulungu as ‘the great spirit of all men, a spirit formed by adding all the departed spirits together.’ This might almost seem too abstract a conception to be a genuine native view, but it was clearly stated to Mr. Macdonald, and is confirmed by Dr. Hetherwick, who has had many years’ experience of the Yaos. This writer also states the view (which Mr. Macdonald hesitated to accept), that the form of the word, or rather its plural (which shows it to belong, not to the first, or ‘personal’ class, but to the second, including things without a separate life of their own, such as parts of the body, trees, etc.), points to Mulungu not being regarded as a person. Dr. Hetherwick was once trying to convey to an old head-man the idea of the personality of God. The old man, as soon as he began to grasp what was meant, talked of Che Mulungu, ‘Mr. God!’
I have noted down some uses of the word I have come across, which I think could not possibly be set down to missionary influence. On two occasions, people told me that their dead friends or relatives had ‘gone to Mulungu’; on another, a mother said that ‘Mulungu had taken away’ the little sick girl I was inquiring after. On hearing thunder, at the beginning of the rainy season, another woman remarked, ‘Mulungu anena’—‘Mulungu is speaking.’ This is very suggestive of the theory on the subject of earthquakes held, according to the Rev. A. G. MacAlpine, by the Atonga of Lake Nyasa, viz., ‘that it was the voice of God calling to inquire if his people were all there. When the rumble of the earthquake was heard, they all shouted in answer, “Ye, ye,” and some went to the flour mortars and beat on them with the pounding sticks.’ Any person who failed thus to answer ‘Adsum’ would be sure (it was believed) to die before long. The name used, in this case, was not Mulungu, but Chiuta.
We have mentioned the name Mpambe as used by the Anyanja. Livingstone, on his first visit to the Shiré Highlands, notes, ‘They believe in the existence of a supreme being called Mpambe and also Morungo’ (Mulungu). Mr. Rowley gives an interesting account of supplications addressed to Mpambe for rain. The principal part was taken by a woman—the chief’s sister. She began by dropping ufa on the ground, slowly and carefully, till it formed a cone, and in doing this called out in a high-pitched voice, ‘Imva Mpambe! Adza mvula’ (‘Hear thou, O God, and send rain!’), and the assembled people responded, clapping their hands softly and intoning—they always intone their prayers—‘Imva Mpambe.’ The beer was then poured out as a libation, and the people, following the example of the woman, threw themselves on their backs and clapped their hands (a form of salutation to superiors), and, finally, danced round the chief where he sat on the ground. The ceremony concluded with a rain-charm; but as this is rather magic than religion (the previous proceedings, as being distinctly an appeal to unseen and superior powers, come under the latter head), it will be more convenient to return to it later on. In this very neighbourhood, I heard, one sultry afternoon in September 1894, weird, shrill cries, which I was told were ‘the people shouting for rain’ on Mpingwe—one of the mountains between Blantyre and Magomero. Distant peals of thunder had been heard before the crying began, and the rain came before morning.
It is worth noting that, here, Mpambe is thought of as sending rain, while, in some parts, as on Nyasa, the word means ‘thunder.’ The connection between rain and thunder is obvious, especially where, as is the case in these countries, the latter always heralds the breaking-up of the dry season. Sometimes the word is said to mean ‘lightning’—which comes to much the same thing as far as the idea is concerned.
This certainly looks like a personification of nature-powers, which seems more probable than the suggestion that mpambe only came to mean thunder or lightning because these were the work of the being to whom the name was originally applied.
It is worth noticing that in Yao the rainbow is called Mulungu, or ukunje wa Mulungu (‘the bow of Mulungu’) and an earthquake chilungu, which is the same word with another prefix.
Chiuta (which is treated by the Rev. D. C. Scott as synonymous with Mulungu and Mpambe) is perhaps derived from the Nyanja word uta, ‘a bow,’ and connected with the rainbow (called in this language uta wa Lezi). Lezi, or Leza, meaning ‘lightning’ in the Kotakota dialect, is another synonym.[10] I have never heard it used except in the above compound. Chiuta is the word used by the Atonga, and, according to the Rev. A. G. MacAlpine, ‘is very difficult to derive with certainty, but whatever its root may be, it now denotes one who inspires wonder and awe.’ If, however (as is quite possible), the name was borrowed by the Atonga from the Anyanja, this may be a secondary meaning imported into it.