Kyala

Kyala is the high divinity of the Nyakyusa and the being whose name the earliest missionaries adopted, from 1891, to render the Christian God. In older testimony he is not a transcendent creator but one of several remote hero-ancestors who receive sacrifice on behalf of clustered chiefdoms, a 'lord' approached for rain, health and increase. Nyakyusa of Monica Wilson's generation differed over where he dwelt: older people placed him below, among the shades, while younger people set him above, in the region called kumwanya, the sky. In the charter of origins he is one of four god-like brothers who came from Ukinga bringing fire, iron-working and new crops, and in some versions the power to model cattle in clay and breathe life into them.

Domains

• supreme divinity
• sky
• ancestral shades

Powers

• dwell both above the sky and below among the shades
• receive sacrifice offered at his cave

Epithets

• Kyala

Relations

• sibling: Lwembe
• sibling: Mbasi
• sibling: Nkekete

Sources

• Encyclopedia of Religion, 'Nyakyusa Religion' (Macmillan Reference, 2005)
• Monica Wilson, Communal Rituals of the Nyakyusa (Oxford University Press, 1959)
• Monica Wilson, Rituals of Kinship among the Nyakyusa (Oxford University Press, 1957)
• 'Divinity or divinities? The religious role of ancestors in Nyakyusa belief,' Journal of Humanities (Zomba) 18 (2004)