Untranslatable Word (Shavanizhurang)

Shavanizhurang

I first heard the word ‘shavanizhurang’ on Shanunisenja. I was listening to a retelling of the religious history of the Oktip people with my guide, Rahli. Throughout the stories, she was able to translate with the elder talking in Chongja but this word made her hesitate. At the time, she just translated the word as ‘crying’, which I found confusing because I knew the word for crying was “shanun”. I was entranced in the stories, however, and didn’t press the issue further. 

Later I found the time to ask Rahli about the foreign word during our walk back to the yitja where I was staying. She seemed confused at first, but when I repeated my question in Chongja, Rahli explained, “I know what you are asking but I am not sure how to translate it.” I mentioned the context where I had first heard the word and asked if that would help her explain it.

Rahli smiled and said, “Yes that helps me remember! Shavanizhurang was used during the story of Matfunoktipa trying to save her children.”

This was even more surprising to me. I knew the legends, of course. With a society like the Oktip, so deeply rooted in their beliefs, it is difficult to live among them and not know all their stories about how they came to be. The legend of Matfunoktipa, or ‘moon’, and her efforts to save her people from Datha, or ‘sun’, was not one of my favorites, but was vital to the beliefs of the Oktip. 

The story is as follows; 

When the world was young and the Sun and the Moon were still together in the sky as sisters, they decided to build a people. The Sun and Mood created the plants and animals for their people to eat and places for them to rest and sleep. They placed the people on the world and watched them together from their place in the sky. 

However, the Sun grew jealous. The people, burned by the harshness of the Sun’s light and disheartened by the heat that killed their crops and herds, more readily welcomed the softer light of the Moon. Angered by the love they felt for her sister, the Sun poisoned the people of the earth. She caused their dark thoughts to fester and fighting became rampant as the people seeked to right past wrongs. Death was more common and the lands trembled with the weight of the people’s rage. 

The Moon, seeing what had been done to her children, tried to stop the violence. She spoke to her people, begged them to stop their fighting and get along as they used to, but the people, twisted to anger by the Sun’s powers, ignored her. The Moon looked down at her children destroying each other and at her sister, enjoying their suffering, and wept. She cried for so long and so hard over the world and the dreams she had lost that her tears began to fill the world. 

The Moon’s tears filled the hollow parts of the world and the peoples were forced to higher lands to survive. They had to work together to adapt and survive in the harsher conditions of their new lives. The Sun, angered by how the Moon had saved her children, forced the Moon from her presence, and away from seeing the people she loved so dearly. 

That is why the Oktipsenja is separated. Matfunoktipa was protecting them from their own selfish desires and the rage of Datha by splitting them apart. The water is still salty from her tears and she is still running from her sister up in the sky.

                  Shavanizhurang was used in this story to explain the Moon’s actions when she realized what the Sun had done. Shavanizhurang, literally ‘to weep bitterly’ is weeping because you have tried your hardest at something only to see it fail anyway. 

                  “It is a thing of great love, “Rahli explains, “to cry so desperately that you create Funja. That is one of the reasons the Oktip are so reverent to the water. It is a sign of how much Matfunoktipa cares for us.”