Thunder
Songhai · deity · Songhay/Zarma oral tradition; living holey possession cult · Recorded classification
Spirit-class figure (a Tooru noble) entered as a deity. Songhay accounts vary on Dongo's exact descent from Harakoy Dikko (youngest son vs. adopted son); parentId reflects the common river-mother lineage. Principal scholarship: Stoller (1989); Rouch (1960/1989).
Parentage
- parent: River Mother of the Niger
Domains
- thunder storm
- justice retribution
- rain
Powers
- to hurl lightning and crack the sky with thunder
- to descend into and ride the body of a possession dancer
- rule the sky as master of thunder and rain
Epithets
- Dongo The thunder-god, who hurls the lightning and is summoned in the holey spirit-possessionJean Rouch, La religion et la magie songhay (secondary)
Relations
- sibling: LightningTooru brothers among Harakoy Dikko's children: Cirey's lightning flashes before Dongo's thunder strikes; Dongo is youngest or adopted.Jean Rouch, La religion et la magie songhay (2nd ed., Brussels 1989) (secondary)
- sibling: Master Smith of the HausaReciprocal of songhai_manda_hausakoy.sibling — Half-brothers among the Tooru nobles of the holey pantheon.Paul Stoller, Fusion of the Worlds (Chicago 1989) (secondary)
Sources
- Dongo is the Songhay/Zarma god of thunder and lightning and chief of the active Tooru spirits, an (adopted/youngest) son in the lineage of the river-mother Harakoy Dikko; he enforces justice by lightning and is the central deity of the holey possession cult, propitiated for rain.: Paul Stoller, Fusion of the Worlds: An Ethnography of Possession among the Songhay of Niger (1989) (secondary); Jean Rouch, La religion et la magie songhay (1960/1989) (secondary)