Biliku

Spirit-class creator-and-weather being classed here as deity. Identity of Pūluga (southern Aka-Bea, per E. H. Man) and Biliku/Bilik (northern groups, per Radcliffe-Brown) was a central debate in early Andamanese ethnography; Radcliffe-Brown showed the figure is the personified NE monsoon, paired in opposition with Tarai (SW monsoon), with sex and personality varying by band. 'Biliku' is also the bee/cicada-linked owner of fire. Andamanese languages are unwritten; the term value is a Latin transcription (no native script).

Domains

• storm and monsoon wind
• creation and cosmic order
• taboo and divine anger

Powers

• send the monsoon winds
• hurl storm and strike offenders with thrown objects
• make the sun and the moon

Epithets

• Biliku latin · Biliku (Puluga) · oralThe great sky-and-storm being, source of the wind and the seasonsA. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders (secondary)

Relations

• spouse: TaraiThe NE and SW monsoon pair; by band the two are spouses (the birds their children), siblings, or rivals.A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders (1922) (secondary)
• enemy: KingfisherReciprocal of andamanese_maia_lircitmo.enemy — The kingfisher stole fire from the sleeping Biliku, who hurled her pearl-shell lightning after the thief.A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders (1922) (secondary)

Sources

• Biliku (Bilik), called Pūluga in the southern groups, is the creator/storm being associated with the northeast monsoon and the enforcer of taboo.: A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders, Cambridge University Press, 1922 (ethnography); E. H. Man, On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, London, 1883 (ethnography)
• Radcliffe-Brown found Biliku to be of variable sex across bands (often female in the North, treated as a male creator in Man's southern Aka-Bea informants), and not a single uniform supreme deity.: A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders, 1922 (ethnography)