The Religious System of the Amazulu

Sacred-Texts African 

note to the hypertext transcription

This book is composed of a series of interviews conducted by Callaway with Zulu informants, of which only the answers of the natives to Callaway's questions are usually given. As such, it is made up primarily of prose explanations of concepts and ideas that Callaway, a more or less sympathetic English missionary, found to be of interest. There are no sacred narratives, transcriptions of ceremonies, or anything else of that nature, although the book is still interesting, and in many ways more informative than it might be otherwise.

In the book, the Zulu originals are presented in parallel columns alongside the English translations. In this electronic edition, only the English is given, and all text printed in column in the original is redered indented (i.e., inside of <blockquote> tags).

Certain letters in the Zulu words are italicized as part of the orthography (c and x always, h most of the time); this has not been reproduced, primarily because it would have been moderately difficult to italicize the letters in the words and also to reverse the italics where the entire word is in italics. Also, this is no longer standard Zulu orthography, and the lack of the italics will not hinder comprehension of the words for anyone who speaks Zulu. For those of us who do not speak Zulu, the italics are also not really necessary.

Last, but not least, please be aware that this book cuts off in mid-sentence at the end. We have checked a number of copies of this book and the card catalogs for the British Library and the Library of Congress, and this is apparently the way that the book was printed, and not just an error in the copy used for scanning or with this edition.