The Burst and the Cut Stomach

The Metabolism of Violence and Order in Nilotic Kingship

Abstract

An interpretation is offered of two contrasting Nilotic customs relating to the stomach of a king who has just died: the cutting of the stomach of a king who has been killed by his subjects for causing drought and the practice of some Bari speaking peoples of allowing the stomach of the king, who has died a natural death, to bloat and burst. The case material on the cutting of the stomach is taken from nineteenth century accounts by travellers and a missionary concerning two cases of regicide among the Bari and from the study of the murder of the Pari queen in 1984 by the anthropologist Eisei Kurimoto.
In a first round of interpretation it is argued that the relevant property of the stomach in this context, as well as in other Nilotic sacrificial ritual, is its capacity to turn a mass of undifferentiated substance into something valued and desirable. In a second round we demonstrate that the stomach-metaphor is used to make sense of the socio-political impact of the king on the conflicts in his realm and, closely interwined with that, of his cosmic impact on the weather. To understand why the king's metabolism plays such an important role at the moment of his death we turn to the theory of the victimary origins of kingship developed by René Girard. Since the death of the king is a powerful lever for achieving social unity and cosmic harmony, his people should leave nothing to chance when he dies, especially with regards to the organ most closely associated with his powers to dissolve conflicts and bring peace and rain.