ABSTRACT Remarkable similarities across colonial encounters where Africans believed projectiles could be influenced by ritual practices (medicines, behaviours, observances) demand enquiry into their conception and trajectory. Although suggestion of pan-subcontinental phenomena may elicit suspicion of a generalisation, here evidence is examined from the late-independent and colonial periods that shows that a general belief, held cognate between groups, may indeed have existed. The focus is on precolonial1 southern African beliefs in the manipulation of projectiles and how these may have affected ritual responses to firearms during colonisation. At least a millennium of interactions between hunters, herders and farmers appear to have resulted in commonly held beliefs, albeit with differential emphases. From first contact, and into sustained colonisation, it became necessary for Africans to highlight and/or adapt indigenous beliefs as mechanisms by which to cope with firearms and settler aggressive expansion.

中文翻译：

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“子弹到水”信念复合体：用于保护性药物和射弹控制的泛南非洲同源认识论

摘要 非洲人认为射弹可能会受到仪式实践（药物、行为、仪式）影响的殖民遭遇之间的显着相似之处需要对其概念和轨迹进行调查。尽管泛次大陆现象的暗示可能会引起对泛化的怀疑，但这里对独立后期和殖民时期的证据进行了检查，这些证据表明，在群体之间保持同源的普遍信念可能确实存在。重点是前殖民时期 1 南部非洲对操纵弹丸的信仰以及这些信仰如何影响殖民期间对枪支的仪式反应。猎人、牧民和农民之间至少一千年的互动似乎导致了普遍持有的信念，尽管各有侧重。从第一次接触，