Mojarra Stela 1: Lines 1-3

Granted Mojarra 1 was published before the side Mojarra inscription, but I never got around to deciphering the text.

The first column of the Mojarra inscription reads as follows:Row 1 (reading right to left).

(1) i ta ki yo.(1a) i po Ki se. (1b) i ta ki yo.1/1b.

Thou sacre raising (as) a vital spirit exist (now).1a. Thou the pure Protector / or You (art) Pure Kise.

2)Ba da Yo

The Great Da Yo.

3. Se po Da Yo

The victorious and Pure Da Yo

4. Po tu

Pure birth (was on)

5. 8 5 3 3 5

May 21 ,143 AD

6. Se Gyo(Thou art)

Se gyo Snake

(Se gyo is a surname given to an enfant whose people ascribe the intervention of a divinity.)

Translation :"Thou sacre raising exist (now). Thou (art) the Pure Protector. The Great Da Yo. The victorious and pure Da Yo's pure birth ( was on ) May 21 143 AD. Thou (art) the Se Gyo. Thou Snake"

Row 2

Ni Po

Kyu gyo

Po tu

Yo po bo po ta

Monkey Tu

Yo

pa po

Ta

Se lu la

Tu ku tu

Yo Pe"

(1)The pure house, (2)the big hemisphere sepulcre (burial Pyramid?) is a talisman. (3)Pure King Yo, is pure moral gradeur (and) a pure Propriety. (4) The Monkey King. (5) Yo (6) has much purity (7) the devotee is pure. (8) To realize and hold upright a good situation. (9) The king and Governor is obedient to the law. (10) (Oh) Yo Pe."

Row 3

Po tu

Pe pe Ngbe

Yo Pe

Papa Po gbe Papa

Yo Pe

Pe po pe

Da Yo da

"The pure King (he has) Prodigious purity and virtue. The pure Yo, very much purity and virtue (is due) Yo Pe. Very much admiration for Da Yo at this moment the king."lu ma tu gyoYo Pe[/b]"Hold upright spiritual tranquility for the ruler and cult leader: Yo Pe."


The first date in Mojarra 1, relates to the birth of Yo Pe who was recognized as Se Gyo. The inscription makes it clear that Yo Pe was recognized as a god and the leader of his people's religion.To understand the designation of Yo Pe as Se Gyo (Se Jo) is explained by Mande traditional culture.

Reading the signs as Pe gyo tells us that Yo Pe was considered a powerful religious specialist in addition to be the King.

The "loopy" sign is not an Initial Series character. It was just a description of the potent supernatural power Yo Pe possessed.As Se gyo, Yo Pe appears to have had great knowledge of sorcery or nyama.

Se (foot, foundation) represents the beginning of knowledge. The se symbolizes beginning, an advance of success and power. The se represents man's progression in pursuit of knowledge.

Since Se, means foundation and gyo, is spiritual knowledge. Se gyo would = "foundation of spiritual knowledge".P.R. McNaughton's The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, Power and Art in West Africa. This book gives us keen insight into Mande traditional beliefs and helps explain much of Olmec social concepts and religion.

Nyama is occult power or special energy of supernatural origin. Nyama is considered source of power behind every task. Among the Mande the pinnacle of potency is the knowledge of sorcery. Sorcery is important among the Mande says McNaughton because "for the vast majority [of Mande] sorcery provide a means for analyzing situations and a tool for responding to them, and these people can be quite open about their use of it" (p.13).

In the above transliteration of the signs in the “loopy” figure I gave the following interpretation:

(1) i ta ki yo.(1a) i po Ki se. (1b) i ta ki yo.1/1b. Thou sacre raising (as) a vital spirit exist (now).1a. Thou the pure Protector / or You (art) Pure Kise.

Instead of translating this middle sign as i po ki se, I believe it should read i po kilisi. In the Friday decipherment of the loopy sign I failed to include transliteration of the dot sign: li. The lexical item li, is represented by the black dot inside the middle symbol. Since "li" is in the middle of the figure I am reading the se sign as si, instead of se, thus we have Kilisi. Reading the signs as follows i po kilisi, we have "Thou pure secret speech".Kilisi means secret speech. Kilisi is a potent formula of human sounds rich with supernatural energy. It is kilisi that provides an object with nyama.In relation to the serpent/snake in the inscription it does not relate to a date.

Before the sa or snake we have se gyo "Foundation of spiritual knowledge". I believe that Ye Po was a Satigi[/]: Master of Snakes.Among the Mande the snake is used in divination. The snake diviner studies the reptiles movements which he mystically interprets to answer clients questions. The Satigi, communicated with snakes for numerous purposes, e.g., to forsee future events and obtain secret knowledge, because he shares a supernatural bond with the serpent. The Satigi is recognized as one of the most powerful diviners of the Mande people who has the ability to perform supernatural acts (McNaughty, p.52).

This suggest that Se gyo Sa (Snake) may be interpreted as The Se Gyo and Sa(tigi).In Row 2 we read the following:

Row 2Ni PoKyu gyoPo tuYo po bo po taMonkey TuYopa poTaSe lu laTu ku tuYo Pe

" (1)The pure house, (2)the big hemisphere sepulcre (burial Pyramid?) is a talisman. (3)Pure King Yo, is pure moral gradeur (and) a pure Propriety. (4) The Monkey King. (5) Yo (6) has much purity (7) the devotee is pure. (8) To realize and hold upright a good situation. (9) The king and Governor is obedient to the law. (10) (Oh) Yo Pe."

The monkey figure probably has an important meaning in this inscription and may represent an emblem. Among the Mande [b]sulaw monkeys indicates the initiates awareness of his own animality. This suggest that Sula tu in row 2, should read "A king aware of his animality".In conclusion it is safe to say that Yo Pe had immense supernatural power, thus his nickname "Se Gyo". He was also a Satigi, and thus could see into the future and obtain supernatural knowledge via his snake totem.

As a result of this I do not believe that Se gyo Snake, is a day sign. These signs probably related to the immense supernatural powers of Yo Pe.

Picture History of the Vai Writing

Above we have a beautiful artifact engraved with Vai symbols.

Below is an ancient saharan inscription some archaeologist claim is 3000 years old. This inscription from Oued Mertoutek contains many symbols we find the Vai syllabary which provides a key to reading the thousands of inscriptions engraved on rocks throughout the Sahel, Sahara and West Africa. The Mande speakers before they adopted Islam worshipped the God Amma. This god Amma, was probably the Mande name for the god Aman/Amon/Amun of the Egyptians.

The Vai writing has been in continous use for thousands of years. The Vai Writing is one of the diverse writing systems used by Mande speaking people in West Africa.





The Vai script gives us an understanding of the phonemic values of the so-called Libyco-Berber symbols. The Libyco-Berber writing is nothing more than a varient form of the original Mande writing represented best by the Vai signs. The Mande in their migration from the Fezzan in Libya across the Sahara into West Africa have left us numerous inscriptions giving us tetimony to their literacy.



Today the Vai script is still being taught to a future generation of Mande speaking youth who will continue writing in this interesting script for hundreds of years to come.

The Mande speaking people have never stopped writing in their ancient script. It appears that the Mande are keeping alive use of the script in Secret Societies like the Poro Secret Society.

There is considerable evidence that the Vai writing was invented millennia before 1820. This view is supported by the presence of signs analogous to the Vai script being found on rocks from the Fezzan to the Niger Valley and beyond that make up the corpus of the Vai script .

Controversy surrounds the invention of the Vai script. Delafosse claimed that Vai informants told him the writing system was invented in ancient times. S.W. Koelle in Narrative of an expedition into Vy country West Africa and the Discovery of a system of writing,etc.(London,1849) claimed that the writing system was invented by Bukele in 1829 or 1839. David Diringer in The Alphabet (London,1968,pp.130-133) reported that there was a tradition that the writing was invented by a group of eight Vai. Marcel Cohen La grande invention de l'ecriture at son evolution (Paris,1958, p. 21) believed that the Vai writing system was not invented before the 18th century, but more probably at the beginning of the 19thth century.

The story about Bukele's dream is just a cover, used by Bukele to keep members of the Gola Poro society from being angered by Bukele's open teaching of the Vai script . We know that the symbols associated with the Vai script existed prior to Bukele's alleged invention of the Vai writing because it was known to African slaves in Suriname. In 1936, M.J. Herskovits and his wife on a field trip to Suriname recorded a specimen of writing written by a man while he was possessed by the spirit winti. Mrs. Hau, who examined the specimen wrote that "Most of the component parts of are to be found in the syllabaries of West Africa which we have just discussed" (see: K.Hau, Pre-Islamic writing in West Africa, Bulletin de l'IFAN, t35, ser.B,No.1 (1973)pp.1-45).

The British took over Suriname and ended slavery in 1799. Years before Bukele's alleged invention of the Vai writing. As a result, there is no way a descendant of a Suriname Maroon (runaway slave) could have produced the writing under possession by the spirit winti if the writing was invented by Bukele.

If you read the history of Bukele's alleged invention of the Vai script we discover that although Bukele dreamt of the Vai characters he was able to "reconstruct" the symbols not by deeply meditating on the dream, he: Later Dualu retired from his work as a steward and returned to his hometown in the Vai chiefdom. But he couldn’t forget the idea of having a means of writing. He asked himself, “Why can’t we have something like this for our own Vai people?” One night he had a vision in which he saw a tall white man who said, “Dualu, come. I have a book for you and your Vai people.” The man in the vision then proceeded to show him the shapes of the Vai characters used in the Vai writing system.

When Dualu awoke, he began to write down the characters he’d seen in his vision. Sadly, there were so many he could not remember them all, so he called together his friends and fellow elders and shared with them his vision and the characters he had written down. His fellow Vai elders caught his excitement and over time, they added more characters in place of those Dualu could not remember.

This is the main give-away that the writing existed before Bukele's alleged invention. Firstly, how could "his friends and fellow elders" help him recover the Vai signs, if the signs were not already invented--since these men had not had Bukele's dream.

Secondly, before Bukele popularized the Vai script he sought protection from King Fa Toro of Goturu in Tianimani for his school. The King granted protection to the inventors of the Vai script because "The king declared himself exceedly pleased with their discovery, which as he said would soon raise his people upon a levelwith the Porors and Mandingoes, who hitherto had been the only book-people" (see: S.W. Koelle, Outline grammar of the Vai language--and an account of the discovery and nature of the Vai mode of syllabic writing, London,1854).

Bukele needed a Kings support for the teaching of anyone the Vai writing because the first schools set up to teach the script at Dshondu and Bandakoro were burned down along with the Vai manuscripts found in the schools after 18 months .

If Bukele had invented the Vai script as he claimed, why did he need protection for his schools? The answer is that he didn't invent the writing he just popularized the script.

The Vai script was taught in the Mande secret societies. This is why even though the script is well known, it is cloaked in an aura of secrecy.This view is supported by the fact that when Thomas Edward Beslow, a Vai prince who attended mission schools in Liberia and the Wesleyan Academy in Massachusetts was initiated into the Poro Society he mentions in his autobiography that many members of the secret society could write in Vai (see: T.E. Beslow, From Darkness of Africa to the light of America).

What do we learn from this report. First, the Vai script was known to Vai elites. Obviously, members of Poro would not like non members of the society to know about this writing. Yet, Bukele was teaching the Vai writing to any one who desired to learn it , so the Vai would be recognized for their literacy just like Europeans. Secondly it was being taught in the Poro society, which King Fa Toro, did not belong too.

Today eventhough the Vai script is well known the writing is semi-secret. As a result. some commentators believe the Vai no longer write in the script. This led Christopher Fyfe in A History of Sierra Leone, to write that: "Though an English trader who spent some time among the Vai in the 1860's found schools where children were still learning it, it was almost forgotten by the early twentieth century, and today is only studied by linguist".

Fyfe was wrong. Gail Stewart, only five years later in Notes on the present-day usage of the Vai script in Liberia (African Language Review 6,(1967)p.71) found that the script was still very popular among many Vai.

David Dalby wrote about a Gola student of William Siegman, who allowed Siegman him to copy the inscription but he would not translate same. This student attributed the writing to the Poro Society, and said he was taught the writing by his grandfather. Dalby wrote: "After the present paper had gone to press, Mr. William Siegman of Indiana University gave me information on a fifteenth West African script, used in Liberia for writing Gola. Mr. Siegman had seen a young Gola student at Cuttingham College (Liberia) writing a letter in this script in 1968, but although the student allowed him to take a copy of the letter he declined to provide Mr. Siegman with a Key"(see:D. Dalby, Further indigenous scripts in West Africa and etc.,ALS,10,pp.180-181).

Dalby viewed the assertion of the student that the writing was used by members of the Poro Society with skepticism. But Dalby should not have been skeptical because Beslow had made the same claim.

In conclusion, Bukele probably did not invent the Vai writing. This is supported by the fact that 1) the symbols associated with the Vai script were well known to members of the Poro Secret Society; 2) descendants of Maroon Blacks in Suriname were familiar with the script; and 3) the Vai writing, for the most part remains in use but it is maintained in a semi-secret fashion and not usually shared with people who are not members or kin of members of a secret society, this is why the Gola student would not translate his letter for Mr.Siegman.

Finally it must be remembered that the symbols engraved on rocks from the Fezzan to the Niger bend and other areas where the Mande live are identical to symbols associated with the Vai script. This shows the continuity of writing among the Mande speaking people over a period of 3000 plus years.

The evidence from Suriname, symbols on the rocks near Mande habitations in the Americas, and the existence of the symbols relating to the Vai script in other Mande writing systems and their continued use by members of the Vai and members of secret societies support Delafosse's tradition that the Vai writing existed in ancient times.

References:

S.W. Koelle in Narrative of an expedition into Vy country West Africa and the Discovery of a system of writing,etc.(London,1849)

David Diringer,The Alphabet (London,1968, pp.130-133)

K.Hau, Pre-Islamic writing in West Africa, Bulletin de l'IFAN, t35, ser.B,No.1 (1973)pp.1-45).

S.W. Koelle, Outline grammar of the Vai language--and an account of the discovery and nature of the Vai mode of syllabic writing, London,1854).

T.E. Beslow, From Darkness of Africa to the light of America).Gail Stewart,Notes on the present-day usage of the Vai script in Liberia (African Language Review 6,(1967)p.71)

D. Dalby, Further indigenous scripts in West Africa and etc.,ALS,10,pp.180-181)..