Dausi

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Dausi is one of bards sung epic of Soninke in West Africa. The core consists of 150 single lines that do not have a regular meter and cannot be divided into individual sections. The originally uniform work, parts of which have been lost, is said to have been written down in historical order.

The epic is about the Sonike empire Wagadu with the capital Kumbi , which was also the capital of the legendary empire of Ghana . However, it has not been proven that they are the same empires and cities.

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A story tells of a king's son who sings the Dausi as a bard after many heroic acts. As a result, his kingdom Wagadu goes under. Another king's son re-establishes the kingdom and, with the help of a magic drum, a hyena and a vulture, determines the place where the city of Kumbi will be founded. The area in question is owned by a black snake who makes the land rich with laburnum. For this she demands a virgin as a sacrifice every year, but the friend of those determined to be sacrificed kills the snake. Wagadu then goes under, the girl dies.

In another story of the Dausi, a king's daughter demands ever greater heroic deeds from her suitors, so that one of them ends up throwing himself into his sword. Another section tells episodes from the history of the Diawara Empire.

Impact history

French administrators evaluated parts of the Dausi between 1870 and 1913. The first translation (together with the Pui ) was published by the German ethnologist Leo Frobenius in 1921. A further study was published in 1953 from the estate of the French Charles Monteil, which also contained the original text in Soninke . Monteil criticized Frobenius' translation; in fact, Frobenius' proper names are not spelled correctly and his interpretation is only a hypothesis.

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