Finally, de Bourgogne wrote under his own name a treatise on the
plague,[1] extant in Latin, French and English texts, and in Latin
and English abridgments. Herein he describes himself as Johannes
de Burgundia, otherwise called cum Barba, citizen of Liége and
professor of the art of medicine; says that he had practised forty
years and had been in Liége in the plague of 1365; and adds that he
had previously written a treatise on the cause of the plague, according
to the indications of astrology (beginning Deus deorum), and another
on distinguishing pestilential diseases (beginning Cum nimium
propter instans tempus epidimiale). “Burgundia” is sometimes
corrupted into “Burdegalia,” and in English translations of the
abridgment almost always appears as “Burdews” (Bordeaux) or
the like. MS. Rawlinson D. 251 (15th century) in the Bodleian also
contains a large number of English medical receipts, headed
“Practica phisicalia Magistri Johannis de Burgundia.”
See further Dr G. F. Warner’s article in the Dictionary of National Biography for a comprehensive account, and for bibliographical references; Ulysse Chevalier’s Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen age for references generally; and the Zeitschr. f. celt. Philologie II., i. 126, for an edition and translation, by Dr Whitley Stokes, of Fingin O’Mahony’s Irish version of the Travels. (E. W. B. N.; H. Y.)
MANDHATA, a village with temples in India, in Nimar district of the Central Provinces, on the south bank of the Narbada. Pop. (1901), 832. It is a famous place of Hindu pilgrimage, as containing one of the twelve great lingas of Siva; and as late as the beginning of the 19th century it was the scene of the self-immolation of devotees who threw themselves from the cliffs into the river.
MANDI, a native state of India, within the Punjab. It ranks as the most important of the hill states to which British influence extended in 1846 after the first Sikh War. The territory lies among the lower ranges of the Himalaya, between Kangra and Kulu. The country is mountainous, being intersected by two great parallel ranges, reaching to an average height of 5000 to 7000 ft. above sea-level. The valleys between the hill ranges are fertile, and produce all the ordinary grains, besides more valuable crops of rice, maize, sugar-cane, poppy and tobacco. Iron is found in places, and also gold in small quantities. Area, 1200 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 174,045; estimated revenue, £28,000; tribute, £6666. The chief, whose title is raja, is a Rajput of old family. Considerable sums have been expended on roads and bridges. An important product of the state is salt, which is mined in two places.
The town of Mandi is on the Beas, which is here a mountain torrent, crossed by a fine iron bridge; 2991 ft. above sea-level; 88 m. from Simla. Pop. (1901), 8144. It was founded in 1527, and contains a palace of the 17th century and other buildings of interest. It is a mart for transfrontier trade with Tibet and Yarkand.
See Mandi State Gazetteer (Lahore, 1908).
MANDINGO, the name currently given to a very important
division of negro peoples in West Africa. It is seemingly a corruption
of a term applied to an important section of this group, the
Mande-nka or Mande-nga. The present writer has usually heard
this word pronounced by the Mandingo themselves “Mandiña,”
or even “Madiña.” It seems to be derived from the racial name
Mande, coupled with the suffix nka or nke, meaning “people,”
the people of Mande. Then again this word Mande seems to
take the varying forms of Male, Meli, Mane, Madi, and, according
to such authorities as Binger, Delafosse and Desplagnes,
it is connected with a word Mali, which means “hippopotamus”
or else “manati”—probably the latter. According to Desplagnes,
the word is further divisible into ma, which would have
meant “fish,” and nde, a syllable to which he ascribes the meaning
of “father.” In no Mandingo dialect known to the present
writer (or in any other known African language) does the vocable
ma apply to “fish,” and in only one very doubtful far eastern
Mandingo dialect is the root nde or any other similar sound
applied to “father.” This etymology must be abandoned,
probably in favour of Mani, Mali, Madi, Mande, meaning
“hippopotamus,” and in some cases the other big water mammal,
the manati.[2]
The West African tribes speaking Mandingo languages vary very much in outward appearance. Some of them may be West African negroes of the forest type with little or no intermixture with the Caucasian; others, such as the typical Mandingos or the Susus, obviously contain a non-negro element in their physique. This last type resembles very strongly the Swahilis of the Zanzibar littoral or other crosses between the Arab and the negro; and though nearly always black-skinned, often has a well-shaped nose and a fairly full beard. The tribes dwelling in the West African forest, but speaking languages of Mandingo type, do not perhaps exhibit the very prognathous, short-limbed, “ugly” development of West African negro, but are of rather a refined type, and some of them are lighter in skin colour than the more Arab-looking Mandingos of the north. But in these forest Mandingos the beard is scanty. Occasionally the Mandingo physical type appears in eastern Liberia and on the Ivory Coast amongst people speaking Kru languages. In other cases it is associated with the Senufo speech-family.
Delafosse divides the Mandingo group linguistically into three main sections: (1) the Mande-tamu, (2) the Mande-fu, and (3) the Mande-tã, according as they use for the numeral 10 the root tamu, tã or fu. Of the first group are the important tribes of the Soni-nké (called Sarakulle by the Fula, and Sarakolé by the French); the Swaninki people of Azer, and the oases of Tishitt, Wadan and Walata in the south-west Sahara; and the Bozo, who are the fishermen along the banks of the Upper Niger and the Bani from Jenné to Timbuktu. The Soni-nké are also known as Marka, and they include (according to Binger) the Samogho and even the Kurtei along the banks of the Niger east of Timbuktu as far as Say.
The group of Mande-tã would include the Bamana (incorrectly called Bambara) of the upper Senegal and of Segu on the Upper Niger, the Toronke, the Mandenga, the Numu of the district west of the Black Volta, the Vai of south-western Liberia, and the Dyula or Gyula of the region at the back of the Ivory Coast.
The group of the Mande-fu includes a great many different languages and dialects, chiefly in the forest region of Sierra Leone and Liberia, and also the dialects of the celebrated Susu or Soso tribe, and the Mandingo tribes of Futa Jallon, of the Grand Scarcies River and of the interior of the Ivory Coast, and of the regions between the eastern affluents of the Upper Niger and the Black Volta. To this group Delafosse joins the Boko dialect spoken by people dwelling to the west of the Lower Niger at Bussa—between Bussa and Borgu. If this hypothesis be correct it gives a curious eastern extension to the range of the Mandingo family at the present day; or it may be a vestige left by the Mandingo invasion which, according to legend, came in prehistoric times from the Hausa countries across the Niger to Senegambia. It is remarkable that this Boko dialect as recorded by the missionary Koelle most resembles certain dialects in central Liberia and in the Ivory Coast hinterland.
The Mandingos, coming from the East and riding on horses (according to tradition), seem to have invaded western Nigeria about A.D. 1000 (if not earlier), and to have gradually displaced and absorbed the Songhai or Fula (in other words, Negroid, “White”) rulers of the countries in the basin of the Upper Niger or along its navigable course as far as the Bussa Rapids and the forest region. On the ruins of these Songhai, Berber, or Fula kingdoms rose the empire of Mali (Melle). Considerable sections of the Mandingo invaders had adopted Mahommedanism, and extended a great Mahommedan empire of western Nigeria far northwards into the Sahara Desert. In the 16th century the Songhai regained supreme power. See infra, § The Melle Empire.
Although the Mandingos, and especially the Susu section, may have come as conquerors, they devoted themselves through the succeeding centuries more and more to commerce. They became to the extreme west of Africa what the Hausa are in the west-central regions. Some of the Mandingo invasions, especially in
- ↑ Respecting this, see David Murray, The Black Book of Paisley, &c. (1885), and John de Burdeus, &c. (1891).
- ↑ Indeed it is possible that the European name for this Sirenian—manati—derived from the West Indies, is the corruption of a West African word manti, applied very naturally to the animal by the West African slaves, who at once recognized it as similar to the creature found on the West African coast in their own rivers, and also on the Upper Niger.
