40 pages • 1 hour read
Djibril Tamsir Niane (D.T. Niane), Transl. G. D. PickettSundiata: An Epic of Old Mali (Sunjata)
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1200A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Words of the Griot Mamoudou Kouyaté”
Djeli Mamoudou Kouyaté introduces himself to the listener. He is a griot, “son of Bintou Kouyaté and Djeli Kedian Kouyaté, master in the art of eloquence since time immemorial” (1). He notes that without griots, “the names of kings would vanish into oblivion” (1). Kouyaté explains that as a griot, he is responsible for keeping the history of Mandinka culture, advising kings, and serving as their mouthpieces. He tells the listener that he will tell “the story of him who, by his exploits, surpassed even Alexander the Great […] Maghan Sundiata […] the man of many names against whom sorcery could avail nothing” (1-2).
Chapter 2 Summary: “The First Kings of Mali”
Sundiata is “great among kings […] peerless among men […] beloved by God because he was the last of the great conquerors” (2). He is the product of a long lineage of kings leading to Sundiata’s father, Naré Maghan Kon Fatta. The first of these kings listed by Kouyaté is Bilial Bouname, ancestor of the Keitas (Mali’s ruling dynasty) and servant of the Prophet Muhammad. Bouname’s great grandson is Lahitoul Kalabi, the first black prince to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. Lahitoul had two sons: Kalabi Bomba, who ruled Mali, and Kalabi Dauman, who “preferred fortune and wealth and became the ancestor of all those who go from country to country seeking their fortune” (3). Bomba’s son Mamadi Kani invents the hunter’s whistle, teaches Mandinka hunters the use of medicinal herbs, and communicates with the “jinn”—meaning spirits or gods—and the hunting deity Kondolon Ni Sané (3). These many generations of male descendants, all of whom were fit to be called “Simbon” (or master hunter), eventually lead to Naré Maghan, Sundiata’s father. Naré Maghan had three wives and six children. His second wife, Sogolon Kedjou, was Sundiata’s mother.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Buffalo Woman”
One day the good king Naré Maghan is sitting under a silk-cotton tree in his capital of Niani. There he is visited by a hunter from the region of Sangaran. The hunter has killed a doe near Niani’s walls and, as is custom, has come to offer a portion to the king. The king’s griot Gnankouman Doua accepts the gift, and the hunter identifies himself as a seer. He prophesies that “Mali is about to emerge from the night […] what is this light coming from the East” (5). He foretells that although the king already has an eight-year-old son, his successor is not yet born, and two hunters will soon arrive with a hideous woman whom the king must marry, “for she will be the mother of him who will make the name of Mali immortal forever” (6). For this to come true, the king must sacrifice a red bull.
Several days later, two Mandinka hunters return from the kingdom of Do, bringing a hunchbacked woman for the king to marry. The hunters tell the king that a terrible buffalo monster had ravaged the lands of Do, and they went there to kill it. When they reached the land of Do, they met an old woman who asked them for food. They obliged, and the woman revealed herself as the buffalo monster and the sister of the king of Do, who is wreaking vengeance on Do because her brother has deprived her of her inheritance. She tells them how to defeat her, on the condition that when the king offers the hunters their choice of any maiden to marry, they choose the hideous Sogolon Kedjou, who is the old woman’s wraith, or spirit-double. As instructed, they take Sogolon back to Niani to be Naré Maghan’s wife.
Though embarrassed by her ugliness, the king takes Sogolon as his second wife. On their wedding night he fails to have sex with her, doubting that she is even human. This failure to “overcom[e] the wraith of Sogolon” (12) continues for a week. After using sand drawn from his hunter’s bag to divine an answer to his problem, the king realizes that he misunderstood the seer’s prophecy: He must sacrifice Sogolon, not a red bull. Sogolon faints when the king tells her this, which causes the wraith to leave her body. She conceives a child in her sleep.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The first three chapters of Sundiata form a prologue to the main narrative, which recounts the life of Sundiata. They trace three stages of Sundiata’s history, each crucial to his life in its own way.
Chapter 1 introduces and explains the cultural significance of the griot and the epic poem as a narrative form. This chapter simultaneously dwells on the distant past—reaching back to the very origins of Mandinka culture—and on the immediate present, linking this history to the lives and culture of the modern Mandinka listener. As the griot Mamoudou Kouyaté explains, “without us the names of kings would vanish into oblivion, we are the memory of mankind; by the spoken word we bring to life the deeds and exploits of kings for younger generations” (1).
One of the tropes of the epic form used in this chapter is invocation, or a call to a muse to purify one’s speech, as Homer famously calls to a muse in The Iliad. Here, the griot Kouyaté performs a similar feat, calling on the history of all griots as a lineage of cultural knowledge linking him directly to Sundiata’s time, and as such purifying his words: “my word is pure and free from all untruth; it is the word of my father; it is the word of my father’s father” (1). Notably, Niane preserves a semblance of the narrative’s original oral communication by maintaining the griot’s use of apostrophe, or direct address to the listener: “listen to my word, you know want to know, by my mouth you will learn the history of Mali” (1). Such oral transmission, from one griot to another and on to listeners through public performance, was how this story was maintained over centuries.
Chapter 2 again stretches back to the beginning of Mandinka history, this time to trace the genealogy of kings that leads to Sundiata. As such, this chapter mirrors the genealogy of griots in Chapter 1 and serves as the text’s first hint at one of its major themes: the unity of griot and king as a political entity in Mandinka culture. Such a genealogy of the hero is another trademark of the epic form; it expresses the long history of a culture by embodying it in the hero. The mythological aspects of Sundiata’s history take shape in this chapter, particularly in the cases of previous kings who are said to be inventors or communicators with the divine—like Mamadi Kani, who invents medicine, or Kalabi Dauman, who becomes the patron of all travelers. These references demonstrate that this epic will teach us more than Sundiata’s story; indeed, his story helps explain aspects of Mandinka culture.
Chapter 3 describes the events immediately preceding Sundiata’s conception. Like other epic heroes, such as Achilles in The Iliad, Sundiata’s birth is foretold by a prophecy. The event of Naré Maghan’s visitation by a seer initiates another crucial theme in the text: the inevitability of prophecy. Naré Maghan proves himself a wise king by accepting his obligation to marry Sogolon or else face the consequences of shirking destiny. Similarly, the Mandinka hunters who bring Sogolon to Naré Maghan show themselves worthy of the aid of the Buffalo Woman by offering her food instead of rejecting her. Such events contrast these hunters—and by extension all Mandinka men—with other heroes throughout the literary canon who do the opposite and face dire consequences. These include such figures as Oedipus in Oedipus Rex, who denies the words of Tiresias, or the Beast in The Beauty and the Beast, who refuses to welcome an enchantress into his home. The prophetic aspects of Sundiata’s history, and this chapter’s hints at the power of destiny, are complemented by the immaculate conception that ends the chapter. This event marks Sundiata as a truly magical child.
