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Etymologies
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Examples
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Based on its distribution, belief in * mulungu is likely rooted in the proto-Kaskazi period of the middle of the last millennium BCE. 32 Though its definitions within descendent linguistic communities vary * mulungu can be broadly characterized as having covered large, unsettled areas, and is known for having a disposition that could create calamity but did not always do so.
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But in fact he conflated the mulungu "nature spirit" that could bring on calamity with Mulungu "God," which would not.
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Recent Ruvu speakers frequently characterized * mulungu as sick or hot in nature, and they often implicated it in periods of regional disease and death. 34
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Zones in which * mulungu was remembered to have previously inflicted devastating disease and death were long remembered as places in which to exercise caution when entering.
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Mawinza recognized the fact that ethnographers, colonial officials, and others generally mistook the distinction between * mulungu "spirit" and * Mulungu "Creator."
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When people moved into its domain, it was understood that * mulungu expected formal honoring or it might have responded by causing problems for trespassers.
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The idea of heat as a feature of and metaphor for unwellness, both individual and social, was associated with more than witchcraft since, for example, malaise associated with * mulungu spirits were also tied etiologically to heat at a cognitive and physical level.
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For example, colonial era documents concerning Vidunda people characterize * mulungu as an ailment that required medical intervention. 41 A subtle distinction in how it afflicted people was that the spirit did it by leaving its usual province of wild and untamed zones; it moved into existing communities.
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On top of that, because * mulungu spirits demanded supplication in the places in which they dwelled, many times Africans are characterized as having "worshipped" God in the "bush" when their propitiatory ceremonies were in reality supplicating forest-dwelling spirits that could cause havoc and were wholly distinct from * Mulungu, the Creator. 31
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In chapter 3, we introduced one such spirit, the proto-Ruvu era * mulungu, as a potentially harmful spirit that dwelled in wild or untamed zones and demanded propitiation when people moved into its territory. 40 Ruvu people described as sick or hot the areas in which * mulungu resided.
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