Tumbuka mythology

Ethnic group living in Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania The Tumbuka are an ethnic group living in Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania. In Tumbuka mythology, Chiuta ("Great Bow") is the supreme creator, symbolised in the sky by the rainbow, and is approached through a wider hierarchy of spirits that Tumbuka cosmology sets out in some detail. Tumbuka mythology is carried mainly through myths and folktales, traditionally told around a fire at night to the accompaniment of drumming and choral response; these stories aim to entertain as much as to teach children moral behaviour. Much of this repertoire has thinned since the mid-twentieth century as rural life has changed, though a good deal survives; these vidokoni (stories) still carry a moral. Three animals recur more than any others: fulu (the tortoise), kalulu (the hare) and chimbwi (the hyena). Fulu is generally the wisest of the three, chimbwi the greedy villain, and kalulu the clever trickster and manipulator who can usually outwit everyone except fulu. Cosmology Tumbuka traditional religion sets the high god at the head of a graded hierarchy of intermediaries reaching down to the living and, below them, to the dead. One detailed account of