The Dinka are a Nilotic ethnic group that lives in South Sudan but also has a large number living in other places.
Most of them live along the Nile, from Mangalla to Renk, in parts of Bahr el Ghazal, Upper Nile (which used to be two of Sudan’s three southern provinces), and the Abyei Area of the Ngok Dinka in South Sudan.
The Dinka mostly depend on traditional farming and herding. They raise cattle as a source of cultural pride, not for meat or profit, but for ceremonies, cultural shows, wedding dowries, and milk feedings for kids of all ages.
The Dinka grow crops for food and money. The Dinka cultivate grains, primarily sorghum and millet, for sustenance. Groundnuts, sesame, and gum arabic are some of the cash crops. We move cattle to high ground during the dry season to protect them from flooding and water during the wet season. During the dry season, cattle stay near rivers, the Sudd, and grasslands.
A 2008 census in Sudan found that they make up about 18% of the country’s population, or about 4.5 million people. They are the biggest ethnic group in South Sudan.
The Dinka, who also call themselves Muonyjang (singular) and Jieng (plural), live in one of the parts of the River Nilotes. The Dinka are mostly nomadic farmers and herders from the Nile Valley and the African Great Lakes region. They speak Nilotic languages, such as Nuer and Luo. Dinka are sometimes known for being very tall. The Tutsi of Rwanda and the Dinka Agaar are believed to be the largest people in Africa.
Roberts and Bainbridge found that the average height of 52 Dinka Agaar was 182.6 cm (5 ft 11.9 in), and the average height of 227 Dinka Ruweng was 181.3 cm (5 ft 11.4 in). They took these measurements between 1953 and 1955. However, it appears that today’s Dinka men are shorter, which could be due to a lack of food or wars. In 1995, a physical study of Dinka men who had fled the war and were living in Ethiopia found that they were, on average, 176.4 cm (5 ft 9.4 in) tall. Other studies that compare historical height records and nutrition indicate that the Dinka are the world’s tallest people.
The Dinka people don’t have a single government leader. Rather, the Dinka people comprise numerous distinct yet interconnected clans. Ritual chiefs, known as “masters of the fishing spear” or beny bith, have traditionally led some of these clans, overseeing the entire group. They seem to be at least partly inherited.
The name of their language is Dinka, or “Thuʦŋjäŋ” (Thő ë Muʦnyjäŋ). . It is a Nilotic language from the eastern Sudanic language family. In Dinka, the name means “people. “We write it with a few changes to the Latin language.”
Dinka Society, Social Events, Attitudes, Traditions and Customs
Families related by blood make up the Dinka part, as do other individuals or families who have bonded together through marriage or other means. One of the main chiefly clans (beny), who hold power and are believed to own the section’s land, links the sections to a specific bloodline. For some reason, they believe they have a single ancestor and that this gives them the right to be politically and religiously better.
The term “kic” (commoners) generally refers to people from the second group of clans, whose members did not have any special religious duties passed down through generations. Their spread size and range are very different. People didn’t really see the “commoner” groups as anything; they saw them as split-up families that didn’t feel connected to a larger group.
The main clans of the Dinka tribe are known as koc tong (people of the war spear), while those who were not chiefs are known as koc bith (people of the fishing spear). However, this distinction is based on society rather than function. The Dinka think that the chief has supernatural powers that help him tell the truth, be fair, make money, learn new things, and see the future.
The Dinka are proud and focused on their own culture, but they are also usually welcoming and friendly. They have a high moral standard, code of conduct, eating habits, a sense of personal dignity (dheeng), and honesty. When they deal with others, they expect the same in return. The Dinka are the least affected by modernization. Their pride and ethnocentrism must play a big role in why they are so conservative and don’t want to change. Cattle are important to Dinka society. Dinka society uses cattle as payment for things like marriage, bills, and blood prices. People also use it to make sacrifices to spirits and for significant events and rites.
Traditional Homes
Before the British arrived, the Dinka did not live in villages. Instead, they moved in families and set up temporary homes with their cattle. There could be anywhere from one or two to one hundred people living on the homesteads at a time. Around British government centers, small towns grew up. The group selects a leader to govern each village of one or more large families.
Mud walls and thatched cone-shaped roofs, capable of lasting up to twenty years, were the building materials used in ancient houses.
Men sleep in mud-roofed cow pens, while women and children sleep inside the house. People placed the homesteads in an area that provided them with year-round access to grass and water. They now build a permanent village on land higher up, above the Nile’s flood plain, where there is abundant water for farming. On this high ground, women and older men care for the crops, while younger men move up and down with the water level.
Social and Political Organisation
The people are an acephalous nationality, which means they are a cultural group of sub-nationalities rather than a political one. The Dinka don’t have the idea of a state, which means they don’t have government institutions, structure, or authority. Each section of the Dinka people has its own separate political body.
From generation to generation, people pass down the title of chief, known as beny (plural bany), which can mean various things such as chief, expert, or military officer. The title always has an added part that tells you what job it is for. For instance, the Northern Dinka refer to the person as Beny de Ring or Beny Rein (or Riem), while the rest of the country calls them Beny Bith.
The word “ring” (or “rem”) most likely refers to the chief’s magical power. As a sign of power, the bith is the holy fishing spear that doesn’t have any barbs or serrations on it. The fishing stick chief, the medicine women and men, and Deng’s elders are all spiritual leaders with a lot of power. Aside from a few rare cases, spiritual leaders usually don’t follow worldly rules. The people’s chiefs used persuasion to rule instead of any known tools of force and pressure.
Marriage
For Dinka people, marriage is a must. Every man should have a family and get married as many times as he wants. The people have a lot of “ghost fathers,” or relatives who marry the ghost of a boy who died when he was a baby. In different parts of Dinka, the bride price is different. It varies from a few tens (Upper Nile) to a few hundreds (Bahr el Ghazal). The groom’s family also contributes to the bride price, which is then split among the bride’s family members in the same way that the groom’s clan does.
Like how a son should pay more cattle for his wife, a daughter of the chief brings in more cattle. More brides are willing to pay for college graduates, which is likely to encourage more girls to go to school. For the Dinka, as for other Nilotic people, having sex is only for making babies. Adultery is therefore illegal, and those who commit it face disdain and heavy fines. This can sometimes lead to conflict and clan fighting. Most people can’t even imagine or condone incest.
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