The Eland and the Sun God

(Credo Mutwa)

Aside from the giraffe, there was one animal that was regarded as very sacred by all tribes throughout southern and eastern Africa. This animal was painted inside the ancient caves hundreds of times. It was engraved on flat rocks far out in the open scores of times. This animal was the eland. The eland is known as the animal of a thousand legends, so many are the stories that have been woven around this beautiful antelope.

Amongst the legends of the Great Earth Mother’s journey into the underworld, the eland is mentioned next to the elephant as being one of two animals that went into the underworld to bring back the Great Earth Mother. This was an act of bravery, which caused the eland to endure extreme danger, terror and hardship as it laboured to return back to the earth’s surface with the Great Mother goddess riding on its back. The eland is seen as an animal of selfsacrifice, an animal that is always ready to give its life for the benefit of other animals as well as human beings.

A beautiful story is told of how, one day, the young son of the sun god visited Earth against his father’s wishes.The sun god had warned his son not to come down from heaven and visit human beings because human beings were dangerous and unpredictable. And although his father had warned him, the young sun god surreptitiously visited humankind on Earth one day and was promptly murdered by a group of jealous wizards.

The great sun god was torn with grief and was very, very furious with the human race for what it had done. He increased the ferocity of the heat of the sun so that, instead of giving life, the sun gave the earth death and destruction. Fires erupted all over the land. Rocks melted in the furious heat of the sun. Rivers boiled away and so did the ocean. Human beings died in their thousands, and only those that succeeded in reaching deep caverns under the earth survived.

The sun god told human beings that he would not stop destroying them until one of the most beautiful of them had sacrificed himself or herself, by jumping into a fire of molten rock from the top of a mountain. A beautiful princess was about to sacrifice herself for the salvation of human kind, when, out of the burning bush there appeared a beautiful eland, which galloped towards her, and stopped her from jumping into the fire pit. 

“Great god of the sun,” cried the beautiful female eland. “I, Pofana, the beautiful one, am more comely than this fat human being. Accept my soul, Lord of light. Accept my body, and remove your angry hand from the head of humankind.” It is said that the beautiful animal jumped into the boiling rock and was immediately consumed by the blue flames that roared upward. And stricken with guilt, the beautiful human princess also threw herself into the fire pit, dying together with the eland for the sake of humankind. It is said that the sun god was so moved by this double sacrifice that immediately he halted the fury of the sun and once more soothing rain clouds swam across the skies and blessed the earth with rain.