SUNDIATA, the Lion of Mali Sundiata, the Lion of ...

Without them, we would know nothing of Sundiata, who assembled an empire in the 13th-century sub-Sahara. Now, the words of the griots have been cemented in print?for better or worse. Their claim to an underlying secret knowledge passed along only through the fraternity of griots can't be tested, but what's written rivals?perhaps surpasses?the works of Herodotus. Even accompanied by offhand magic, the descriptions have a sense of detail that feels eminently right.

I have no idea how we came by Sundiata, An Epic of Old Mali, compiled by D.T. Niane and translated from the French. It's a thin, ratty, paperback with tiny type but a huge tale. Niane took his story directly from a contemporary griot, Mamoudou Kouyate (complete with his snipes at written history), who claims that it has been passed down unaltered. Since some 30 versions of the Sundiata legend exist, we can suspect some embellishment, but no matter.

Sundiata, the child of the reigning king's second, hunchbacked wife, has been heralded by sorcerers as a figure of enormous destiny. But by the age of seven, he still crawls like a baby. His mother, Sogolon, has been eclipsed and humiliated by the king's shrewish first wife, whose son succeeds to the kingdom despite the dying king's wish.

But lo! Sundiata orders a massive iron pole brought to him. It takes six men to carry it, yet Sundiata raises it upright with one hand and pulls himself erect. From then on, despite his family's exile, his power of command goes unquestioned by all he meets. When he turns 18, he amasses the armies and allegiance of all the neighboring kingdoms to reclaim the throne of Mali, which has since come under the domination of the evil sorcerer king, Soumaoro, who dresses in the skins of the nine kings he has vanquished.

Whew! But the real power of the telling comes in the detail, especially the battle scenes, which combine the expected tall-tale heroics with minute descriptions of military tactics. The griot often compares Sundiata to Alexander the Great, "the king of gold and silver," apparently well-known in the 13th century. In one battle, Sundiata deploys a novel military maneuver?which, in both formation and deployment, seems to be the classical Greek phalanx.

Even though the griot explains that the ancestors of the Mandingo rulers of Mali came from the east, bringing Islam with them, this kind of historical connection, carried through without writing, is astonishing. More bemusing is the occasional gesture to Islam, though it has little interaction with a daily life of tribal magic. Altogether, this is storytelling, history and genealogy of the highest art.

For a Western look at the same legend, adapted from a different oral lineage, pick up Will Eisner's graphic novelette, Sundiata: A Legend of Africa (a delightful gift from friend Jim Knipfel). Eisner, the father of the "graphic novel" and, through his character the Spirit in the 1940s, the grandfather of today's dark comic books, put this together last year at the age of 85.

Drawn in black, white and the red of dried blood, Eisner's version pits a more edgy, earthy Sundiata against an almost invincible enemy who can command the very air. The storyteller here is the Great Gray Rock, a sardonic, evil advisor to the sorcerer king. Confined to 30 pages, most with six panels, the story necessarily takes a more streamlined form, but Eisner has lost nothing of his command of sweeping visual art. When the sorcerer directs the elements to destroy the armies of Mali, it is terrifying.

History, it's good to see, can take many forms.