DINKA (called by the

See also:

• ARABS

Arabs Jange)  , a widely spread negro people dwelling on the right bank of the White Nile to about 12° N., around the mouth of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, along the right bank of that river and on the banks of the lower Sobat . Like the Shilluk, they were greatly harried from the north by Nuba-Arabic tribes, but remained comparatively free owing to the vast extent of their country, estimated to cover 40,000 sq. m., and their energy in defending themselves . They are a tall race with skins of almost blue black . The men wear practically no clothes, married women having a short apron, and unmarried girls a fringe of iron cones round the waist . They tattoo themselves with tribal marks, and extract the lower incisors; they also pierce the ears and lip for the attachment of ornaments, and wear a variety of feather, iron, ivory and brass ornaments . Nearly all shave the head, but some give the hair a reddish colour by moistening it with animal matter . Polygamy is general; some headmen have as many as thirty or more wives; but six is the average number . They are great cattle and sheep breeders; the men tend their beasts with great devotion, despising agriculture, which is left to the women; the cattle are called by means of drums . Save under stress of famine cattle are never killed for food, the people subsisting largely on durra . The Dinkas reverence the cow, and snakes, which they call " brothers." Their folklore recognizes a good and evil deity; one of the two wives of the good deity created man, and the dead go to live with him in a great park filled with animals of enormous size . The evil deity created cripples . The Dinka came, in 1899, under the control of the Sudan government, justice being administered as far as possible in accord with tribal custom .

A compendium of Dinka

laws was compiled by Captain H . D . E . O'Sullivan . See G . A . Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa (1874); W . Junker, Travels in Africa, Eng. edit . (London, 1890—1892) ; The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count Gleichen (London, 1905) .