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Report n°5 : "Water : symbolism and culture"

Different climes, identical practices

In China, the Book of Documents (Shujing) compiled in the 6th century BC, mentions the sacrifices that the divine emperor Shun made to mountains and rivers.

Even now, in south east Asia, people affected by the catastrophic floods of July 2004 prayed for an end to the deluge that fell upon Bangladesh, India and Nepal. In Nepal, goats are ritually sacrificed on the altar of Indra, Hindu god of rain, in order to stop the rains and natural disasters (30).

This reverence for and sanctification of water are echoed even in the western way of thinking. Mary Douglas, in the preface to the French edition of "Purity and danger (31)" mentions that she had long been "convinced of the existence of a link between the pollution of rivers and taboo... For a long time, the relationship seemed based solely on an effect of language, as thought the word "pollution" served two concepts: pollution of the environment and religious profanation". Mary Douglas demonstrates that'the systems of contamination and profanation' are symbolisms that permit reality to be ordered, in particular because "the body... and its various parts can serve as symbols of other complex structures: society and also the cosmos. (32)"

For many African populations, the rites of birthing are closely linked to water, the elixir of life. When the placenta is delivered, the newborn is sprinkled with a little fresh water so that he cries out: the offspring of man has officially received the right to speech. In Cameroon, when the Bamileke marry, at the wedding the father blesses his daughter with water containing plants symbolising gentleness, happiness and marital bliss.

In Africa, purification, for example, forms an integral part of the rites of initiation since it drives away the forces of evil and malevolent spirits, eliminates all stain and protects the initiated.

The Bambara of Mali live along the banks of the Niger and believe that the water and bush spirits are their ancestors. There are six initiation ceremonies in a lifetime to preserve the spiritual powers of the members of the community. Neophytes, at the end of initiation, are sprayed with water from the mouth of the chief of the Kore, the society of the initiates.They are then washed twice over, first within the Kore compound by an elder initiate with water drawn from the village's sacred pond and then at the sacred village well. "On the first day of the Peul year, a communal ritual bath (lootori) is customary." (Amadou Hampâté Bâ, "L'éclat de la grande étoile. Récits initiatiques peuls", Armand Colin, Paris, 1974).

The Malagasy believe that rain water is "God's water". It is an essential part of life, and therefore of rice, since as the island proverb goes: "like water and rice, inseparable in the paddy, inseparable in the pot"; furthermore, to emphasise the role of water, rice growers say with common sense that "Water is what makes the land fit for rice". In Madagascar, they say poetically that a spring is "the eye of water" when it emerges from the ground and sees the sky (33). In view of the importance of rice in the country, many ceremonies, beliefs and customs centre on this essential activity. For example, it is forbidden to work in the shallow waters of the paddy fields three days a week for fear that the Gods will send rain and hail thatwould destroy the rice.Similarly, geomancers preside over the siting of irrigation canals so that they are not unfavourable for the community. The layout is generally inspired by the route followed by... a zebu, since the beast chooses the path that it finds least tiring. Furthermore, the construction of canals is based on empirical notions and it was discovered that even in the 16th century, canals were sited where the ground has the best load-bearing capacity. "The water share" of a canal depends on the amount of work each person has done and it is inherited from ancestors and a way of asserting one's identity.To preserve it, water shares are not mingled.Generally, canals always proceed in straight lines except when they suddenly branch off to the plot of land to be irrigated. The geographer Hervé Rakoto from the University of Poitiers considers that the network of canals reproduces local "good manners" because when you go and see some one, the main subject of your visit is always brought up at the last minute (34).

These examples of cosmogony, symbolism and African culture as regards water, show in action the agrarian content of the vision expressed by many gods in the black pantheon who wait upon the Supreme God: rain, water, hail, wind and cloud. Clearly, the observations of Pierre Erny, professor at the Faculty of Letters, Strasbourg, when studying the role of imagination as regards water in the West apply also to these African myths. He wrote: "There are two kinds of water:the one that comes from above and the one which wells up from below. According to a very common thought structure, the sky and the earth form an embracing couple. The male sky fertilises the earth with rain so that their'children', plants, can come forth. Water in this sense is a seminal liquid and has a male connotation. In contrast, spring water and well water are clearly feminine and maternal. They are the waters of birthing, blood and lymph of the earth, the rising sap (35)."

(30) "Nepalis sacrifice goats to stop floods in South Asia", The New York Times, July 18, 2004

(31) Mary Douglas, "De la souillure. Etudes sur la notion de pollution et de tabou", Editions La Découverte, Paris, 1992

(32) Elvire Van Staëvel, "Natures de la pollution", Doctoral thesis, EHESS, Paris, 2003

(33) In Arabic, the word a'ïn means both a spring and the eye.

(34) This information was noted at the excellent presentation made by M.Hervé Rakoto in Poitiers on March 23, 2005.

(35) Pierre Erny, "L'imaginaire de l'eau", Dire, revue du conte et de l'oralité, n° 13, winter 1991, p.34 (quoted by Christian Chenault Ref. 41 below)