Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali (Sunjata)

“I am a griot. It is I, Djeli Mamoudou Kouyaté, son of Bintou Kouyaté and Djeli Kedian Kouyaté, master in the art of eloquence since time immemorial the Kouyaté clan have been in the service of the Keita princes of Mali; we are vessels of speech, we are the repositories which harbour secrets many centuries old. The art of eloquence has no secrets for us; 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. I derive my knowledge from my father Djeli Kedian, who also got it from his father.”

In the text’s first lines, the narrator Kouyaté introduces himself as a griot and explains the meaning of this social role. In describing where this story comes from, passed down by a sequence of ancestors that ends with Kouyaté himself, the speaker engages an epic technique that in Western literature is commonly called the invocation, the inciting song to a muse which inspires the poetry to come. In this case, the invocation is not to a deity but to the poet’s own sacred ancestry. It is through this ancestry that Kouyaté’s modern Mandinka listeners are also connected to the heroes of the past.

“Oh king, the world is full of mystery, all is hidden and we know nothing but what we can see. Kingdoms are like trees. Some will be silk-cotton trees, others will remain dwarf palms and the powerful silk-cotton tree will cover them with its shade. Oh, who can recognize in the little child the great king to come? The great comes from the small; truth and falsehood have both circles at the same breast. Nothing is certain, but, sire, I can see two strangers over there coming towards your city.” 

The Sangaran hunter-seer offers his prophecy to Sundiata’s father, Naré Maghan, in cryptic terms. This is the text’s first expression of the importance of fate in deciding human lives and of destiny’s mysteriousness and impermeability to human defiance. Foreshadowing Sundiata as a “great king to come,” this passage is also the text’s first mention of the silk-cotton tree, which symbolizes Sundiata’s slow but certain destiny as king of Mali.