DIVINITY AND EXPERIENCE: THE RELIGION OF THE DINKA. BY GODFREY LIENHARDT. Oxford, England : At The Clarendon Press, 1970 [1961]. Signed & Inscribed Letter by Author. Scarce.
A solid and attractive scarce book. Signed & Inscribed Letter by the Author laid in. Published more than 45 years ago, this edition is now long out of print and hard to find.
From the dust jacket: "According to the Dinka people of the Southern Sudan, men and their divinity were originally close together. They became separated, like the earth and sky, when the first man and woman acted with human independence. Dinka religious practice follows from that separation. The various divinities of the Dinka are here described with their complex ranges of meaning and imagery, and are related to the Dinkas' own experience of the conditions of life and death. they may be interpreted, it is suggested, as images arising out of that experience. The second part of the book discusses the role of the priests, the 'masters of the fishing spear', who interested Fraser in his study of divine kingship. Sacrifices are describes and their meaning analysed, and finally the rites at the death of priests, some of whom may enter the grave alive, are examined. The book contains translations of hymns prayers and myths, which introduced the thought and belief of the Dinka
to those interested in religion and its interpretation."
According to Wikipedia: "Ronald Godfrey Lienhardt (17 January 1921 - 9 November 1993) was a British anthropologist. He took many photographs of the Dinka people he studied.[1] He wrote about their religion in Divinity and Experience: the Religion of the Dinka. Born in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, of mixed Swiss and Yorkshire parentage, he went to Cambridge University in 1939, where he read English at Downing College under F. R. Leavis until he was called up and became a transport officer, stationed in Africa. He was followed in 1946 to Downing by his brother Peter Lienhardt, who also read English and became an anthropologist.[2] After returning to civilian life, Godfrey's academic interests were redirected to anthropology by an encounter with Edward Evans-Pritchard, under whom he subsequently studied at Oxford. His chosen field of research were the Dinka of southern Sudan, a people closely related to the Nuer studied by his mentor, (1947-50) and the Anuak (1952-1954). His work on the former, culminating in Divinity and Experience: the Religion of the Dinka, is regarded as unsurpassed as a study of African religion. His central, ultimately Durkheimian premise here is that religion is not reducible to a matter of beliefs and practices, but rather to a complex set of natural and social practices.[3] His methodology shows an acute sensitivity to the dangers of translating key words in an indigenous lexicon concerning belief and religion, for example, into Western languages.[4] Sudan drifted into a civil war, and many of the native people he had got to know were swept up in the chronic violence of the area, Lienhardt found writing about his field increasingly difficult, particularly since he found himself at odds with the rising vogue for theory in anthropology, which overtook the practice of ethnological description. The dilemma he faced in struggling with expectations that he should replace Evans-Pritchard in the chair of anthropology at Oxford informed Dan Davin's novel Brides of Price (1972). He died, aged 72, of complications from pneumonia.[5]"
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Thick Octavo - sized hardcover book with dust jacket; 328 pages of text with 6 plates and 4 figures. Very Good+ condition: no torn or missing pages; no writing or markings in the text; Signed & Inscribed Letter by the Author laid in; signature on ffep. Original hardcover binding, with only light wear. Good+ condition dust jacket, with wear, tear to head of spine, minor edge tears, and light fraying to corners. A solid and attractive copy of this book.
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